Marilyn Monroe, the Pop Art Muse

Using a press image from Marilyn Monroe’s 1953 film Niagara—ironically, the star’s only film in which her character dies—Andy Warhol cast America’s beloved bombshell in perhaps her most lasting role: as his muse. Immediately following Monroe’s tragic suicide in ’62, a death- and celebrity-obsessed Warhol began to create silkscreens of her likeness—print after print, asserting the reproducibility of the fallen starlet and the oh-so-fleeting nature of Hollywood’s embrace.