Chiaroscuro

Andy Warhol loved almost every single facet about celebrities—the idea of celebrity, the beauty and production of it, and the idea that a person’s face could become its own brand, idea, ideal, and anything else that could make up the construct of a Zeitgeist.

I believe it is fair to say that Andy Warhol was the first 20th century artist to discover that a picture of a celebrity could unlock hundreds or thousands of subconscious thoughts in the minds of the people who viewed it. This is not to say that Warhol took the idea of celebrity further than what it was. This is also not to say that Warhol was the first man to come up with the idea of mass producing pictures of beautiful, well-known women and make it artistic. No, what Warhol did was take images of celebrities and turn their already-ubiquitous presence and make them into a symbol—either as a symbol of truly unattainable iconic status (the piece Gold Marilyn Monroe, with its inherent shrine-like idea) or as a symbol of a kind of pop intellectual commerce (like the dual dueling Elvis’s—by taking images of images of celebrities and adding copies of them Warhol was essentially saying “You know what this is, you know that you’ve seen this very image possibly many times before and, yet, it can still make you see this person in a different light.”) And because the colors are sometimes heavy and not within the lines and the nuances of a facial expression are replaced by a single color, Warhol was even playing with the idea that a celebrity’s image is not always something that they, the celebrity, have a say in.

Andy Warhol’s most memorable celebrity lithographs are the ones of Marilyn Monroe. But for me, personally, I’ve always had a fondness for Liz, the picture of Elizabeth Taylor with the deep red background. Maybe it was because the first Warhol book I bought had it on the cover. But mostly I think it has to do with Taylor herself and her beauty and her sexuality of her youth.

The easy way to describe Elizabeth Taylor is this: she was the opposite of Marilyn Monroe. Black hair instead of blonde, girl next door instead of a dream vixen. The more complicated way to describe Elizabeth Taylor: her beauty and allure and sexuality rivaled Monroe’s, it’s just that it didn’t hit you right away. Monroe was literally a dream girl, someone who had a physical perfection about her that seemed to be conjured by the gods; her sexuality was up front and it seemed completely malleable. Taylor’s beauty was more refined and almost royal (Taylor looked like she could be a queen, whereas Monroe would be the woman that the king would have an affair with). Monroe married Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller, two Great Men from opposite ends of the spectrum. Taylor married very popular and powerful men too, but those marriages appeared to have more to do with proximity and blind passion rather than level-headed decision making.

Which leads me back to this piece, Liz.

Before Elizabeth Taylor got married a bunch of times and befriended Michael Jackson and was a diva behind the scenes and came out with a perfume that had a commercial in which she interrupts a poker game, she was a young, iconic, beautiful girl. She was a like a mixture of Shirley Temple and Audrey Hepburn. She had one of the most recognizable brunette hair-colored faces in the world. And like all celebrities worth their salt, the right image of them at the right time can eradicate the negatives and enhance the positives about them. Warhol was keenly aware of this, it is one of the things that drew him into the fascination with celebrity. It is probably why he once said, “I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They’re so beautiful. Everything’s plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.”

To some people Liz is just an offset picture of Liz Taylor. To me, as someone who was not alive during the height of her popularity, this picture says more about her than any of her studio stills. You couldn’t possibly capture her beauty like this with a camera at a photo shoot—the red background, the red of her lips, and the blue eye shade: sure it all looks fake and exaggerated. But isn’t that the exact essence of how we like to think of celebrities?

I will take this kind of exaggeration when it comes to beautiful celebrities over scripted interviews and enhanced body parts and the desire to defy aging every time.

by Andy Warhol
Color offset lithograph on paper
1964