Mimmo Rotella (1918-2006) started using "double-décollage" in 1953. This technique involves tearing a poster off the wall in the street, sticking it on canvas and lacerating it. This Italian painter, who officially joined the "New Realism" movement in 1961, often used cinema imagery. He and Andy Warhol were enthralled by Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962). These two 1960s artists fervently reworked the multiple image of the woman who embodied the tremendous modernity bursting with sensuality of a star system at its peak. For La Storia del cinema, Rotella used a photograph by Philippe Halsman (1906-1979) from a series for Life magazine. Like some of his other models, Halsman had asked the star to jump in the air to capture her features for posterity.
The surface of this poster is torn in places, revealing the layers beneath it. It portrays Marilyn as a genuine icon. It borrows all the motifs in the Assumption of the Virgin: it captures her in midair, frozen between the earth and the sky, her silhouette nestled in a blue oval not unlike the almond-shaped shrines enveloping the Madonna. Her hair encircles her face like a halo and a golden crown. The gashes sidestep her sacred image, forming an aura that befits her elevation: there are three saints to her right, and red, blue and gold (the Virgin's traditional colours) intertwine to wrap her for her final flight.
Marilyn, however, has the traits of a much more bodily divine figure. She is smiling, barefoot, her back and arms uncovered, in a dress that becomes her perfect silhouette, and her unashamed mien is reminiscent of Venus. The breeze unfurling her blonde hair could well be blowing from Botticelli's The Birth of Venus.
The scratches look like attempts to strip that so often craved, so often exposed body that slips away so often. Rotella's Marilyn is half way between Mary and Venus, and an idol ever rekindled by onlookers' desire.
