Warhol's Marilyn Diptych repeats one publicity photo of Marilyn Monroe fifty times. On the left she is printed in loud color, on the right in black and white that smears and fades. Most people read it as a pair about fame and death, begun within weeks of her death in August 1962.
Twenty-five faces sit on each side, all taken from the same cropped photograph, and no two come out quite alike. The left panel looks like an advertisement. The right looks like a smudged newspaper picture.
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The story is tidy: color on the left, death on the right, read in order like a sentence. It also assumes a plan, and by the account of the people who first bought the canvases, the pairing was not Warhol's idea. He made two separate canvases.
Gregor Muir, who curated the Warhol show at Tate Modern, says it plainly: the diptych "was put together not by Warhol, but by the collector." So the picture hanging on the wall rests on a decision that began with someone else.
I don't believe that empties the work. I do think it changes who gets the credit for the story everyone tells about it.
What You'll Discover
Who put the two halves together.
What lies under the colors.
Whose photograph Warhol borrowed.
How the black side comes apart.
What sixty years of dust did.