Marilyn in Art

Once described as ‘the only blonde in the world’, Marilyn Monroe’s impact in the course of her brief film career was so great that her image remains one of the most potent and poignant of our time, combining waiflike innocence with glittering eroticism, worldliness with profound vulnerability. Much photographed during her lifetime, Marilyn has since
been a constant source of inspiration to artists, from Andy Warhol and noted fine artists to the graphic studios who mass produced greeting cards bearing her likeness. Some see her as the public saw her - sensual, half-open mouth, dreaming eyes, heavy, always just-covered breasts. To others, she is the subject of fantasy - bizarre, erotic, expressionistic - an emblem of pure sex, or the embodiment of the wholesome American Dream.

It is the work of these artists that are presented here from around the world, a true testament to her global impact. These portraits exercise artistic licence to the full, but in which there is little that does not connect at some point with the original model in all her fascination, a unique and universal fascination which, forty three years after her death, shows no sign of diminishing.