Abstract
Marylin Diptych by Warhol consists of twenty-five brightly coloured pictures on the left and the
twenty-five black and white ones on the right. Since Western cultures typically conceptualise space in
terms of directional metaphors LEFT IS THE BEGINNING and RIGHT IS THE END, the common
interpretation is that the colourful images represent Marylin’s life with the greyish ones corresponding to
her death. One way of clearing some doubts concerning this interpretation of the work is to assume that
the painter used reverse perspective, which he most probably knew from the art of the Byzantine icon.
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