My cartoon about the elections in Congo recently appeared in La Libre Belgique, illustrating an article by Jerôme Grynpas.
Krüger Workshop 2006
(Montage : Ben Heine)
A group of 18 diverse artists joined the 2nd Krüger Professional Artists' Workshop held in one of Germany's most beautiful tourism areas, Garmisch-Partenkirchen.In a 3 hour live presentation Krüger painted an image of the famousGerman composer, Richard Wagner. For more photos and information please visit KRÜGER EXHIBITIONS
Richard Wagner by Sebastian Kruger
(Photo : Ben Heine)Kruger Workshop "Team"
(Photo : Bernd Schoenebaum)
(from left to right) Gerald, Ben, Stefan, Jens-Uwe, Jeff, Michael, Glenn, Jeremy, Wolfgang, Stefan, Jürgen, Patrick, Bernd, Henning, Rohan, Sebastian, Andrea,Derek, Siv Grethe
Photo: Bernd
Sebastian Kruger
In the early 1980's Krüger studied painting and graphic arts, and then quickly moved into the professional art world where his iconic 'personality portraits' continue to captivate famous collectors and audiences across the continents. Krüger approaches nearly all of his subjects with a level of respect and sincerity contrasting the often extreme exaggeration of their features. The result is the creation of visually and psychologically explosive 'Krugerized' portraits.
Out
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Out
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Be music now that the rest may follow,
Tread safely out of self-made gloom.
In our hands life has slipped loose
Tumbled down the tatty path of doom.
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Be music now that the rest may follow,
Release this God-thrown derivation,
This holy communion of flesh
Near our whitened determination.
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Be music now that the rest may follow,
Move now your thousand bones
Slumping back of your shape
Making its approach toward home.
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Be music now that the rest may follow,
Embrace it with a gleaming teeth,
Leave now the bittered weeping
And odor of death and defeat.
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Be music now that the rest may follow.
Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman
Revolution
by Thepoetryman
US and British occupation of Iraq is regarded as the re-emergence of the old colonialist practices of the western empires in some quarters. The real ambitions underlying the brutal onslaught are still highly questionable - and then there are the blatant lies over weapons of mass destruction originally used to justify the war. There were no great victory marches by the occupiers, nor were they thrown garlands of flowers and greeted in triumph. More US soldiers have died in Iraq since George Bush declared an end to the war on 1 May 2003 prompting the question: Will Iraq turn into a new Vietnam eventually bringing the US to its senses ... or perhaps to its knees?
US policy towards Iraq has always been shaped by the country’s rich oil resources, its strategic location on the Gulf and its regional weight.Iraq ranks only second to Saudi Arabia for its oil resources, and was the world’s second largest oil exporter before the Iraq-Iran war broke out in 1980.The US has always been a key importer of Iraqi oil. Even under the UN sanctions, US companies imported some 750,000 barrels per day (bpd) from Iraq until the end of 2002.
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The Bush administration has justified its war against Iraq on three grounds: Saddam Hussein's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction, his links to so-called terrorists, and liberating Iraqis from oppression and tyranny.Advocates of war in the US administration claimed that Iraq had continued to develop WMDs, and with Saddam Hussein capable of making them available to organisations such as al-Qaida, it put the US at imminent risk.However, a closer analysis of US behaviour, as well as the thinking of the pro-war camp inside the Bush administration, reveals that the justifications were convenient excuses for mobilising US public opinion.The war on Iraq was planned over several years, promoted by an influential group of neo-conservatives, made possible by the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, and marketed by the right-wing pundits and media.
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U.S. October Death Toll in Iraq Hits 70…The military says the sharp increase in U.S. casualties - 70 so far this month - is tied to Ramadan and a security crackdown that has left American forces more vulnerable to attack in Baghdad and its suburbs. Muslim tenets hold that fighting a foreign occupation force during Islam's holy month puts a believer especially close to God.
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Revolution!
The power scale is bending, disturbed
By bomb laden souls bent against empire.
It isn’t terror… it is tragedy.
Shakespeare could not have crafted it better.
Revolution!
Upon the riddled carcass of wars yowl
And the slaughter of human cells
Upon the somber sands of death,
This drama crests inside its fourth act.
Revolution!
The scene now set with harrowed seraphs
Feeling bursts of metal strafe the waning soul,
And ending their hallowed harvest
Weary of this; our sloping future.
Revolution!
Man cannot sustain this blast;
War penetrating even the angel’s love.
The life taker and the giver, entrenched,
Bogged down in the black swamp
Unable to right their self-same falling;
Indistinguishable in their smirking speech
And muck ridden paws they murder the other.
Revolution!
Upon the riddled carcass of wars yowl
Of obliteration of human cells
On the somber sands of death,
This tragedy’s inside its fourth act.
Moignon Génital
America, Bring Thy Pain
O beautiful for spacious skies,
Run thy razor down my thighs
For amber waves of grain,
`cross my naked body bring thy rage
For purple mountain majesties
For I'm your slave
Above the fruited plain!
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America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
Rule my unclean body, mind and soul
And crown thy good with brotherhood
And bring thy pain to me
From sea to shining sea!
Bring thy pain to me!
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O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern impassion'd stress
I deserve thy punishing hand
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Thrust thy black-barreled love inside me
Across the wilderness!
I'm the terrorist you seek!
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America! America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw,
No, Master! Do not stop
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
I beg of thee don’t rest
Thy liberty in law!
Bring thy shock
And bring thy awe!
.
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O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
I'm undeserving
Who more than self their country loved,
Crack my fingers! Split my skull
And mercy more than life!
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America! America! May God thy gold refine
Put me on the rack
Till all success be nobleness,
And lash then on my back
And ev'ry gain divine!
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O Beautiful for patriot dream
She is most beautiful
And thou her king
That sees beyond the years
To the American dream
Thine alabaster cities gleam,
Bless me with thy freedom dear
Undimmed by human tears!
Run your blade
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
`cross my broken face
And crown thy good with brotherhood
Bring thy pain to me!
From sea to shining sea!
Marilyn Willendorf
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Woman from Willendorf
By Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe
Nowadays, in the captions to illustrations of her in books, the word "Woman" is sometimes substituted for "Venus," a switch that has contributed, together with the current growing sensitivity to the visual representation of women, to a shift in how she is perceived.
One effect of this name change is to remove her from immediate identification as a goddess and to think of her in more mundane, human terms. This demystification, allows us to approach the figure more on its own terms and, without the encumbering preconceptions provoked by a name, gives us a better chance of interpreting its meaning.
The sculpture shows a woman with a large stomach that overhangs but does not hide her pubic area. A roll of fat extends around her middle, joining with large but rather flat buttocks. She is not, as Luce Passemard has pointed out, steatopygous (that is, possessing protruding buttocks). Piette had been the first to use the term steatopygous to describe the "Venus" figurines, regarding it as a racial feature that he related to the appearance of women in African tribes such as the Bushmen, Pygmies and Hottentots (KhoiKhoi). The implication that Aurignacian people may have been African in appearance influenced subsequent interpretations.
Her thighs are also large and pressed together down to the knees. Her forearms, however, are thin, and are shown draped over and holding, with cursorily indicated fingers, the upper part of her large breasts. Small markings on her wrists seem to indicate the presence of bracelets. Her breasts are full and appear soft, but they are not sagging and pendulous. The nipples are not indicated.
Her genital area would appear to have been deliberately emphasized with the labia of the vulva carefully detailed and made clearly visible, perhaps unnaturally so, and as if she had no pubic hair. This, combined with her large breasts and the roundness of her stomach, suggests that the "subject" of the sculpture is female procreativity and nurture and the piece has long been identified as some sort of fertility idol.
A characteristic of all the Paleolithic "Venus" figurines exhibited by the Willendorf statuette is the lack of a face, which for some, arguing that the face is a key feature in human identity, means that she is to be regarded as an anonymous sexual object rather than a person; it is her physical body and what it represents that is important.
From the front, the place where her face should be seems to be largely concealed by what are generally described as rows of plaited hair wrapped around her head.
Close examination, however, reveals that the rows are not one continuous spiral but are, in fact, composed in seven concentric horizontal bands that encircle the head, with two more half-bands below at the back of her neck. The topmost circle has the form of a rosette. The bands vary in width from front to back to sides, and also vary in size from each other. Cut across the groove separating each band at regular, closely-spaced intervals is a series of more or less lozenge-shaped deep vertical notches, some wide, others narrow, that extend equally into the band above and into the band below. These notches alternate between bands to produce the effect of braided or plaited hair. That it is intended to be understood as braided hair seems clear, although it has been suggested recently that the figure is in fact wearing a fiber-based woven hat or cap.
When seen in profile, the impression is that the figure is looking down with her chin sunk to her chest, and her hair looks more like hair; longer at back and falling and gathering like real hair might on her upper back. Some find it significant that the number of full circles is seven; many thousands of years later seven was regarded as a magic number.
Such elaborate treatment of hair is extremely rare in Paleolithic figurines, and the considerable attention paid to it by the sculptor must mean it had some significance. In later cultures, hair has been considered a source of strength, and as the seat of the soul.
Hair also has a long history as a source of erotic attraction that lies, perhaps surprisingly, not so much in its color, style, or length, but in its odor. The erotic attraction of the odor of hair is obviously rooted in the sense of smell, which plays a considerable role in sexual relations. Though greatly diminished in the modern world, smell was paramount in establishing an erotic rapport with a mate, as it still is among animals. In this context, the hair of the woman or goddess represented in the "Venus" of Willendorf figurine may have been regarded as erotically charged as her breasts and pubic area.
Another characteristic of Paleolithic "Venus" figurines is the lack of feet. In the archaeological report of her finding, the Willendorf statuette is described as perfectly preserved in all its parts, so it appears she never had feet.
It has been suggested that possibly the intention was to curtail the figurine's power to leave wherever she had been placed.
A more common explanation is that because the statuette served as a fertility idol, the sculptor included only those parts of the female body needed for the conception and nurture of children. Even if she had feet, though, it seems unlikely that she was meant to stand up. This is even more true of the other Paleolithic figurines.
Nor it seems was she ever intended to lie in a supine position. In fact, her most satisfactory, and most satisfying, position is being held in the palm of the hand. When seen under these conditions, she is utterly transformed as a piece of sculpture. As fingers are imagined gripping her rounded adipose masses, she becomes a remarkably sensuous object, her flesh seemingly soft and yielding to the touch.
What her identity and purpose may have been, why and for what reason she was carved, becomes an even more pressing question. If we dismiss all associations with goddesses and fertility figures, and assume an objective response to what we see, she might be identified as simply a Stone-Age doll for a child.
But this strikes us as unsatisfactory, not the least because of the very high degree of artistic ability exhibited in the sculpting of her forms. Compared with the other Paleolithic figurines in this group, the "Venus" of Willendorf is a remarkably realistic representation of a fat woman.
This analysis appeared on http://witcombe.sbc.edu
By the same author, see :
- Mother Goddess
- Women in the Stone Age
- What is in a name?
Milo Monroe
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Beauty : Making sense of sex appeal
By Jerome Burne (*)
We all recognise beauty when we see it, but what makes a beautiful face is something that few can agree on. Is there some mathematical combination of angles, ratios and proportions that produce an equation for beauty , making one face more beautiful than another? Or is beauty like a work of art a matter of opinion, taste and culture?
These questions were familiar to the Greek philosophers 2,500 years ago, when the face of Helen launched a thousand ships, just as they are pondered today when Princess Diana launches a thousand magazines.
In the last year a flurry of research has provided new insights into the origins of beauty. At University College Hospital, London, Dr Alfred Linney from the Maxillo Facial Unit has been using lasers to make precise measurements of the faces of top fashion models women generally accepted as beautiful.
The most controversial finding in the research is that there is no such thing as the beautiful face. Instead, Linney and his team have found that the features of models are just as varied as those of everyone else. "Some have teeth that stick out, some have a long face, and others a jutting chin.There was no one ideal of beauty that they were all a bit closer to," he says.
One of Linney's co-workers,orthodontist Mark Lowey, even considered that some of the models' features might have required surgery if found on a ''normal'' face .One type of problem people often seek help for is teeth that stick out," he says ," As a general rule we'd consider operating on cases where the teeth project more than five millimetres, but one of the models we measured had teeth that were eight millimetres out and she still looked gorgeous".
Although the UCH study suggests that the criteria for beauty are rather less rigid than previously believed, it still leaves one question unanswered: if one woman goes to an orthodontist to have her teeth straightened, how come another earns a fortune modelling them?
Interestingly, the Greeks had the same ideal of beauty for men and women - at least as far as their statues went - but that is unusual.Generally, male beauty has been considered less important,since male attractiveness is measured in terms of power and social standing rather than by facial features.However, when women hold economic power,such as among the Nigerian Wodaabees, then it is the males who become preoccupied with beauty and who dress up and hold beauty competitions.
Recent findings from UCH undermine one of the most influential scientific ideas of beauty - that the composite features of several ordinary faces can result in one beautiful face.
The theory dates back to the last century and is the work of Sir Francis Galton, who made his name both as a psychologist and geneticist In 1878 he discovered that if photographs of a number of faces were superimposed, most people considered the resulting composite to be more beautiful than the individuals who made them.
But this theory has taken a knock in a recent report from the science magazine Nature. Dr David Perrett, of the University of St Andrews, compiled some composite photographs of European and Japanese faces and asked people to judge them.
"We found that not only were individual attractive faces preferred to the composites, but that when we used the computer to exaggerate the composite features away from the average,that too was preferred," he said. This would account for the popularity of actresses such as Brigitte Nielsen and Daryl Hannah, who have features that are far from average.
The research also gives scientific respectability to another old idea. As the philosopher Francis Bacon put it more than three centuries ago: "There is no excellent beauty which hath not some strangeness in the proportion".
Dr Perrett claims that his beautiful faces have something in common. "The more attractive ones had higher cheek bones, a thinner jaw, and larger eyes relative to the size of the face than the average ones did," he says He also found that beauty can transcend culture: the Japanese found the same European faces beautiful as the Europeans did, and vice versa.
So it seems there is something fundamental to beauty.Many people agree on who's got it and different cultures find the same faces attractive - although obviously there are exceptions to this rule. Even three-month-old babies, according to Dr Judith Langlois, of the University of Texas, prefer beautiful faces to plainer ones. All of which suggests there must be an evolutionary advantage to being beautiful.
Could it be that beauty is an indication of a woman's fertility? Until recently, evolutionary theories concerning beauty and fertility opted for the "law of averageness" Anthropologists proposed that. beauty represented no more than the average value of faces in a human population. They argued that; evolutionary pressures operate against extreme features: people with average physical properties should stand the best chance of surviving to pass their genes on to the next generation. Average features serve above all as an indication that their possessor is likely to be fertile. The quest for a fertile mate also explains why glossy hair and good skin are sought after because they showed that someone is healthy and free of parasites.
Yet another theory said that women with baby faces, such as the model Kate Moss, who has big eyes, a small, full mouth and small nose, were attractive because they triggered the warm protective feelings we have towards small children.
Then last year Professor Victor Johnstone, of the University of New Mexico, published results of a fascinating series of experiments that linked perceptions of beauty to the effects of oestrogen on the bodies of adolescent girls His results bore the idea of childish features being attractive, but the explanation he gives has turned the original theory on its head.
"We found that that there definitely was a type of adult female face that men found attractive and that it was different from the average face," says Johnston. "The two key measurements are the distance from the eyes to the chin, which is shorter - in fact it is the length normally found in a girl aged eleven and a half; and the size of the lips, which are fatter - the size normally found on a fourteen-year-old girl". The Kate Moss view seems to be confirmed, but where does that leave actress Sigourney Weaver as an example of an attractive mature face, for instance?
Johnstone came to these conclusions by running a computer program that tried to mimic the process of evolution. Faces randomly selected by the computer were rated according to attractiveness by volunteers, and the most attractive were combined to breed a second generation of faces, continuing the process on to third and fourth generation,and so on. Gradually a shorter,full - lipped face took over. But Johnstone doesn't believe that the reason for its success was that it triggered protective feelings. "Although the features are juvenile, the face wasn't seen as being babyish," he says. The ideal face turned out to be that of a woman of 24.8 years.
The proportions seem to point to fertility, specifically the effect of the hormone oestrogen on the female face. "Up until puberty the faces of boys and girls are similar," says Johnstone. "But then the rise in oestrogen in girls gives them fuller lips, while testosterone in boys gives them a fuller jaw . So what people are picking out as beauty is really a sign of fertility brought on by oestrogen. Interestingly, 24.8 years - the age when most women achieve ideal facial proportions, according to the study - is the time when oestrogen levels are highest and women are at their most fertile".
In cultures where male beauty is valued, the features that are considered attractive are generally the mature ones - the small eyes, large nose, thin lips and prominent chin, rather than the big eyes and small mouth and jaw of the attractive female baby-face. Of course, there are beautiful male faces , Michaelangelo's David is a classic example,but generally men have more freedom to stray further from the rules of strict proportion and still be regarded as attractive -Sean Connery or Gerard Depardieu come to mind.
The oestrogen-beauty-fertility connection rears its head again in studies where men decide if a woman's body is sexy or not. Dr Devendra Singh from the University of Texas, points out that while testosterone encourages weight to be put on around the stomach, oestrogen lays it down around the buttocks and thighs, so full buttocks and a narrow waist send out the same message as the ideal face: ''I'm full of oestrogen and fertile."
When Singh got male students to rate pictures of women according to whether they had an attractive figure, he found that the most popular proportions for the ratio of a woman's waist to her hips were between 0.67 and 0.8. Women with these ratios were also seen as being humorous, healthy and intelligent .Those women whose waists are thicker were viewed as being faithful and kind, while women who are too thin were seen as aggressive and ambitious.
When men adopt a more traditionally feminine role of being judged solely in terms of their looks, such as the Chippendales today , they begin to show such traditional feminine anxieties as being worried that people only want them for their bodies and not for who they "really are".
There is no doubt that the fertile baby-face that emerged from many computer-based studies is attractive - Nell Gwyn fits it just as well as Cindy Crawford - but it doesn't by any means describe all beauties.
Why hasn't evolution produced a race of small-nosed, pouty-lipped clones?
Evolution hasn't produced a race of small-nosed, pouty-lipped clones. What about Glen Close or Susan Sarandon, with their strong, even slightly hooked noses and definite chins? Another beauty researcher, Dr Michael Cunningham of Elmhurst College, Illinois, has been looking at the effect of individual features in a beautiful face and has discovered that some features may or may not be desirable, depending on what the judge is looking for.
When male interviewers are selecting a woman for a job, for instance, arched expressive eyebrows and dilated pupils are seen as desirable, but they were less important on a potential date.On the other hand, men contemplating partners with a view to settling down and starting a family, found a wide smile more important than expressive eyes and eyebrows. Is the secret of Julia Robert's appeal that she would be good with children?
Cunningham also found that attractive women with mature features, such as small eyes and a large nose, received more respect ."It could be that societies where women have more power and autonomy idealise women with more mature features," he says, "while those which value submissive females may prefer baby faces". But is beauty really just a matter of sending out a message saying: ''I am ready to conceive?'' So far all the studies are limited to photos that capture some types of beauty.Yet we all know people who are attractive in the flesh, but lousy in photos.
Why? Is it to do with how fertile they look? No one knows.But the search for a better definition of beauty will continue, driven by the billion-pound beauty industry's desire to find new ways of closing the gap between the actual and the ideal. In politics and business, personal looks are increasingly important;one estimate says that American professional women now spend up to one-third of their income on appearance.Maybe the 19th-century writer Stendhal got it right when he said: "Beauty is no more than the promise of happiness." Jerome Burne .
(*) Jerome Burne is a freelance science writer specialising in psychology and medicine. Last year he contributed several sections to BrainPower, the Sunday Times six-week supplement on the brain. For the last eight years he has written regularly for most of the broadsheets as well as for magazines including New Scientist, Focus and Harpers & Queen. Current interests include new brain research on phantom limbs and hallucinations, evolutionary psychiatry, gene therapies, the role of bacteria in chronic diseases and clinical nutrition for the treatment of long-term ailments.
See Beauty analysis
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Photons De La Nuit
(Experimental photos, Ben Heine © 2006)
Benjamin est né à Abidjan en Côte d’Ivoire le 12 juin 1983 et vit aujourd’hui à Bruxelles en tant qu’artiste indépendant. A côté de son enseignement général en Communication et Journalisme (IHECS-Bruxelles), il a étudié le Dessin, la Peinture et l’Histoire de l’art au Hastings College of Arts & Technology (Angleterre) puis à l’Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts de Belgique. Il produit peintures, cartoons, sculptures et collages. Ses peintures ont plutôt un caractère mystique et expressionniste et pourraient être déterminées comme des œuvres érotico-fantastico-burlesques. A côté de cela, Benjamin prend des photos et écrit de la poésie. Il a été intensément influencé par l’Expressionisme allemand, le Surréalisme et le Pop Art. Benjamin dispose de son site Internet, www.benheine.com et de son Blog www.benjaminheine.blogspot.com.
Experimental photos 1
Experimental photos 2
Experimental photos 3
In the color of awakening our eyes glimpse frontward;
The still picture of life choosing our strange development.
Only as god-headed Anubis rises do we begin to sit up.
Does our blood not run with its unique being until shadow?
Our choices aren’t merely life, but its dancing nourishment
Of wish, yet we seem content in our slack jawed living,
Startled, like sheep governed by jackals.
Now is the occasion of our most hallowed sanctuary;
We are stirring the untamed humility of a new province
And we should, we must, see the angels motioning to us
From their silver-lined occurrence.
We’re tasting an account of empire that is infected
And has begun to sketch our days in thickened blood.
The hope of kindness is being spent in fees of silence,
Slain, like sheep governed by jackals.
War and theft are now boarders in our homes,
Sharing a bed and smacking their greedy lips at our table.
Accounts seem lost to these events in the steady drum,
The throb of liberty and speech blasted thickly in it.
Are we awake? Are we alive? Are we beckoning to it?
We see, we smell, we hear it, must we suffer it, too?
If we’re dead how might we then change course;
Voiceless, like sheep governed by jackals.
The jackal’s eerie howling and scavenging senses
Are most suitable for our dank and willful gloom,
Picking over the carcass of our living, dying and dead.
The leopard, hyena and eagle dare not answer
For they know they too have lost the spirit to fight.
Does our blood not run in our being until shadow?
Are our ideals dead? We’ve no more yearning than this?
You can rest assured that the jackal does.
Copyright © 2006 mrp / thepoetryman
CD cover - Vincent Delerme
By Stoff Allirot
CD cover - Leaves
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CD cover - The Czars
CD cover - Joe Gonzalez
CD cover - Louise Attaque
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Stoff Allirot
Stoff Design is a Web designer and skilful artist. He created my Website : www.benheine.com
Have a look to his own Website : www.stoff74.com
Stoff Design is a one man operation, leaving complete control of art direction and art creativity in the hands of one person. This provides a more direct and personal connection to each client.
Stoff Design produces innovative solutions for briefs from a wide range of areas, from corporate identity to Websites.
He currently works in association with Digilicious media but he still works as a freelance graphic and Web designer from home and he can also work on site so do not hesitate to contact him for more information or for a free quote.
Ben Heine by David Baldinger
Baldinger©
Thank you so much David, this is very funny and erotic. I love your "aggressive" technique with the colour pencils. These little green ladies are quite surprising... :)
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Here are some recent political cartoons by David Baldinger
Baldinger©
Baldinger©
Baldinger©Here follow the explanations that David sent me :
"I hope everyone outside the USA understands these cartoons. "Booga, Booga" is N. Korea frightening the US with a recent nuclear bomb test. "Misimpressions" (misimpressions is NOT an English word) is playing with Bush's recent mangling of English as well as his lies about Iraq. "Extinct" is referencing the elephant symbol of the Republican Party, Bush's party, and their recent scandals that we all hope will drive them from control of the US government." David
Al Gore in Brussels to present
his documentary
"An Inconvenient Truth"
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US ex-vice president Al Gore has said he understands Europe's frustration over his country's reluctance to ratify the Kyoto protocol on climate change - but insisted that both superpowers could still unite over the issue as support for green goals is rising across the US.
Speaking in Brussels on Sunday (8 October) and presenting Belgium's premiere of his global-warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth", Mr Gore pointed out that despite the EU's leadership, the bloc still has a lot to do - in terms of energy saving and reducing CO2 emissions - to face "by far the most serious crisis that we have ever faced."
Happy birthday Marilyn
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80 years ago, a legend was born. Although she was known then only as "Norma Jeane", a simple girl with a humble background, she would soon become the greatest star of all time. This year, 2006, marks the 80th anniversary of her birth. Despite the many years that have passed, Marilyn Monroe remains the picture of youth, beauty and elegance.
Marilyn was once quoted as saying, "I'm going to be a great movie star some day". Her prediction was correct. Her career as a model and actress is full of successes and accomplishments. She appeared in 30 films, graced the covers and pages of magazines and recorded many songs. She will forever be known as the ultimate sex goddess of the 20th century.
Her honors have continued posthumously, being chosen by Empire Magazine as one of the "100 Sexiest Stars in Film History" in 1995 and named "Number One Sex Star of the 20th century" by Playboy magazine in 1999.
Despite her tragic passing at such a young age, Marilyn continues to dazzle fans throughout the world with her youthful exuberance and sophistication. She leaves a lasting impression with each new generation, gaining fans who were born many years after her death.
This year we celebrate the 80th anniversary of Marilyn's birth, commemorating this beautiful and talented woman who continues to amaze us today.
Source : http://www.marilynmonroe.com/
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Marylin Monroe's Last Interview
By Richard Meryman 1962
Sometimes wearing a scarf and a polo coat and no make up and with a certain attitude of walking, I go shopping or just looking at people living. But then you know,there will be a few teenagers who are kind of sharp and they'll say, "Hey, just a minute. You know who I think that is?" And they'll start tailing me. And I don't mind. I realize some people want to see if you're real.The teenagers, the little kids, their faces light up. They say, "Gee," and they can't wait to tell their friends. And old people come up and say, "Wait till I tell my wife." You've changed their whole day. In the morning, the garbage men that go by 57th Street when I come out the door say, "Marilyn, hi! How do you feel this morning?"
To me, it's an honor, and I love them for it. The working men, I'll go by and they'll whistle. At first they whistle because they think, oh, it's a girl. She's got blond hair and she's not out of shape, and then they say, "Gosh,it's Marilyn Monroe!" And that has it's, you know, those are times it's nice. People knowing who you are and all of that, and feeling that you've meant something to them.
I don't know quite why, but somehow I feel they know that I mean what I do, both when I'm acting on the screen or when if I see them in person and greet them. That I really always do mean hello, and how are you? In their fantasies they feel "Gee,it can happen to me!"
But when you're famous you kind of run into human nature in a raw kind of way. It stirs up envy, fame does. People you run into feel that, well, who is she who does she think she is, Marilyn Monroe? They feel fame gives them some kind of privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you, you know, of any kind of nature and it won't hurt your feelings. Like it's happening to your clothing. One time here I am looking for a home to buy and I stopped at this place. A man came out and was very pleasant and cheerful, and said, "Oh, just a moment, I want my wife to meet you." Well,she came out and said, "Will you please get off the premises?" You're always running into peoples unconscious. Let's take some actors or directors. Usually they don't say it to me, they say it to the newspapers because that's a bigger play.
You know, if they're only insulting me to my face that doesn't make a big enough play because all I have to say is, "See you around, like never." But if it's in the newspapers, it's coast to coast and all around the world. I don't understand why people aren't a little more generous with each other. I don't like to say this, but I'm afraid there is alot of envy in this business. The only thing I can do is stop and think, "I'm all right but I'm not so sure about them!" For instance, you've read there was some actor that once said that kissing me was like kissing Hitler. Well, I think that's his problem. If I have to do intimate love scenes with somebody who really has these kinds of feelings toward me, then my fantasy can come into play. In other words, out with him, in with my fantasy. He was never there.
But one thing about fame is the bigger the people are, the simpler they are, the more they are not awed by you! They don't feel they have to be offensive, they don't feel they have to insult you. You can meet Carl Sandburg and he is so pleased to meet you. He wants to know about you, and you want to know about him. Not in any way has he ever let me down. Or else you can meet working people who want to know what it is like. You try to explain to them. I don't like to disillusion them and tell them it's sometimes nearly impossible. They kind of look toward you for something that's away from their everyday life.
I guess you call that entertainment, a world to escape into, a fantasy. Sometimes it makes you a little bit sad because you'd like to meet somebody kind of on face value. It's nice to be included in peoples fantasies but you also like to be accepted for your own sake. I don't look at myself as a commodity, but I'm sure alot of people have. Including, well, one corporation in particular which shall be nameless. If I'm sounding picked on or something, I think I am. I'll think I have a few wonderful friends and all of a sudden, ooh, here it comes. They do alot of things. They talk about you to the press, to their friends, tell stories, and you know, it's disappointing. These are the ones you aren't interested in seeing everyday of your life.
Of course, it does depend on the people, but sometimes I'm invited places to kind of brighten up a dinner table like a musician who'll play the piano after dinner, and I know you're not really invited for yourself. You're just an ornament.
When I was 5 I think, that's when I started wanting to be an actress. I loved to play. I didn't like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own boundaries. It goes beyond house, you could make your own situations and you could pretend, and even if the other kids were a little slow on the imagining part you could say, "Hey, what about if you were such and such, and I were such and such wouldn't that be fun?" And they'd say, "Oh, yes," and then I'd say, "Well, that will be a horse and this will be..."it was play, playfulness.
When I heard that this was acting, I said that's what I want to be. You can play. But then you grow up and find out about playing, that they make playing very difficult for you. Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I'd sit all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it. I loved anything that moved up there and I didn't miss anything that happened and there was no popcorn either. When I was 11, the whole world which was closed to me. I just felt I was on the outside of the world. Suddenly, everything opened up.
Even the girls paid a little attention to me because they thought, "Hmmm, she's to be dealt with!" And I had this long walk to school 2 1/2 miles to school, 2 1/2 miles back. It was just sheer pleasure. Every fellow honked his horn you know, workers driving to work, waving, you know, and I'd wave back. The world became friendly. All the newspaper boys when they delivered the paper would come around to where I lived, and I used to hang from the limb of a tree, and I had sort of a sweatshirt on. I didn't realize the value of a sweatshirt in those days, and then I was sort of beginning to catch on, but I didn't quite get it, because I couldn't really afford sweaters.
But here they come with their bicycles, you know, and I'd get these free papers and the family liked that, and they'd all pull their bicycles up around the tree and then I'd be hanging, looking kind of like a monkey, I guess. I was a little shy to come down. I did get down to the curb, kinda kicking the curb and kicking the leaves and talking, but mostly listening. And sometimes the family used to worry because I used to laugh so loud and so gay; I guess they felt it was hysterical. It was just this sudden freedom because I would ask the boys, "Can I ride your bike now?" and they'd say, "Sure." Then I'd go zooming, laughing in the wind, riding down the block, laughing, and they'd all stand around and wait till I came back, but I loved the wind. It caressed me. But it was kind of a double edged thing. I did find too, when the world opened up that people took alot for granted, like not only could they be friendly, but they could suddenly get overly friendly and expect an awful lot for very little. When I was older, I used to go to Grauman's Chinese Theater and try to fit my foot in the prints in the cement there. And I'd say, "Oh, oh, my foot's too big! I guess that's out." I did have a funny feeling later when I finally put my foot down into that wet cement.
I sure knew what it really meant to me. Anything's possible, almost. It was the creative part that kept me going, trying to be an actress. I enjoy acting when you really hit it right. And I guess I've always had too much fantasy to be only a housewife. Well, also, I had to eat. I was never kept, to be blunt about it. I always kept myself. I have always had a pride in the fact that I was my own. And Los Angeles was my home, too, so when they said, "Go home!" I said, "I am home." The time I sort of began to think I was famous, I was driving somebody to the airport, and as I came back there was this movie house and I saw my name in lights. I pulled the car up at a distance down the street, it was too much to take up close, you know, all of a sudden. And I said, "God, somebody's made a mistake." But there it was, in lights. And I sat there and said, "So that's the way it looks," and it was all very strange to me, and yet at the studio they had said, "Remember you're not a star."
Yet there it is up in lights. I really got the idea I must be a star, or something from the newspapermen, I'm saying men, not the women who would interview me and they would be warm and friendly. By the way, that part of the press, you know, the men of the press, unless they have their own personal quirks against me, they were always very warm and friendly and they'd say, "You know, you're the only star," and I'd say, "Star?" and they'd look at me as if I were nuts. I think they, in their own kind of way, made me realize I was famous.
I remember when I got the part in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Jane Russell, she was the brunette in it and I was the blonde. She got $200,000 for it, and I got my $500 a week, but that to me was ,you know, considerable. She by the way, was quite wonderful to me. The only thing was I couldn't get a dressing room. I said, finally, I really got to this kind of level, I said, "Look, after all, I am the blonde, and it is Gentlemen Prefer Blondes!" Because still they always kept saying, "Remember, you're not a star." I said, "Well, whatever I am, I am the blonde!" And I want to say the people, if I am a star, the people made me a star. No studio, no person, but the people did.
There was a reaction that came to the studio, the fan mail, or when I went to a premiere, or the exhibitors wanted to meet me. I didn't know why. When they all rushed toward me I looked behind me to see who was there and I said, "My heavens!" I was scared to death. I used to get the feeling, and sometimes I still get it, that sometimes I was fooling somebody. I don't know who or what, maybe myself. I've always felt toward the slightest scene, even if all I had to do in a scene was just to come in and say, "Hi," that the people ought to get their money's worth and that this is an obligation of mine, to give them the best you can get from me. I do have feelings some days when there are scenes with alot of responsibility toward the meaning, and I'll wish, "Gee, if only I had been a cleaning woman." On the way to the studio I would see somebody cleaning and I'd say, "That's what I'd like to be. That's my ambition in life." But I think that all actors go through this.
We not only want to be good, we have to be. You know, when they talk about nervousness, my teacher, Lee Strasberg, when I said to him, "I don't know what's wrong with me but I'm a little nervous," he said, "When you're not, give up, because nervousness indicates sensitivity." Also, a struggle with shyness is in every actor more than anyone can imagine. There is a censor inside us that says to what degree do we let go, like a child playing.
I guess people think we just go out there, and you know, that's all we do. Just do it. But it's a real struggle. I'm one of the world's most self conscious people. I really have to struggle. An actor is not a machine, no matter how much they want to say you are. Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you're a human being, you feel, you suffer. You're gay, you're sick, you're nervous or whatever. Like any creative human being, I would like a bit more control so that it would be a little easier for me when the director says, "One tear, right now," that one tear would pop out. But once there came two tears because I thought, "How dare he?" Goethe said, "Talent is developed in privacy," you know? And it's really true.
There is a need for aloneness which I don't think most people realize for an actor. It's almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you'll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you're acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They'd all like sort of a chunk of you. They kind of like to take pieces out of you. I don't think they realize it, but it's like "rrr do this, rrr do that." But you do want to stay intact. Intact and on two feet.
I think that when you are famous every weakness is exaggerated. This industry should behave like a mother whose child has just run out in front of a car. But instead of clasping the child to them, they start punishing the child. Like you don't dare get a cold. How dare you get a cold! I mean, the executives can get colds and stay home forever and phone it in, but how dare you, the actor, get a cold or a virus. You know, no one feels worse than the one who's sick. I sometimes wish, gee, I wish they had to act a comedy with a temperature and a virus infection. I am not an actress who appears at a studio just for the purpose of discipline. This doesn't have anything at all to do with art.
I myself would like to become more disciplined within my work. But I'm there to give a performance and not to be disciplined by a studio! After all, I'm not in a military school. This is supposed to be an art form, not just a manufacturing establishment. The sensitivity that helps me to act, you see, also makes me react. An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument. Isaac Stern takes good care of his violin. What if everybody jumped on his violin? If you've noticed in Hollywood where millions and billions of dollars have been made, there aren't really any kind of monuments or museums, and I don't call putting your footprint in Grauman's Chinese a monument, all right this did mean a lot, sentimentally at the time.
Gee, nobody left anything behind, they took it, they grabbed it and they ran, the ones who made the billions of dollars, never the workers. You know alot of people have, oh gee, real quirky problems that they wouldn't dare have anyone know. But one of my problems happens to show, I'm late. I guess people think that why I'm late is some kind of arrogance and I think it is opposite of arrogance. I also feel that I'm not in this big American rush, you know, you got to go and you got to go fast but for no good reason.
The main thing is, I want to be prepared when I get there to give a good performance or whatever to the best of my ability. A lot of people can be there on time and do nothing, which I have seen them do, and you know, all sit around and sort of chit chatting and talking trivia about their social life. Gable said about me, "When she's there, she's there. All of her is there! She's there to work." I was honored when they asked me to appear at the President's birthday rally in Madison Square Garden.
There was like a hush over the whole place when I came on to sing Happy Birthday, like if I had been wearing a slip I would have thought it was showing, or something. I thought, "Oh, my gosh, what if no sound comes out!" A hush like that from the people warms me. It's sort of like an embrace. Then you think, by God, I'll sing this song if it's the last thing I ever do. And for all the people. Because I remember when I turned to the microphone I looked all the way up and back, and I thought, "That's where I'd be, way up there under one of those rafters, close to the ceiling, after I paid my $2 to come into the place." Afterwards they had some sort of reception. I was with my former father-in-law, Isadore Miller, so I think I did something wrong when I met the President. Instead of saying, "How do you do?" I just said "This is my former father-in-law, Isadore Miller."
He came here an immigrant and I thought this would be one of the biggest things in his life, he's about 75 or 80 years old and I thought this would be something that he would be telling his grandchildren about and all that. I should have said, "How do you do, Mr.President," but I had already done the singing, so well you know. I guess nobody noticed it. Fame has a special burden, which I might as well state here and now.
I don't mind being burdened with being glamorous and sexual. But what goes with it can be a burden. Like the man was going to show me around but the woman said, "Off the premises." I feel that beauty and femininity are ageless and can't be contrived, and glamour, although the manufacturers won't like this, cannot be manufactured. Not real glamour, it's based on femininity. I think that sexuality is only attractive when it's natural and spontaneous. This is where alot of them miss the boat. And then something I'd just like to spout off on.
We are all born sexual creatures, thank God, but it's a pity so many people despise and crush this natural gift. Art, real art, comes from it, everything. I never quite understood it, this sex symbol. I always thought symbols were those things you clash together! That's the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing. But if I'm going to be a symbol of something I'd rather have it sex than some other things they've got symbols of! These girls who try to be me, I guess the studios put them up to it, or they get the ideas themselves. But gee, they haven't got it. Y
ou can make alot of gags about it like they haven't got the foreground or else they haven't the background. But I mean the middle, where you live. All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me and I'd worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them, don't hide these things from me. I'd rather you ask me these things straight out and I'll answer all your questions. Don't be afraid to ask anything. After all, I have come up from way down.
I wanted them to know of life other than their own. I used to tell them, for instance, that I worked for 5 cents a month and I washed one hundred dishes, and my step kids would say, "One hundred dishes!" and I said, "Not only that, I scraped and cleaned them before I washed them. I washed them and rinsed them and put them in the draining place, but I said, "Thank God I didn't have to dry them." Kids are different from grown ups. You know when you get grown up you can get kind of sour, I mean that's the way it can go, but kid's accept you the way you are. Fame to me certainly is only a temporary and a partial happiness, even for a waif and I was brought up a waif. But fame is not really for a daily diet, that's not what fulfills you.
It warms you a bit but the warming is temporary. It's like caviar, you know, it's good to have caviar but not when you have it every meal every day. I was never used to being happy, so that wasn't something I ever took for granted. I did sort of think, you know, marriage did that. You see, I was brought up differently from the average American child because the average child is brought up expecting to be happy. That's it, successful, happy, and on time. Yet because of fame I was able to meet and marry two of the nicest men I'd ever met up to that time.
I don't think people will turn against me, at least not by themselves. I like people. The "public" scares me but people I trust. Maybe they can be impressed by the press or when a studio starts sending out all kinds of stories. But I think when people go to see a movie, they judge for themselves. We human beings are strange creatures and still reserve the right to think for ourselves. Once I was supposed to be finished, that was the end of me.
When Mr. Miller was on trial for contempt of Congress, a certain corporation executive said either he named names and I got him to name names, or I was finished. I said, "I'm proud of my husband's position and I stand behind him all the way," and the court did too. "Finished," they said. "You'll never be heard of." It might be a kind of relief to be finished. It's sort of like, I don't know, what kind of a yard dash you're running, but then you're at the finish line and you sort of see you've made it! But you never have. You have to start all over again.
But I believe you're always as good as your potential. I now live in my work and in a few relationships with the few people I can really count on. Fame will go by and, so long, I've had you fame. If it goes by, I've always known it was fickle. So at least it's something I experienced, but that's not where I live.
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External links :
Official Marilyn Monroe website
Marilyn Monroe Collection
Marilyn Monroe at the Internet Movie Database
The Maite Minguez Ricart Collection
Google Images: Marilyn Monroe
See archival newsreels of Marilyn Monroe from Paramount News and Pathe News
TIME 100: Marilyn Monroe
Online community: Marilyn Monroe Forums
Marilyn Monroe's biographic sketch at Find A Grave
Coverage of Monroe's death and aftermath by the Los Angeles Times, with links to further archive material.
Claims by former Los Angeles prosecutor John W. Miner regarding Monroe's death: [11] [12]
An Evening with Marilyn Monroe - Photographs by Doug Kirkland
Filming Location of "NIAGARA"
John Gilmore Marilyn Monroe: A Memoir (Excerpts from a forthcoming book).
Marilyn Monroe Collection
Marilyn Monroe at the Internet Movie Database
The Maite Minguez Ricart Collection
Google Images: Marilyn Monroe
See archival newsreels of Marilyn Monroe from Paramount News and Pathe News
TIME 100: Marilyn Monroe
Online community: Marilyn Monroe Forums
Marilyn Monroe's biographic sketch at Find A Grave
Coverage of Monroe's death and aftermath by the Los Angeles Times, with links to further archive material.
Claims by former Los Angeles prosecutor John W. Miner regarding Monroe's death: [11] [12]
An Evening with Marilyn Monroe - Photographs by Doug Kirkland
Filming Location of "NIAGARA"
John Gilmore Marilyn Monroe: A Memoir (Excerpts from a forthcoming book).
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