Marilyn Monroe was one of the most photographed people of the 20th century and highly skilled at constructing her own image in the public media. While fine artists were also drawn to portraying her during her lifetime, it was her tragically early death that truly turned her into a cultural icon. In celebration of the centennial of her birth, many of the most celebrated portrayals of Monroe are on display in London’s National Portrait Gallery in “Marilyn: A Portrait,” on view through September 6th.
“One of the points I’d like to bring out in the exhibition is that if Marilyn is an agent in the making of photographs…that somehow pervades the paintings,” said the show’s curator Rosie Broadley. Marilyn never sat for a portrait, and none of the artists who painted her during her lifetime met her prior to doing so, meaning that every painting of her that exists is based on a photograph and is therefore “a reflection of her public persona,” she added.
At the same time, Monroe herself wrote in her memoir that “People had a habit of looking at me as if I were some kind of mirror, instead of a person.” “It’s almost like people will see what they want to see with Marilyn and paint what they want to paint,” Broadley said. At the height of her fame and the immediate aftermath of her death, male artists often saw a beautiful, sexually attractive woman or a troubled star. Few female artists chose to portray her at this time, although those that did, notably, Rosalyn Drexler and Pauline Boty, went deeper in their responses. It wasn’t until feminist writer Gloria Steinem edited a copy of Ms. Magazine dedicated to Marilyn 10 years after her death that female artists began to reclaim Marilyn for themselves. “It was almost like that kickstarted this kind of reappraisal of Marilyn,” said Broadley.
Here are some of the most iconic images of Marilyn from contemporary artists.
Willem de Kooning
Marilyn Monroe, 1954
Marilyn Monroe, 1954
Willem de Kooning
American Federation of Arts
According to the exhibition’s catalogue, Willem de Kooning’s striking abstract portrait of Monroe was the first portrait to be made of the star. It’s part of his “Women” series depicting women figures in paintings, yet Monroe is the only subject identified by name. Perhaps, for de Kooning, it’s an indication of her role as the “ultimate woman.” In 1957, the photographer Sam Shaw took Monroe and her then-husband, the playwright Arthur Miller, to see the painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. According to Shaw, Miller was outraged at the depiction, but Monroe herself accepted it. “She thought that artists had the right to depict her as they wished,” said Broadley.
Ray Johnson
Hand Marilyn Monroe, 1958
The Pop artist Ray Johnson’s portrait of Monroe, created at the height of her critical and commercial success, can be read as a prescient appreciation of the damaging effects of fame. Johnson juxtaposes an image of Monroe based on a popular pin-up picture by Bruno Bernard, known as Bernard of Hollywood, with an oversized hand that seems destined to stifle or crush her. The harsh pink color and lines that slice into and around her image, partially obliterating it, add to the sense of danger.
Rosalyn Drexler
The Misfits, 1961
The production of The Misfits (1961), Monroe’s final completed film, was notoriously troubled. With her marriage to Arthur Miller (who had written the script) breaking down, Monroe was frequently late on set and drinking excessively after work. Drexler nails the on-set atmosphere in this queasily colored nightmarish painting based on a black-and-white film still of Monroe and her co-star Clark Gable. Drexler “seemed to see the truth in a way that other people didn’t let themselves think about,” said Broadley. “It feels, when you understand what happens later, that she got a sense of Marilyn’s life slightly spiraling.”
Andy Warhol
Green Marilyn Monroe, 1962
Andy Warhol’s silkscreen prints are undoubtedly the most famous portraits of Monroe and played a key role in cementing her iconic status. Looking at them today, we see a glossy celebration of celebrity and sexuality, but Broadley believes the very earliest versions, such as Green Marilyn Monroe (1962), were intended as tributes to the film star. Produced just weeks after her death, Broadley said, “they genuinely came from a place of shock and grief. They’re not just portrayals of her; they’re almost for her.” When they were first exhibited a few months after her death, “people were really moved; they called them heartbreaking.”
James Francis Gill
Marilyn Triptych, 1962
James Francis Gill used two different photographic sources of Monroe as the basis for his viscerally painful comment on the destructive nature of fame: images taken by Allan Grant and published in Life magazine just a day before she died and a cast photo from The Misfits. In the first two panels, Monroe seems to force herself to perform the role of star for the viewer, but by the third she has given up and sits, slumped and naked, her face scowling. Behind her, the facial expressions in a series of black-and-white images evoke the struggles of maintaining her public persona, alternating between happy smiles and frustrated grimaces.
Pauline Boty
The Only Blonde in the World, 1963
As an attractive blonde whose beauty often overshadowed her talent, Pauline Boty identified closely with Monroe. For her Pop art portraits of the star, Boty chose an image from Monroe’s best-loved film, Some Like It Hot (1959), as the basis for The Only Blonde in the World (1963), in which the character, Sugar Kane, is given an ethereal, almost luminous quality as if she’s sashaying into the afterlife. The vibrantly colored panels that appear about to close over her heighten the sense of a talent eclipsed all too soon.
Audrey Flack
Marilyn (Vanitas), 1977
Audrey Flack’s Marilyn (Vanitas) (1977) brings a contemporary, distinctly feminine take on the age-old genre of vanitas paintings. The work features an early, pre-fame image of Monroe along with the traditional timekeeping motifs of candle, egg timer, and watch, as well as a powder compact and lipstick. With its focus on the fleeting nature of time and beauty, it can be read as a poignant commentary on what Norma Jean sacrificed by becoming Marilyn. The inclusion of one of Flack’s family photographs adds a personal touch, connecting it to “her own experience of being a young child growing up in the ’50s or early ’60s and being in the shadow of this idea of Marilyn being the perfect woman,” said Broadley.
Margaret Harrison
Marilyn, 1998
Margaret Harrison first began painting Monroe in the 1970s, seeing her as one of the many women throughout history who had been “crumpled or destroyed by a society at odds with their talent or intentions,” according to the exhibition catalogue. Here, a close-cropped image of Monroe at the height of her fame is reworked in baby-pink watercolor to produce a picture of heartbreaking innocence. Meanwhile, on the other half of the diptych is a version of the leaked autopsy photograph of Monroe, which was widely reproduced in the press at the time. Again, it conveys the sense of tragic loss.
Marlene Dumas
Dead Marilyn, 2008
Based on the same illicit photograph used by Harrison, but reproduced in a sickly palette of blues and greens, Dumas’s painting is without doubt the most challenging representation of Monroe in the National Portrait Gallery exhibition. “Not everyone is going to feel that it’s an image we should look at,” acknowledged Broadley. “In the exhibition, we portray her as having agency in the creation of her images, and in this instance, she absolutely doesn’t.” However, she believes that Dumas, who was grieving her own mother at the time, acknowledges this media betrayal of such a private image being made public in her work. “It’s almost like she was restoring dignity back to the image,” said Broadley.
