Marking Time

Marking Time Synopsis

Addresses an understudied yet highly significant aspect of the work of the influential artist Andy Warhol: his exploration of anniversaries.

In 1967, on the fifth anniversary of Marilyn Monroe's untimely death at the age of thirty-six, Andy Warhol created a series of ten Marilyn screen prints. His decision to produce these "anniversary" prints fits a pattern in his practices as an artist, and in ours as a culture. The varied ways Warhol explored such moments is the subject of this publication. It is well known that Warhol was obsessed with time, as seen in his use of repetition, his work in the time-based media of film and tape recording, and his creation of Time Capsules. Less familiar, and virtually unexamined, is his multifaceted exploration of the related topic of commemoration. In this volume, readers are invited to consider five distinct time-marking occasions as featured in Warhol's art: holidays; commemorations of things; anniversaries of deaths; commemorations of people; and celebrations. Essays on specific works of art place them within their historical contexts and shed light on their significance as anniversary objects and as reminders of our mortality.