ANOTHER MARILYN

Many of the photos of Actress and artist Agnieszka Dellert-Dellfina portraiing Marilyn Monroe in this presentation titeld "Another Marilyn "taken by Thomas Dellert-Dellacroix between 2001 and 2006 have been used in theire mutual project Self Portraits of Others under the banner of D&D

"Since Marilyn became a contemporary Mona Lisa - a symbol of a mysterious beauty hiding the real truth behind a smiling facade, she has been used and misused in art and advertisement over and over again. Unfortunately she has often been “flattened” and simplified.

D&D daringly took upon themselves a challenge of shifting from this archetype and created works exploring two parallel views: Monroe as an all American product, the sex icon and the myth versus the private persona, abused woman and mortal.

The show consists of paintings on canvas with photographic elements. Physically, some of the images of Monroe resemble those taken of the actress at the time, but are used very carefully and consciously just as flavors in the complex personal composition. These portraits-comments represent American values pictured as company logos shamefully tattooed on Monroe’s bare skin. One minute she is a statue of sexual liberty, the other a missile mouse station or a suicidal army of lovers. She plays both the part of a power slave and a marketing master." Barbara Cohen-Berg, art critic, NL


Still after almost half a century from her death,

Marilyn is still an embodiment of Stardom.

It is probably because she gave to the camera

more than any other person ever did.

She says about herself: “I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.”

A fear of rejection made her a mirror, reflecting human desires. This way she became a paradox,

a living contradiction,

ordinary and glamorous,

natural and artificial,

smart and stupid,

beautiful and grotesque,

ubiquitous and unattainable,

familiar and distant,

selfish and generous,

insecure and confident,

victimized and dangerous,

naïve and shameful,

fragile and everlasting.

She was child and mother, mistress and wife,

a fine line between sadism and masochism.

ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN