Pop artist Russell Young has entered the digital art market with a Marilyn NFT (non-fungible token), FAD magazine reports. This latest venture follows the virtual auction hosted by Marilyn’s estate in June 2021, on what would have been Marilyn’s 95th birthday (see here.)
‘Marilyn Crying‘ is one of Young’s most famous works, based on a photo taken by George Silk as a tearful Marilyn announced her split from Joe DiMaggio on October 6, 1954. (Interestingly, the release coincides with the 68th anniversary of their wedding, on January 14th – just ten months earlier.)
“British-American artist Russell Young, known for his diamond-dusted silkscreen paintings of cultural icons, collaborates with SuperRare for his first NFT release Marilyn Crying .., Young has waited until now to translate the visceral, analog processes of his work into NFTs that elicit the same sense of immediacy and raw material as his signature artistic practice. The NFT will also be viewable on an IRL screen display at Taglialatella Gallery’s New York location.
Marilyn Crying is sourced from one of his most iconic works depicting Marilyn Monroe in an evocative state that speaks to a major part of Young’s overall practice exploring stardom, excess, and the complicated nature of the American Dream. Young hand-mixes and titles each of his original colors …
Marilyn Crying consists of 100 original colors derived from his silk screen paintings with over 1,000 variations which he mapped himself, creating the formula without the use of a generative algorithm. Each of the panels of Marilyn Crying is a photograph of an individual silk screen painting, in which Young rigorously reflects the raw, hands-on nature of his craft …
With its elements of repetition, transition, and movement, Marilyn Crying traces Young’s roots photographing the music scene of 1980s London to filming over 100 music videos in MTV’s heyday in the 1990s to hand-painting and hand-pulling hundreds upon hundreds of silk screen paintings today.”
The Marilyn Report 