Signaling a new period of productivity in the artist’s work, the Reversals, alongside the contemporaneous Retrospectives introduced a new conceptual vigor to Warhol’s artistic practice. Taking his cue from the tradition of artists who have adapted, varied and transformed the art of their predecessors, Warhol, in an act of self-referential, post-modern brilliance, expropriated material from his own now famous repertoire of images, transforming and updating his classic Pop iconography of the 60s.
With his silkscreen process now honed to perfection, Marilyn (Reversal Series) from 1979-1986 is one of the best examples from this powerfully post-modern body of work, which pivots on the Duchampian notion of the readymade. Warhol had previous appropriated images from the canon of art history, in his 1963 serial painting depicting Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, provocatively re-titled Thirty are Better than One. Warhol's interest in Leonardo's masterpiece, however, was less about its art historical significance and mo
