‘Now You See Her’: Natalie White

An interesting new exhibition is currently on display at New York’s Rox Gallery, featuring artist Natalie White merging images of herself with Bert Stern’s iconic photos of MM, Complex reports.

“White got a hold of one of the last remaining large-format 20×24 Polaroid cameras and turned it on herself. Displaying 24 massive nude self-portraits lit in red, white, and blue, White appears nude, sometimes double exposed against herself, on a black field, both elegant and sinister. Next to highly contrasting photos of Monroe—under pink gauze and in an overexposed white field—they carry a tragic significance that borrows from the lore of Monroe.

The photos of the actress are from a collection of the last moments of the star’s life. Taken by Bert Stern just six weeks before her death, the photos relay a tragic figure touched by something of an insatiable desire to be nothing but seen.

To focus the notion of muse on an individual is characteristic of something tragic: Greece, any single other person’s fallibility, why literally anything can be the font of art. It’s not necessary—or always possible—to be so focused on one human as a source of creation. But Natalie versus Marilyn talks more about narrative on a continuum than it does any single source. We’re always searching for a new muse.”


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