ARTSY EXHIBITION | LAWRENCE SCHILLER: MARILYN MONROE & AMERICAN ICONS

Madelyn Jordon Fine Art is pleased to present LAWRENCE SCHILLER: MARILYN MONROE AND AMERICAN ICONS. This ARTSY Viewing Room exhibition features a selection of Lawrence Schiller’s most sensational and beloved photographs of film star Marilyn Monroe and other Hollywood royalty and icons of the 1960’s and beyond.  The online exhibition will run from November 18 - December 31, 2022. 

Lawrence Schiller is an award-winning photographer, film director, and bestselling author. As a photographer, Schiller photographed important and notorious figures in American history including Marilyn Monroe, Lee Harvey Oswald, Muhammad Ali, and Richard Nixon. He began his career as a photojournalist for prestigious publications such as Life, Paris Match, The Sunday Times, and The Saturday Evening Post, capturing some of the most recognizable figures of the 1960s.

In 1962, Schiller received an assignment from Paris Match to photograph Marilyn Monroe on the set of an upcoming film Something’s Got To Give. As so often in his career, Schiller, who was only 26 years old at the time, was in the right place at the right time.  Using black and white and color film, Schiller captured some of the most striking yet intimate pictures of the Hollywood sex symbol.   During the shoot, Marilyn jumped into the swimming pool in a flesh-colored bathing suit and returned to the surface with nothing on. The resulting photographs from this shoot immortalize Monroe’s persona in American culture and catapulted Schiller’s career as a photographer.

Dating from 1962-1970, the selection of images in this exhibition includes photographs of Barbara Streisand, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Martin Luther King Jr. and six images of Marilyn Monroe from the set of the never completed film, Something’s Got To Give. Unbeknownst to all at the time, this would be Marilyn’s final film before her tragic death.

The images included in this exhibition reflect the ease and naturalness between Schiller and his subjects. One candid photographic example is of Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and director George Roy Hill enjoying a game of ping pong during a break in the filming of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Schiller states: “The most important thing is anticipation—not where the action is taking place, but where it’s going to take place. Not where the subject is now, but where they’re going to be.” Anticipating those indelible moments in time, Schiller unobtrusively captured Martin Luther King Jr. during one of his legendary rallies. 

Lawrence Schiller was born in 1936 in Brooklyn and grew up in San Diego.  After graduating from Pepperdine College, he went to work as a freelance photographer for a variety of renowned magazines such as Life Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post.  He’s published 18 books including LSD (1966), Marilyn (1973, in collaboration with Norman Mailer); and directed 7 motion pictures and miniseries for television.   He has won 6 Emmys and 1 Oscar, including for The American Dreamer (1971), and The Executioner’s Song (1982).   

View the exhibition on ARTSY