Hello, Tim Halford here, and please allow me a brief moment to share some news about a fellow

Pushkin podcast. This season on revisionist history, Malcolm Gladwell, is diving into one of the

most infuriating corners of American life. Guns. The six episode series looks at America's gun

problem through topics such as TV Westerns, the assassination of Robert Kennedy, and the insanity

of the Supreme Court. The series begins on August 31. You can binge listen to all six episodes early

and ad-free by subscribing to Pushkin Plus on Apple podcasts, or by visiting pushkin.fm-plus,

or you can hear the episodes each week in the revisionist history podcast feed.

Pushkin

Andy Wallhole once gave a silk screen portrait of Marilyn Monroe to a skeptical friend.

Just tell me in your heart of hearts that you know it isn't art, said his friend.

Wallhole wasn't offended. Wrap it up in brown paper. Put it in the back of a closet, he replied.

One day, it'll be worth a million dollars.

Perhaps he undersold himself. In May 2022, another of Wallhole's Marilyn silk screens,

shot Sage Blue Marilyn became the most expensive work of 20th century art when it sold for $195 million.

Shot Sage Blue Marilyn's backstory is as striking as the price. In 1964, Dorothy Podber,

an artist and provocateur, came to Wallhole's studio, the factory, pulled out a gun,

and fired through several of the portraits. Four years later, Wallhole himself was shot and

nearly killed in the factory, which can only have added to the mystique of bullet-scarred

Wallhole pictures. The picture deserves the cliche iconic, but there is a much more obscure

portrait that has a claim to being Wallhole's most interesting and definitive work.

May I offer for your consideration, Che? A silk screen picture based on a newspaper photograph

of the corpse of the recently executed Marxist revolutionary leader, Che Guevara.

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