The Warhol Museum

Marlon 1986
Silk Screen on Linen

Unlike his other pieces, this silk screen is a black and white photo printed onto a piece of linen. Without the stylistic bright colors and unrealistic representation of a celebrity, this piece is striking for its realistic quality. Granted, it is a glamour shot of this Marlon character, wearing a tilted hat and sitting on his motorcycle. The neutral shade of the linen on which the black and white image is printed becomes the color pallet of the piece. It has an old fashioned feel due to the grainy resolution that results from screen printing in general and more specifically screen printing onto an uneven surface.

Being an artist myself, with a focus on graphic design and geometric abstraction, the off-centeredness of this print chipped at my OCD tendencies to have perfectly straight and centered lines. With a large canvas and a large image, one might expect the artist to center the image so that it becomes the focal point of the canvas. However, for stylistic reasons, Warhol places it off-center to the right hand quadrant. Although I have no explanation for this decision, it illustrates Warhol’s interest in process. It also brings up the idea of how a viewer reacts to a piece. This piece caught my eye due to the way in which it aggravated me. Art does not always have to be visually pleasing. Rather, it has to convey some message, emotion, or display some concept that is unexpected.