The work depicting Cleopatra by the Swiss symbolist painter dated 1872 and exhibited in the halls of the Villa dei Capolavori in Mamiano confronts an extraordinary Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol on the occasion of the great Lichtenstein and American Pop Art exhibition.
A Cleopatra, that of Böcklin far from the exotic imagination
in fact, the work is not depicted in Egyptian costumes and its image on the canvas appears mysterious due to the position of the woman that almost seems to come out of the frame while holding the snake in her hand. A woman and historical figure remembered above all for her seductive ability and ability to manage the fate of her country up to guaranteeing independence from the Roman Empire.
Lover first of Julius Caesar and then of Marco Antonio with whom she governed the East. His ability to govern and his power was then opposed by Octavian who defeated the Egyptian troops at Actium and by Mark Antony who committed suicide, and soon Cleopatra also followed him.
As Plutarch narrates, Cleopatra took her own life with the bite of an asp, a very poisonous cobra that gives a gradual death. With Böcklin's choice to depict Cleopatra between light and shadow, with a highly accentuated dramatic charge, he intends to symbolically explain that the moment depicted is the one following the snake's bite and therefore that of the passing away.
And here for this occasion the "Marylin" contemporary icon for Andy Warhol is combined with Böcklin's Cleopatra.
The image, serially repeated and continually modified by Andy is that of a publicity photo for the 1953 film Niagara, the only one in which Marilyn plays a negative but iconic character for a reading of a vision in a mass desire thus creating a modern mythology of consumerism.
The work, acrylic on canvas with an instantly recognizable silhouette rendered with an almost phosphorescent green, almost seems like a shroud of celebrity to underline the dramatic end of Marilyn's life but also to ensure her eternity.
It was following the tragic death of the thirty-six-year-old actress in 1962 that Andy Warhol decided to transform her appearance into a mass icon of American society.
CLEOPATRA AND MARILYN. IMMORTAL ICONS
Magnani-Rocca Foundation, via Magnani-Rocca Foundation 4, Mamiano di Traversetolo (Parma).
Until 9 December 2018.
Cover image, detail: Andy Warhol, Marylin, 1979 – 1986, acrylic on canvas. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc., by SIAE 2018
