A recent feature in FAD Magazine highlights the upcoming Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, offering a timely lens through which to reconsider artists such as Pauline Boty. The exhibition moves beyond Monroe as a passive icon, instead presenting her as an active collaborator in shaping her own image by directing photographers and consciously constructing her public persona.
This reframing closely aligns with Boty’s practice. As a founding figure of British Pop Art and its only recognised female painter, Boty repeatedly engaged with Monroe as both subject and symbol. Her works draw from mass media imagery but reassert female agency, sexuality, and authorship within a male-dominated visual culture.
By placing Monroe within a broader artistic and cultural context, the exhibition underscores her influence on a generation of artists, including Boty, who used her image to explore identity, power, and representation in the 1960s and beyond.
