Viewing Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait

Portrait of a blonde.

One hundred years after Marilyn Monroe’s birth, the National Portrait Gallery examines the making of an icon. Bringing together photography, painting and works on paper, Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait explores how a young woman born Norma Jeane projected so many facets.

Created in collaboration with the Marilyn Monroe estate, the exhibition spans Monroe’s career from her earliest modelling ‘cheesecake’ photographs to touching and disarming images made shortly before her death in 1962. Along the way, visitors encounter works by artists and photographers including Andy Warhol, Pauline Boty, James Gill, Rosalyn Drexler, Audrey Flack, Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Eve Arnold, Inge Morath, Milton Greene, André de Dienes, Philippe Halsman and George Barris.

Rather than presenting Monroe solely as a subject, the show considers her active role in myth builiding. She understood the power of photography better than most and worked closely with photographers to shape how she appeared.

One highlight is a group of previously unseen photographs by Life magazine photographer Allan Grant, taken at Monroe’s Brentwood home just one day before her death. Captured during the final interview of her life, the images show Monroe reading, reflecting and enjoying the outdoor space with almost childlike glee.

Seen alongside later artistic responses to her death, including Boty’s The Only Blonde in the World and Colour Her Gone, and Warhol’s now iconic Marilyn screen prints, the journey segues into the extraordinary afterlife of Monroe’s image. Note! book in at BFI for the film program Marilyn Monroe: Self Made Star season, running throughout June and July.