This Artiou exhibition guide is a practical entry point for planning a visit to “Marilyn. Portrait of a radiant child”, with the key context, venue, and source details in one place.

About the exhibition

Too many words, too many clichés, endless proofs, commented on to satiety. The most exposed platinum blonde in the world. And yet in the portraits that the New York photographer took of the actress between 1954 and 1958, something of the mystery is conveyed to us.

Of the intensity of a life. Of her beauty. And his vulnerability. The first meeting dates from the filming of Viva Zapata!, when Sam Shaw began working for various studios in the film industry. They become friends. In some ways, they are comrades in arms. In the acting arena – “Everyone says I can’t act. » –, the photographer undeniably contributes to Marilyn’s performance. She feels confident under Shaw's gaze.

In the fervor of her budding love affair with the writer Arthur Miller, her third husband, she no longer carries her heart on her shoulder. The photographs gathered between these pages are so many solar images: Marilyn in the studio in the title role of Marilyn - ruby red mouth, cotton candy of curls more blonde than blonde...

Of all the shots gathered in this little anthology, those taken at Roxbury, Miller's property in Connecticut, are unforgettable. Nothing spectacular anyway. Moments of happy intimacy. But Shaw's gaze has never been so tactile, to the point of making us experience the creamy paleness of this fresh milk skin, to penetrate the halo of softness and abandonment of this face left to itself.

On the back of one of the prints where the couple is leaning against a tree, Marilyn had noted: "Films are my business, but Arthur is my life" - Even. The border is unstable, porous for those who expose themselves, to the point of dizziness, to the art of doubling. The images of Marilyn at her hairdresser, devoted to the ritual ceremony of makeup, offer a disturbing mise en abyme where both the distance and the proximity between her and the Other are revealed.

Norma Jean knew better than anyone how to capture, on the surface of the mirror, the dazzling reflection of Marilyn Monroe. Bring forth, release the exquisite and unstable Presence, study its expressions, adopt its poses. Tame it to the point of playing the game with irresistible grace.

Sam Shaw’s photographs share this power of incantation. Poets have the gift of double vision. Truman Capote, in the incisive and dazzling portrait he draws of the actress, associates Marilyn's radiance with "a hummingbird in flight". that only a camera or the watchful eye of the photographer would be able to capture its poetry...

But this volatile luminosity proves powerful enough to dissipate the shadow of the little girl who has never had a place and who no one is waiting for anywhere. “I just want to be wonderful. Marilyn will have put all her art and her talent into approaching this part of ourselves that most of us ignore or barely allow us to glimpse, this clarity

Visit information

  • Venue: Galerie de l'Instant, 46, rue De Poitou, 75003, Paris
  • Dates: Du lundi 01 juin 2026 au mardi 15 septembre 2026 :

lundi

de 14h00 à 19h00

dimanche

de 14h30 à 18h30

mardi, mercredi, jeudi, vendredi, samedi

de 11h00 à 19h00