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Claire Willard’s provocative portrait connecting Marilyn Monroe with the ancient Roman figure Lucretia won the People’s Choice Award in Falls Church Arts’ All-Members Show for artists with last names beginning M-Z.
Falls Church Arts announced the award July 26. Willard’s 30-by-40-inch acrylic painting with embellishments, titled “The Worth of a Woman: Marilyn as Lucretia,” is priced at $10,000.
The exhibition remains on view through Aug. 10 at the Falls Church Arts gallery, 700-B West Broad St.
Willard’s painting presents a black-and-white, film-like image of Monroe holding a dagger to her chest. The composition draws from Rembrandt van Rijn’s 1664 painting “Lucretia,” which is held by the National Gallery of Art.
Against a stark black background, Monroe is surrounded by four vivid red roses, one in each corner. A thorny, sepia-colored rose winds up the dagger, adding another ominous element to the scene.
Willard describes the work as an examination of how women have been exploited across different eras. In her accompanying statement, she says Lucretia represented the futile pursuit of faultless womanhood for thousands of years, while Monroe assumed a similar symbolic role in the age of mass media.
The award-winning artist has no readily available biography at the gallery, on the Falls Church Arts website or elsewhere online.
Linking two tragic figures
Monroe rose from an impoverished childhood to become one of Hollywood’s most recognizable stars and sex symbols. Behind that fame, she experienced depression and was frequently typecast as a “dumb blonde,” despite her intelligence, acting ability and success in managing contracts and productions within the male-dominated entertainment industry of the 1950s and early 1960s.
Her public image and honor were also scrutinized after nude photographs of her appeared. Monroe died from an overdose in 1962 at age 36, in what was ruled a probable suicide.
Lucretia’s story comes from ancient Rome during the sixth-century B.C. reign of Tarquinius Superbus. According to the account preserved by the Roman historian Livy, Sextus Tarquinius threatened and raped Lucretia after her husband, Collatinus, had praised her loyalty and virtue.
Lucretia later told her father and husband what had happened. Although they considered her blameless, she took her own life in an effort to reclaim her honor. Her rape and death helped ignite the revolt that toppled the Roman monarchy and led to the establishment of the Roman Republic.
Rembrandt depicted Lucretia immediately before her death, holding a dagger toward her chest. Willard adopts that composition while replacing the Roman woman with Monroe, joining two figures whose lives became entangled with public expectations of female sexuality, virtue and worth.
Falls Church Arts’ gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Works in the exhibition may also be viewed and purchased online.