Review - Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait at the NPG

Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait at the National Portrait Gallery is a triumph, joining Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty and David Bowie Is at the V&A (yes, it’s that good) as three spectacular revelations of the inner workings of masters of late 20th century creative culture and, above all, public domain image-making.

The brilliantly curated show is perfectly pitched and paced, organised partly chronologically and partly according to the collaborations with each individual photographer she worked with. Plainly, ‘Marilyn Monroe’ is a construction, but, however objectified that persona became, Norma Jeane no doubt actively sought stardom, hoping for the love and attention she’d never had as a child. She’s absolutely a willing collaborator, actively taking part, often joyously, in the act of finding the perfect image. Her skill in helping create these outcomes is anything but passive and this exhibition does her the great service of reminding us that she was her own subject as well as our object.

The only two sections that made me wince a little were her very earliest cheesecake shots, which verge on the pornographic and feel exploitative. Her vulnerability here is also uncomfortably tangible. As her confidence grows over the next decade, the act of photography becomes more of an equal meeting point between photographer and subject. The majority of the show explores exactly this – Marilyn as the image master, a shape-shifting gift to any photographer.

The second painful section covers the final years before her death. These photographs are beautiful, raw and elegant, but the sadness in Marilyn’s eyes is unmistakeable. We witness her in the process of becoming lost to herself – as well as to us.

I wish she had been photographed by more women, who tend to understate rather than objectify her beauty and seek to dig below the persona – particularly the images by Eve Arnold and Inge Morath. The latter photographed her with great tenderness and respect with Arthur Miller on the set of The Misfits before, as fate would have it, going on to marry Miller herself after he separated from Monroe.

The show’s sub-text is the development of photographic style across the time period on show, from 40s and early 50s calendar girl shots to magazine editorial and documentary realism. Photography is a dance and, although I thought I knew most of its moves on Marilyn, I didn’t know every shot by any means. I feared over-exposure might make the images hackneyed, but far from it. I was astonished to find Bruce Davison had photographed her, for example.

I’m still thinking about this show now. It was a moving experience. Marilyn is so many things - sad, vulnerable and damaged; sweet, joyous, glorious, exuberant, masterful and serious. And always beautiful. From a further viewpoint in time, you see how she broke every rule. You can’t act dumb and be smart. You can’t be a body and a mind. But she tried to get ahead of all these arcs, even if she was never satisfied by any of them finally. We shall be fascinated by her forever.