Rubik Shot Red Marilyn (Rubikcubism)

Warhol's Marilyn, in cube colors

Rubik Shot Red Marilyn takes as its model Andy Warhol's Shot Marilyns of 1964: five 40-inch-square canvases of Marilyn Monroe, each on a different background, red, orange, light blue, sage blue and turquoise. Warhol based them on a publicity photograph for the 1953 film Niagara.

The series got its name from an incident at Warhol's Factory in the fall of 1964, when Dorothy Podber fired a revolver through a stack of four of the canvases, hitting Monroe 'right between the eyes.' In May 2022, about nine months before this edition was released, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn sold at auction for $195 million, a record for an American artist.

Invader rebuilds the portrait as a grid of pixelated color blocks in the language of his Rubik's Cube works, set against a saturated red background.

The man in the mask

Invader was born in France in 1969 and studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He works incognito, masked and mostly at night, and pixelates his face or wears a mask for interviews. Since the 1990s he has installed mosaics of 8-bit video-game aliens in cities around the world: as of January 2020 he had made 3,858 Space Invaders with more than 1.5 million ceramic tiles, and by December 2020 he had invaded 79 cities in 20 countries. On December 31, 1999, he put a mosaic on the D of the Hollywood Sign.

He began Rubikcubism in 2004. For the original works a computer program calculates the color layout, then he turns and stacks real Rubik's Cubes, roughly 300 per piece; a typical work is about 0.9 by 1.3 meters and weighs about 36 kilograms. His Rubik series include Bad Men, Masterpieces and Low Fidelity, which remake famous images and faces.

Rubik Shot Red Marilyn is not made of cubes. It is a printed edition of a Rubikcubist image, issued in collaboration with the London publisher HENI.

A timed release

The work was announced on February 6, 2023, as a timed edition: anyone could buy one for $3,000 until Sunday, February 12, 2023, at 5:59 p.m. Eastern time. The edition is recorded in catalogs as 774.

Each was sold in HENI packaging with a label on the back that the publisher stamps and the artist signs, which serves as the certificate of authenticity. The publisher numbered the series NVDR1-4. Companion Rubik prints include Rubik Shot Country Life (NVDR1-3) and Rubik Camouflage (NVDR1-2).

February 2023 opened with a deadly earthquake in Turkey and Syria on February 6, the same day the edition was announced.

After the release

In 2024 impression 268/774 was offered at auction in London with an estimate of 3,000 to 5,000 pounds and sold for 5,715 pounds. The catalog gives no U.S. dollar figure.

Dealers have continued to offer it well above the release price. In October 2026 one U.S. dealer listed a copy, bought directly from the publisher on release and still in its original packaging, at $5,500, and another offered an unframed copy shipping from the United States at $5,700. A London dealer asked 5,250 pounds and another listed it at 5,000 pounds.

How to identify it

Despite how it is sometimes listed, this is not a screenprint. Catalogs describe it as a giclee print in colors, flush-mounted (Diasec) to an aluminum composite panel with a metal strainer on the reverse, as issued. It measures 100 x 100 cm, about 2.8 cm deep.

On the back is a label from the publisher. One auction catalog records it as signed in black ink and numbered 268/774, with the number printed; a dealer describes the signature as 'INVADER '23' in graphite pencil on the stamped label. Copies are usually sold in the original HENI box.

The title appears in two forms: Rubik Shot Red Marilyn on most catalogs, and Rubik Red Shot Marilyn on the release announcement and some dealer listings. Both refer to the same NVDR1-4 edition.

The numbers

Medium

Giclee print, Diasec-mounted on aluminum composite panel

Dimensions

100 x 100 cm (39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in), about 2.8 cm deep

Edition size

774 (timed edition)

Catalog number

NVDR1-4 (publisher's numbering)

Publisher

HENI Editions, London

Source image

Andy Warhol, Shot Marilyns, 1964, each 101.6 x 101.6 cm

Timeline

1. 1953

   Niagara is released; a publicity photograph of Marilyn Monroe for the film later becomes Warhol's source.

2. 1964

   Andy Warhol paints the five Shot Marilyns; in the fall Dorothy Podber shoots through a stack of four.

3. 1969

   Invader is born in France.

4. Dec 31, 1999

   Invader places a mosaic on the D of the Hollywood Sign.

5. 2004

   Invader begins Rubikcubism, making images from stacked Rubik's Cubes.

6. Jan 2020

   Invader's count reaches 3,858 Space Invaders made with more than 1.5 million tiles.

7. May 2022

   Warhol's Shot Sage Blue Marilyn sells at auction for $195 million.

8. Feb 6, 2023

   Rubik Shot Red Marilyn is announced as a timed edition at $3,000.

9. Feb 12, 2023

   The ordering window closes at 5:59 p.m. Eastern; the edition is later recorded as 774.

10. 2024

    Impression 268/774 sells at auction in London for 5,715 pounds.

11. Oct 2026

    U.S. dealers list copies at $5,500 and $5,700.

The world in 2023

• Jan 8, 2023

  Supporters of Jair Bolsonaro storm Brazil's Congress, Supreme Court and presidential palace.

• Feb 4, 2023

  The United States shoots down a Chinese balloon off South Carolina.

• Feb 6, 2023

  A magnitude 7.8 earthquake strikes southern Turkey and northern Syria.

• Mar 10, 2023

  Silicon Valley Bank collapses, the largest U.S. bank failure since 2008.

• Mar 14, 2023

  OpenAI releases GPT-4.

• Oct 7, 2023

  Hamas attacks Israel, and Israel declares war.

Price record

This is an asking price, not a sale. It is what a seller wanted on the date shown. Asking prices often sit above what buyers pay, but an ask is not a ceiling: a sale can land on either side of it. It is not a value.

By reference price, Rubik Shot Red Marilyn (Rubikcubism) is number 83 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (84 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• It was a timed edition, open to orders for one week in February 2023.
• Warhol's Shot Marilyns got their name when a visitor fired a revolver through a stack of the canvases in 1964.
• An original Rubikcubist work by Invader uses roughly 300 real Rubik's Cubes and weighs about 36 kilograms.
• Invader put a Space Invader on the D of the Hollywood Sign on the last day of 1999.