The Rhapsody of Marilyn Monroe

The Rhapsody of Marilyn Monroe, a new book featuring pencil drawings by artist Anne Gorouben – with text by Olivier Steiner – has just been published in France by Metropolis Editions.

“Le Ravissement de Marilyn Monroe is the result of the meeting of the painter and plastic artist Anne Gorouben and the writer Olivier Steiner. Olivier Steiner gravitates around the black hole of Marilyn’s death, seeking and digging the hours and days around the fateful date of August 5, 1962. Anne Gorouben detects the presence of Marilyn, her shadows, her light, her outlines. 

The text looks at the drawings; the drawings listen to the words, the details, the hours. Years go by, eras, fashions – the century has changed and Marilyn is still fascinating. Why does she seem, strangely, ever more and more present to us? 

Thirty-six drawings like thirty-six portraits. Marilyn Monroe, died at the age of thirty-six. 

‘I researched extracts from her films and her interviews and recorded a number of screenshots to build up my own Marilyn library. I could not ‘steal’ some of the countless portraits of her that appeared in the press or in books; with my screenshots, i tried to capture something other than the “pose” that she mastered so well in front of the photographer. I tried to see what Norma Jeane was going to draw from within herself to transform into Marilyn.’ – Anne Gorouben”

Blogger Fabien Ribery has reviewed the book here…

“’She is beautiful and she can be sublime, unreally beautiful, a goddess,’ writes Olivier Steiner in Le Ravissement de Marilyn Monroe, book of pain and elegance accompanied by portraits of the divine drawn by Anne Gourouben … ‘The more I drew,’ she confides, ‘the closer I felt to her, and the more I found in her missing friends who are dear to me …Marilyn, the misfit, is no stranger …'”

Thanks to Chris at Club Passion Marilyn