Marilyn Monroe -- who would have turned 96 on June 1 -- was always much larger than life.
Nearly 60 years after she was found dead -- reportedly of an overdose of sleeping pills; the conspiracy theories continue to thrive -- in Los Angeles at age 36, Andy Warhol's iconic pop art-style Shot Sage Marilyn -- brought her back to life on Tuesday, May 10, when it was sold for a heart-stopping $195 million at New York's Christie's Spring Marquee Week.
The sale broke the record set by Jean-Michel Basquiat's Untitled, which was sold for $110.5 million in 2017.
The $195 million price tag ensures that the 40 inch by 40 inch painting became the most expensive 20th century artwork to sell at auction or public sale.
Avant-garde artist Andy Warhol painted five silkscreen canvases of Marilyn, considered his most important work, in 1964 in five colours -- sage blue, light blue, red, turquoise and orange -- shoved them into a corner of his Manhattan studio and forgot about them.
They caught the eye of Dorothy Podber, a performance artist friend of a photographer who worked with Warhol at his studio.
She requested permission from Warhol to 'shoot' the canvases. Thinking she planned to photograph them, Warhol was stunned to see her take out a revolver and shoot at the vertical stack of four of these canvases at Marilyn's forehead in the painting.
The Shot Marilyn canvases were born and Podber had created one of the most remembered moments of performance art.
It's fitting that a canvas resulting from this unusual accident of art created a splash across the world with its record-breaking sale. Both Warhol and Podber must be smiling somewhere.
The sage blue Shot Marilyn was part of the collection of Thomas and Doris Ammann, sibling Swiss art dealers. The work was purchased on Tuesday by Larry Gagosian, who owns the Gagosian Gallery chain of art galleries, apparently on a client's behalf.
Take a bow, Norma Jean Mortenson, for that was Marilyn's birth name. You will never be forgotten.
