Authenticate Andy Warhol — Marilyn
The most reproduced image in twentieth-century art, and the most faked.
Pittsburgh
The Marilyn portfolio is the image Warhol is best known for and consequently the one reproduced most often — as posters, as prints, as merchandise, and as outright forgeries. Establishing which of those is in front of you is the first and usually the last step.
The catalogue raisonné records the portfolio's edition size, its year, its publisher and printer, its paper and its signing convention. Match all of them. The commonest failure is an edition size that does not correspond to any documented run.
Under a loupe, a genuine screenprint shows flat opaque colour laid in registered layers with slightly raised edges at the colour boundaries. A reproduction shows a dot rosette. There is no ambiguity in this check.
What a Marilyn does on the secondary market
The strongest part of the Warhol print market, and the part with the most forgery. Catalogue matching and provenance carry the entire case, since no body will issue an opinion.
An orientation for honest, unrestored condition — never an appraisal, and never a quotation.
Questions we are asked
- How can I tell if my Warhol Marilyn is a print or a poster?
- Use a loupe. A genuine screenprint lays flat opaque colour in registered layers with slightly raised edges where the colours meet; a poster shows a dot rosette. There is no ambiguity in this check.
- Can anyone authenticate a Warhol Marilyn?
- No body issues opinions, since the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board dissolved in 2012. The case rests on matching the print against its Feldman and Schellmann catalogue entry and on documented provenance.
Lovenhall ArtRead the work itself
The checks tell you how it was made. The instrument tells you what it appears to be, and roughly what its kind fetches.