Marylin par Ed Feingersh
“What do I wear in bed? Why, Chanel No. 5 of course”. Barely pronounced by Marilyn Monroe, these few words have made two myths enter the legend: the Chanel N°5 perfume and Marilyn Monroe.
Coco Chanel when she imagined how her perfume should be said: “A woman’s perfume, with a woman’s smell. Because a woman should smell like a woman, not a rose”. And for many, men as well as women, Marilyn Monroe represents THE woman. Glamorous icon par excellence, woman child and mistress woman at the same time, never an actress, except perhaps Audrey Hepburn, has so marked the collective memory. Marilyn was a very strong muse for Chanel N°5 having found in spite of herself one of the best advertising slogans of the time. How many women think they are getting closer to her by spraying themselves with the precious effluent?
Marilyn is still intriguing years after her death. We call her Marilyn out of habit as if she were part of the family, her name is no longer necessary. But she will always be Norma Jean Baker, the woman whose mystery has never been really understood. Her death remains an enigma, as does her life, but the image of a beautiful, luscious young woman, a symbol of femininity, persists.
Marilyn Monroe remains the greatest myth of the cinema, the most universal also. Certainly, her tragic end at only 36 years old did not contribute little to the legend, but Marilyn was already a myth in her lifetime, an out of the ordinary person divided between a public character carefully composed and maintained (“Marilyn”) and an unknown woman aspiring only to the recognition of her most intimate being (“Norma Jean”). If the first one continues to make the crowds dream, the various memories and documentaries written about her have gradually taught us to discover the second one: a young woman who was flayed alive in perpetual search of love and who persisted in choosing men who were simply not made for her. Disturbing by its beauty, moving by its fragility, it upsets and seduces inevitably.
And the memories of her are legion, from those films, some of which were shot in pain, to the photographs of them in black and white. She knew how to captivate the lens like no other to leave us these fragments of life in black and white, remnants of a chaotic and brief life.
Years after her death, she still fascinates as much as ever, as shown by the craze for Bert Stern’s last photos for Vogue taken a few months before her death.
Marylin - portrait par Bert Stern
It is a part of these photos that the Galerie de l’Instant offers us with the exhibition Marylin from February 18 to April 21, 2010. It does not pretend to tell us who Marilyn really was, it just offers us to share a few moments with her through the eyes of 9 photographers, some clues to the Marilyn mystery. But not the key!
As a tribute, Ed Feingbergh’s photos show Marilyn getting ready and delicately sprinkling herself with Chanel N°5. We discover her ingenuous and radiant, at the dawn of the woman she was to become, without artifice on the beach through the lens of André de Dienes.
Seductress in full demonstration of her talent lying in a bed and covered with a sheet according to Eve Arnold. Cecil Beaton and Milton Greene show her innocent or naughty by taking off her stockings during the “Black Session”. Backstage photos show her close and fragile. Despite the passing of time, the traces of her life moments make her even more beautiful and elusive. And deeply human and sparkling through the eyes of George Barris and his series on the beach, natural.
And what about Bert Stern’s famous “Last Sitting”, where she appears naked on some in all her truth. Posing naked for Marilyn was not a problem, no, the problem was to live your life….
Gallery of the moment
46 rue de Poitou
75003 Paris
tel : 01.44.54.94.09
www.lagaleriedelinstant.com
This exhibition being a real success, it is extended until May 15, 2010.
Marie-Odile Radom
Cette publication est également disponible en : Français (French)
