Zoe Lin – English – 2022

I paired Bach’s C minor fugue from The Well-Tempered Clavier with Andy Warhol’s 1967 “Marilyn Monroe”. As I listened to the Bach, the repetition of the fugue’s subject took on an obsessive quality. I found myself listening for it and feeling rather relieved when I heard it. In a similar way, Andy Warhol’s work plays on the idea of repetition in capitalism with turning Marilyn Monroe into a recognized, branded icon, her personhood removed with the work’s performative feeling, self-awareness, and flashiness so that we feel a sort of comfort in seeing what we recognize only as an ideal.