tyle out of his own non-involvement with the material, and he attempted to produce works that were machine-like and so that were separated from the artist. At the same time, Warhol stood himself as an artist embodying a certain image of the artist. He was his own artwork and was dedicated to fame and wealth as much as to art. He presented himself in simple terms, but in a way this presentation itself was complex and conflicted. He wrote at one point, "If you want to know all about Any Warhol, just look at the surface: of my paintings and films and me; and there I am. There's nothing behind it" (Stiles and Selz 340). Warhol actively sought to present only the surface, emulating popular art in this regard and challenging the abstract expressionist's interplay with the artwork and the viewer of the artwork.
One of the more famous of Warhol's works is a series of reproductions of Marilyn Monroe, as in an acrylic on canvas from 1962. This image is in keeping with Warhol's repeated use of popular icons in different forms, and in this case it would seem that commercial considerations were very much involved in the selection and reproduction of this image. The image was purchased by Warhol from a 1950s publicity photograph only a few days after Monroe's death, and the fact that this story was much in the news adds to the view that the image was selected because it had commercial appeal in the here and now. Bourdon indicates something of the sort when he writes, "During the immediate aftermath of her death, the
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