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To what extent does Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych illustrate F.R. Leavis’ fears concerning Mechanical Reproduction?

To answer this question with any degree of certainty we must first approach the concept of mechanical reproduction in the context of F.R. Leavis’ understanding of cultural theory; once this has been established, we can outline Leavis’ fears concerning this concept and begin to draw parallels between these ideas and Andy Warhol’s seminal piece: Marilyn Diptych. Released in 1962 Marilyn Diptych presents a distinctly biographical narrative of the life and death of celebrity actress Marilyn Monroe, encouraging a critical interpretation of the polarising disparity between the two sides of the piece considering the then late stars recent expected suicide (Banner, 2012, p.411). Marilyn Diptych is a calculated critique of the post-war consumer culture that was fuelled by the mechanical production and blasé consumption of products and cultural texts on a scale never seen before. Warhol’s careful analysis of the environment that produced the icon of Marilyn Monroe is obvious here; whether Warhol was conscious of, and explicitly illustrating Leavis’ fears and ideas however, is another story – and one that in the following paragraphs we will be analysing and addressing.

The invention or perhaps birth of a cultural landscape dominated by mindless production and consumption of ‘thwarted and incoherent’ (Leavis, cited in Storey, 2006 p.14), cultural texts mentioned above was feared particularly by F.R. Leavis, who in 1930 defined culture as ‘the finest human experience of the past’; something that is guarded and perpetuated by a ‘minority’ and of which the ‘consciousness of the race�� is constituted (cited in Storey, 2006, p.13-14). This rather archaic understanding of culture, borrowed from the likes of Matthew Arnold, presents one of Leavis’ core beliefs: that ‘the twentieth century is marked by an increasing cultural decline’. Based on this definition and understanding of culture then it is clear to see why mechanical reproduction would have instilled great fear in Leavis, and a ‘Leavisite’ (Storey, 2001, p.23) definition of mechanical reproduction emerges: mechanical reproduction (or simply ‘the machine’), refers to the ‘process of mass-production and standardisation’ of cultural texts, whereby the power and influence of them (and the minority that defines them) is threatened and undermined. Leavis fears that this process will be accompanied by a great ‘levelling-down’ of art and culture that will render ‘active use of the mind more difficult’, injuring the ‘standard of living’ of the individual and more importantly ‘debasing and inflating’ the cultural currency that, in Leavis’ mind, is most valuable to civilisation. It is perhaps Leavis’ greatest fear, however, that the victims of mass-culture and mechanical reproduction will become purely ‘passive’ consumer creatures; surrendering ‘under conditions of hypnotic receptivity to the cheapest emotional appeals [that are] associated with a compellingly vivid illusion of actual life’, ultimately becoming slaves to the commercial entities that rule and drive this ‘machine’ (cited in Storey, 2006, p.13-14).

Throughout Marilyn Diptych we can see references to the idea of mechanical reproduction, indeed the form itself is indicative of this as we see the iconic source image of Marilyn Monroe repeated 50 times over, here Warhol is ‘reinforcing [Monroe’s] status as a consumer product’, emphasising her ‘commodity status’ (Kleiner, 2009, p.428) as the method of repetition is reminiscent of that of the factory conveyor belt, which when paired with Warhol’s choice of name for his studio: ‘The Factory’ (Guggenheim, 1999), becomes an obvious reference to the concept of ‘mass-production and standardisation’ that was feared by Leavis (cited in Storey, 2006, p.13). The number of iterations of the source image is significant too as it matches the number of states in the USA, which works to highlight the fact that at the time of release the myth and ‘vivid illusion of [an] actual life’ of Marilyn Monroe dominated the ‘consciousness’ (Leavis, cited in Storey, 2006, p.13) of the American public. Indeed the entirety of Marilyn Diptych can be interpreted as a twisted incantation of the American flag, a warning to onlookers of the dangers of secular celebrity worship and the realities of their living a split-life; one of which that is dominated by the glamorous illusion displayed to the public, as seen portrayed by the vivid bright colours on the left-hand side of the diptych, and the private personal reality that is shown as it’s opposite on the right side of the piece, indicating a dark, hidden reality that only becomes obvious in light of the subject’s tragic, early, drug induced death. An injury to the ‘standard of living’ is obvious here for Marilyn Monroe specifically, who through the process of being commodified lost her individual identity, and evidently suffered greatly. This can even be taken a step further, as the unexpected death of Monroe in 1962 triggered a doubling in the suicide rate in Los Angeles (Banner, 2012, p.427) thus illustrating this grave injury and highlighting the ‘hypnotic receptivity’ of the ‘passive’ consumer in their reaction to the death of their icon. Consumers who, instead of employing ‘active use of the mind’ to question the cultural and societal environment that led to Marilyn’s death, reacted as martyrs – choosing suicide rather than re-evaluating the worship of their secular religious icon and the ‘machine’ that manufactured it (Leavis, cited in Storey, 2006, p.14). It is fair to say that Leavis feared through the mechanical reproduction of art and cultural texts that the elitist intellectuals (himself included) would be undermined and made essentially redundant in their defining and perpetuation of high art and high culture, which would allow for the first time a new, accessible, ‘mass-art’ to emerge, as Alloway writes in 1958:

The elite, accustomed to set aesthetic standards, has found that it no longer possesses the power to dominate all aspects of art. It is in this situation that we need to consider the arts of the mass media. It is impossible to see them clearly within a code of aesthetics associated with minorities with pastoral and upper-class ideas because mass art is urban and democratic.

It is clear to us that Warhol was creating and spearheading a new breed of art that was accessible not only to the ‘vanguard’ of society and not operating ‘within a code of aesthetics associated with [the] minorities [and their] pastoral … upper-class ideas (Richards, cited in Leavis, 1930). Warhol was instead appealing to the masses, hence the defining term for his work: pop-art. Leavis spoke of this ‘overthrow of standard’ that would ‘debase and inflate’ the cultural currency, constituting a ‘catastrophe’ for the existence of high-art and high-culture, and indeed he was right – the secluded and elitist world of fine art was being threatened by Warhol’s revolutionary work. This work however allowed – for perhaps time in the history of modern art – the general public, uneducated in the nuances of artistic analysis the ability to understand and appreciate fine art, relating to its subject and receiving its message: that the contemporary culture they perpetuated and subscribed to killed Marilyn Monroe, implying as Leavis states a ‘responsiveness to [art] and … philosophy … [that] may affect the sense of the human situation and of the nature of life’ (cited in Storey, 2006, p.13).

It is clear then to see that the presentation and reception of Marilyn Diptych does illustrate, and to a certain extent prove Leavis’ fears regarding mechanical reproduction and mass-culture theory – however, as seen reflected in the wake of the critical and public response and acceptance of Marilyn Diptych, the ‘power and influence’ of cultural texts has by no means been undermined and the currency of culture has been enriched, usuring in a new era of popular art that is available and accessible to the individual. In addition to this, by bringing the reality of Marilyn Monroe’s story to light through the medium of art it encouraged the ‘passive’ consumer to engage ‘active use’ of their mind to understand the message and warning Warhol was putting across: to be aware of the ‘vivid illusion of actual life’ portrayed by the polarising two-faced nature of celebrity culture, and to be wary of the cultural landscape that allowed such realities to emerge and thrive.

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Bibliography

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