Andy Warhol - Marilyn Monroe I Love Your Kiss Forever Forever (FS II.5)

Marilyn Monroe I Love Your Kiss Forever Forever is Warhol’s first depiction of Marilyn Monroe. Unlike later portrayals of the classic Hollywood star’s likeness set against vibrant colors, here Warhol has detailed a focused image of Monroe’s most seductive feature set against a stark white backdrop. The print illustrates Monroe’s lips, slightly parted in a sensual, erotic manner that borders on the line of haunting, as if the world’s most popular movie star is in on a secret that the world will never know about.

Concentrating on separate body parts, such as a foot, breast, or hair was an early Pop strategy that Oldenburg, Lichtenstein, and Wesselmann all utilized, mimicking the fragmentation found in advertisements. This early lithograph appeared in the book One Cent Life, produced and assembled by Walasse Ting, Bern, and E.W. Korfeld. The Swiss publisher of the book writes, “[Ting] wanted to publish the most international illustrated book, intended to illustrate his text, uniting neo-dadaism and Pop art, among many other artistic movements. The idea was born from global experience, close contact with culture, pseudo-culture, primitive existential worries, urban erotic and Eastern wisdom…It was a Herculean task, for which only a Chinese would have been able to muster the perseverance.”