“If you remember the 60s, you weren’t really there”. This famous quip says much about our rose-tinted nostalgia for the decade. The fun-loving hedonism of Woodstock and Beatlemania may be etched into cultural memory, but Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe portraits reveal a darker side to the swinging 60s that turns our nostalgia on its head.

Warhol’s iconic Marilyn Monroe portrait Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, due to go on sale at Christie’s in May, is expected to fetch record-breaking bids of $200 million (£153 million), making it the most expensive 20th century artwork ever auctioned. Nearly 60 years after they were first created, Warhol’s portraits of the ill-fated Hollywood star continue to fascinate us.

According to Alex Rotter, Christie’s chairman for 20th and 21st century art, Warhol’s Marilyn is “the absolute pinnacle of American Pop and the promise of the American dream, encapsulating optimism, fragility, celebrity and iconography all at once”.

Hollywood stars were great sources of inspiration for the Pop art movement. Monroe was a recurring motif, not only in the work of Warhol but in the work of his contemporaries, including James Rosenquist’s Marilyn Monroe, I and Pauline Boty’s Colour Her Gone and The Only Blonde in the World.

Mourning Marilyn

Born Norma Jeane Mortenson but renamed Marilyn Monroe by 20th Century Fox, the actress went on to become one of the most illustrious stars of Hollywood history, famed for her roles in classic films like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot. She epitomised the glitzy world of consumerism and celebrity that Pop artists thought was emblematic of 1950s and 1960s American culture.

While Rotter’s statement may be true to some extent, there is also a sinister edge to the Marilyns because many were produced in the months following her unexpected death in 1962.