Hello, Norma Jeane

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/03/2009 (6320 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THOSE luscious lips. Those heavy­lidded, black-lined eyes. That pouf of impossibly blond hair.

Those legs, exposed by an updraft from a subway grate, the white skirt billowing with intoxicating allure.

We’d know these iconic images anywhere, even if they were reduced to a few caricatured lines. The most famous photographs of Marilyn Monroe, the ultimate 20th-century sex goddess, remain ingrained in popular culture some 50 years after they were captured.

They speak of manufactured celebrity and commodified sexuality. They document the poignant story of a model, actress and singer who longed to be taken seriously, but lost herself in the larger-than-life role she played for 1950s America.

Many of those notable photographs and a diverse array of paintings, prints, sculptures and other art works inspired by the actress are on view in Marilyn Monroe: Life as a Legend, a major exhibition that opens Saturday at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and runs through June 5.

The show, curated by Artoma in Germany, is largely drawn from German galleries and collections. It’s similar in size to the Andy Warhol show that drew 24,000 visitors to the WAG last season.

Since the WAG doesn’t have the space to display all 307 works in the show, chief curator Helen Delacretaz has selected and written panel text for just over 200 of them, including Warhol’s uber-famous screen-printed iterations, in garish colours, of a Monroe portrait by Gene Korman.

The gallery walls, some painted coral pink, carry quotations from and about Monroe, chosen by Delacretaz during her research into the icon’s story.

"She’s one of the most photographed women in the world," the curator says. "You’d expect that she lived this incredibly glamorous life… but she seems to have been quite lonely. She wasn’t happy with being the blond bombshell.

"This whole thing about constructing an identity comes out over and over: Who is the real person?"

The show is organized by theme, such as Monroe as sex goddess and Monroe in death. The viewer can trace the legend’s persona from fresh teenage model Norma Jeane Baker to luminous starlet to damaged beauty, shortly before her death in 1962 at age 36.

One of the obvious ironies is that her perfection wasn’t real: She was given facial surgery on her nose and jawline. Her teeth were straightened and her famous mole was fake.

The show’s photographers include Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eve Arnold and Bernard of Hollywood.

Included are Ted Kelley’s 1949 nude calendar shots of Monroe sprawled on a red sheet, later purchased by Hugh Hefner to launch Playboy; Bert Stern’s suite of colour photos, including an iconic one with a champagne glass, that he misleadingly billed as The Last Sitting; and Willy Rizzo’s actual final poolside photos, taken two weeks before Monroe’s death of a drug overdose.

WAG director Stephen Borys says his favourite images are probably the sensual set by a young Canadian, Douglas Kirkland, who spent a night in 1961 photographing Monroe for Look magazine on a bed with rumpled white sheets.

Prominent artists in the show include Robert Indiana, Christo, Eduardo Paolozzi, Mimmo Rotella, Friedemann Hahn and Sarah Schumann.

Borys knows that some may question the artistic merit of a large-scale show devoted to a Hollywood celebrity. He says the exhibition reflects the WAG’s goal to "give every Winnipegger a reason to come here" and will undoubtedly attract first-time visitors.

"You have to see the show to know that it is serious art," he adds.

"There’s no question when you attach the name and the image of Marilyn to a show, it all of a sudden becomes popular. Does that lessen its intellectual or esthetic component? No."

alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca

 

ART PREVIEW

Marilyn Monroe: Life as a Legend

Winnipeg Art Gallery

Opens Saturday, through June 5

 

Much more Marilyn

THE WAG is going all-out with events and tie-ins with the Monroe show. Drop-in tours, curator’s tours and iPod tours are available. Here are some additional offerings (visit www.wag.mb.ca for more information):

March 27-April 12, actress Sunny Thompson performs the one-woman play Marilyn: Forever Blonde. A ticket to the play includes admission to the exhibition on the same day.

On four Saturdays at noon, the WAG screens the Monroe films Niagara (May 2), River of No Return (May 9), There’s No Business Like Show Business (May 16) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (May 23).

April 23 and May 7 at noon, cultural studies scholar Angela Failler gives tours on the theme Mirror, Mirror: Popular Culture in Marilyn’s Image.

May 14 at 7 p.m., performance artist Shawna Dempsey, Winnipeg Free Press writer Alison Gillmor and professors Angela Failler and Kate Ready take part in a panel discussion, Sex, Politics and Scandal, Oh My!, about the cult of celebrity and its relationship to femininity.

May 28 at 7 p.m., psychology professor Maria Medved gives a talk titled On the Couch: Freud, Marilyn, and the Psychology of Icons.

The WAG gift shop is selling Marilyn merchandise ranging from books, posters, mouse pads and puzzles to mugs and martini glasses.

The WAG’s Brio Restaurant is offering a special three-course, Marilyn-inspired dinner for $35, with dishes such as That Old Black Magic swordfish and Some Like It Hot sugar pie.

 

 

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