Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe

Goodbye (Again), Norma Jean NYTimes, DEBORAH SOLOMON, September 19, 2004.

"Like any number of male intellectuals, Arthur Miller is not always wise when the subject turns to women. His ''After the Fall'' opened on Broadway in 1964, and many viewers considered it offensive. They could not understand why a playwright known for his lofty principles, for his famously sturdy and unshakable conscience, would have depicted his former wife so harshly. Marilyn Monroe was no longer alive to protest the character of Maggie, a popular singer who is addicted to pills and tyrannizes her husband with her implacable demands."

The irony of Andy Warhol's 'Marilyn' is that it is an icon of an icon created by an icon.

"Using the same cool detachment he used to create the Campbell Soup silkscreens that first made him famous, Warhol's 'Marilyn' is no different from a soup can on a grocery shelf. She is no longer a human being but a consumer product, one created by Hollywood to satisfy the demands of the marketplace. This illusion is emphasized by Warhol's depersonalizing colors and the silkscreen medium, which, because it is so reproducible, blurs the line between art and commodity.

At the same time, Warhol is also celebrating Monroe. Although the series was created five years after her death in 1962, she is in many ways the perfect embodiment of Warhol's ideal: the sexy and the tragic wrapped up in one famous package."