How a literal misunderstanding turned five paintings into the world's most expensive bullet-riddled art.
In short: In 1964, performance artist Dorothy Podber asked Andy Warhol if she could shoot his new Marilyn Monroe canvases. Warhol, assuming she meant with a camera, agreed. Podber pulled a pistol and fired, forever altering the history of the five paintings and cementing their place in the annals of art.
The Shot Marilyns are a series of five 40-inch square silkscreen portraits created by Andy Warhol in 1964. Each piece utilizes the same 1953 publicity photograph of Marilyn Monroe from the film Niagara, originally taken by Gene Kornman. While Warhol had explored Monroe’s image since her death in 1962, these works represented a shift toward larger scales, more luminous colors, and a refined silkscreen technique. The series is distinguished by five color variations: red, orange, light blue, sage blue, and turquoise.
The series earned its name during a visit to Warhol’s Factory studio in the fall of 1964. Dorothy Podber, a performance artist, asked to shoot the paintings; when Warhol consented, she drew a revolver and fired a single bullet through a stack of four canvases. The fifth, the turquoise version, remained untouched as it was not part of the stack. Although Warhol was visibly shaken and permanently barred Podber from his studio, the bullet holes were repaired, albeit with the damage remaining faintly visible. This act of violence became an inseparable, albeit contested, element of the works' provenance.
Art historians have frequently interpreted the incident as a form of performance art or a 'happening,' noting that Podber’s literal interpretation of the word 'shoot' mirrored Warhol’s own explorations of authorship, originality, and mass-media imagery. Whether the act was motivated by genuine mischief or artistic intent, the notoriety of the shooting contributed significantly to the paintings' fame. Today, they rank among the most valuable artworks in existence. In May 2022, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn sold at Christie’s for $195 million, setting a record for the most expensive work of 20th-century art ever sold at a public auction and the highest price ever paid for an American artist's work.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Shot Marilyns
- Also: Art Institute of Chicago — Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn) · CC0 (data); description CC BY 4.0
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