Marilyn Monroe (2014)

Website link: https://corneakkers.com/marilyn-monroe-2014/
Print: https://corneakkers.com/print-marilyn-monroe-2014/
Printable: https://corneakkers.com/product/printable-marilyn-monrie-2014/

Moviestar

Moviestar Marilyn Monroe in oil and cubism. I chosed a fairly unknown and at least not iconic picture of her. The reason is that I do not like her pictures with that exaggerated smiles at all. It makes her cheap and instead she was very intelligent and humorous. Instead I like the ones disclosing her vulnerability, showing Norma Jean Baker (or Mortenson). This picture was taken on the beach with her hair fluttering in the wind. She looks as if she is not yet fully aware of the premonition of her stardom. Tragically at the end of her life she got it. She said: “When I look in the mirror, I see her”. Eery! I settle for the MM almost becoming a star, not heavily sedated and jogging on the filmset.

Primary Process

Often drawing is called the primary process and an oil painting the secondary; a kind of elaboration of a drawing. My Sans titre sketches like Sans Titre – 06-05-14 I consider to be sketches in order to find a style. However, I sell them as bonified works of art occasionally. This painting is a first attempt to capture such sketches in a serious painting.

Complementary Colors

The color scheme I used is the good old orange / blue complementary scheme. It creates vividness and assertiveness, underligning her life lighting up like a spark of fire in the dark. Intense but short-lived. In the head I used some other colors than orange like greens, yellows and blues. Then again, all touches are alike from a tonal point of view, differing only in the shadows. Next to this I liked doing the hair. It gave me a reason to see whether I could pull it off to turn spiky hair into cubistic forms.

Oil painting on wood panel (60 x 80 x 0.9 cm)
Artist: Corné Akkers