Richard Avedon - Photographs London Thursday, November 21, 2024 | Phillips
  • “A picture of Norma Jean, not Marilyn.”
    —Vik Muniz on this work

    Among Richard Avedon’s most celebrated portraits, this tour de force was captured on 6 May 1957 at Madison Avenue studio during a publicity shoot for 30-year-old Marilyn Monroe’s new film The Prince and the Showgirl. About this day, Avedon reminisced:

     

    ‘Marilyn Monroe was an invention of hers. A genius invention that she created like an author creates a character. So when Marilyn Monroe put on a sequin dress and danced in the studio, I mean, for hours she danced, and sang, and flirted, and did this thing. There is no describing what she did. She did Marilyn Monroe. And then there was the inevitable drop because she was someone who went very high up and went way, way down. And when that night was over she sat in the corner like a child with everything gone. But I wouldn't photograph her without her knowledge of it. And as I came with the camera, I saw that she was not saying, “No”.’

     

    This poignant image was first published in his 1964 book Nothing Personal with the caption Marilyn Monroe, actress as if to contradict her fame and celebrity. Here, we see a fatigued Monroe with an absent expression, her gaze downward and posture slumped. A rare glimpse of the woman behind the superstardom, Avedon reveals the vulnerable side of her inner complexity. It is this sense of contradiction and duality between public persona and private self, outer perception and inner truth that renders this prophetic shot, taken five years before her death, so hauntingly memorable within Avedon’s unparalleled oeuvre.

     

    The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, each holds a print of this image.

    • Provenance

      Sotheby’s, New York, Photographs, 5 October 1995, lot 454A
      Christie’s, New York, Icons of Glamour & Style: The Constantiner Collection, 16 December 2008, lot 27

    • Exhibited

      Marilyn Monroe: Photographs from the Collection of Michaela and Leon Constantiner, New York City, Tel Aviv Museum, 13 May - 19 September, 2004, this lot
      I Wanna Be Loved By You: Photographs of Marilyn Monroe from the Leon and Michaela Constantiner Collection, Brooklyn Museum, New York, 12 November 2004 - 3 April 2005; Toledo Museum of Art, 14 September - 31 December 2005; Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, 17 February - 30 April 2006, this lot

    • Literature

      Avedon, Nothing Personal, n.p.
      Avedon, Portraits, n.p. variant crop
      Avedon, Woman in the Mirror, p. 88
      Avedon, An Autobiography, pl. 134
      Avedon, Performance, p. 103
      Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Richard Avedon - Photographs 1946-2004, p. 60
      The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Richard Avedon Portraits, n.p., variant crop
      Tsukuba Museum of Photography, Paris New York Tokyo, pl. 22
      Whitney Museum of American Art, Richard Avedon: Evidence 1944-1994, p. 138
      Greenough et al., On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Photography, p. 374
      Hartwell, The Making of a Collection: Photographs from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, p. 94

    • Artist Biography

      Richard Avedon

      American • 1923 - 2004

      From the inception of Richard Avedon's career, first at Harper's Bazaar and later at Vogue, Avedon challenged the norms for editorial photography. His fashion work gained recognition for its seemingly effortless and bursting energy, while his portraits were celebrated for their succinct eloquence. "I am always stimulated by people," Avedon has said, "almost never by ideas." 

      Indeed, as seen in his portraits — whether of famed movie stars or everyday people — the challenge for Avedon was conveying the essence of his subjects. His iconic images were usually taken on an 8 x 10 inch camera in his studio with a plain white background and strobe lighting, creating his signature minimalist style. Avedon viewed the making and production of photographs as a performance similar to literature and drama, creating portraits that are simultaneously intensely clear, yet deeply mysterious.

      View More Works

PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE JAPANESE COLLECTION

8

Marilyn Monroe, actress, New York City, 5-6-57

1957
Gelatin silver print, printed 1980.
33 x 27.1 cm (12 7/8 x 10 5/8 in.)
Signed, numbered 4/25 in pencil, title, date, copyright credit reproduction limitation and edition stamps on the verso.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
£50,000 - 70,000 

Sold for £58,420

Contact Specialist

Rachel Peart
Head of Department, London
RPeart@phillips.com

Yuka Yamaji
Head of Photographs, Europe
YYamaji@phillips.com

Clare Lamport
Head of Sale, Associate Specialist
CLamport@phillips.com
 

General Inquiries
+44 20 7318 4092
 

Photographs

London Auction 21 November 2024