Marilyn Monroe in Reno
Artist
Henri Cartier-Bresson
(French, 1908 - 2004)
Date1961; printed ca. 1980s-1990s
MediumGelatin silver print
DimensionsImage: 17 3/4 x 11 7/8 inches (45.09 x 30.16 cm)
Sheet: 20 × 15 7/8 inches (50.8 × 40.32 cm)
Sheet: 20 × 15 7/8 inches (50.8 × 40.32 cm)
Credit LineGift of the Hall Family Foundation
Object number2007.21.3
SignedSignature on sheet recto, lower right, in black marker: "Henri Cartier-Bresson"
Inscribednone
MarkingsBlind stamp on sheet recto, lower left: " © Henri / Cartier / Bresson";
On sheet verso, lower left corner, in pencil: "HF.003.115.07"
On View
Not on viewCollections
DescriptionPortrait of Marilyn Monroe seated in front of photographers.Exhibition History
In the
Public Eye: Photography and Fame. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas
City, MO, March 8 - June 15, 2008, no cat.
Rotation 15. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,
Kansas City, MO, June 2013-January 2014, no cat.
Surveillance. The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO. September 16, 2016 – January 29, 2017, no cat.
This photograph of Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) was taken while she was on location in Reno, shooting The Misfits (1961), her last completed film. Born Norma Jeane Baker, "Marilyn Monroe" was a completely invented persona: dumb, beautiful, sexual, naïve, a construction down to her makeup and hair color. As she noted to an interviewer in 1960, "I'm an artificial product." She at once understood how to seduce the media, and was commodified by it: captured, possessed, and packaged. Here, Cartier-Bresson astutely captures this paradox: Monroe belongs to everyone and to no one, at once the center of attention and poignantly alone.
Hall Family Foundation, Kansas City, MO, 2007;
Given by the Hall Family Foundation to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2007.
Copyright© Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos, courtesy Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris
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