The Rhetoric Of The Image

In this, probably Andy Warhol's most iconic image, we see the face of just that, an icon; Maralyn Monroe's portrait plucked from the sphere of pop-culture to serve as pop art. Denotatively speaking, a portrait is all it is but it is in the contradictions and connotative meaning created by the processes of changing the image from one found anywhere in the mass media, that Warhol's point lyes.By obsessively reproducing the image through the medium of the screen print, technically speaking, quite badly, Warhol speaks of the endless repetition of 'low culture' and its obsession with this star, whose image, through endless reproduction, it has rendered almost meaningless in terms of the aura and mystique it lauds, devoid as it is from the original. The kitch colour choices combined with the aforementioned treatment, affords the image an almost laughable quality which is quite the opposite of the original intended meaning of the original image.This image and all those almost identically like it, speak of the absence of any unique quality in modern culture and the prevailance of the throw away and disposable. Ironically, Andy Warhol 'originals' now sell for hundreds of thousands.