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ARRON CRASCALL · 2022 · SIGNED LIMITED EDITION · 19/38
There are some faces that no longer seem to belong to one moment in history.
Marilyn Monroe is one of them.
More than sixty years after her death, the image remains instantly recognisable — the hair, the dress, the pose, the smile.
But what I like about Arron's Air Max Marilyn is that he takes one of the most reproduced images in popular culture and drops it into a completely different world.
The elegance remains.
Everything around it changes.
The Marilyn we know is normally presented through the polished lens of Hollywood.
Here, that polish has been disrupted.
Pink and red explode across the background. Paint drips down the image. Hearts, marks and fragments of graffiti surround her.
And then Arron makes one final intervention.
He puts trainers on Marilyn Monroe.
It's such a simple idea, but it completely changes the image.
Suddenly, something belonging to the 1950s feels as though it could have been created yesterday.
High culture meets street culture.
Hollywood meets contemporary art.
An icon from one generation is reinterpreted through the language of another.
And that's what makes this piece interesting to me.
We tend to remember people through a handful of frozen moments.
One photograph.
One performance.
One story.
One version of who we think they were.
Marilyn became one of the most photographed women in history, yet behind those photographs existed a person infinitely more complicated than the image the world consumed.
Perhaps that's why this piece works so well within the philosophy behind our collection.
Because Arron isn't simply reproducing Marilyn.
He's changing the lens.
The famous pose remains, but everything surrounding it belongs to another time, another culture and another artist.
And suddenly you're looking again at an image you thought you already knew.
Like Air Max Ballet, this piece demonstrates something I particularly enjoy about Arron's work.
He isn't particularly interested in treating cultural icons with reverence.
He plays with them.
He disrupts them.
He brings them into his own world.
And somehow, underneath all the paint, graffiti and humour, the original icon remains completely intact.
That's quite an achievement.
Air Max Marilyn now sits within the Beyond the Originals section of The Allun Lewis Collection — another work collected along the way that reminds me why contemporary art can be so much fun.
Because sometimes you don't need to reinvent the icon.
You simply need to look at her through a different lens.
Arron Crascall
Air Max Marilyn
2022
Giclée print on archival smooth fine-art paper
Approx. 69.9 × 50.2 cm
Signed Limited Edition
No. 19 of 38
ARRON CRASCALL · 2022 · SIGNED LIMITED EDITION · 19/38
There are some faces that no longer seem to belong to one moment in history.
Marilyn Monroe is one of them.
More than sixty years after her death, the image remains instantly recognisable — the hair, the dress, the pose, the smile.
But what I like about Arron's Air Max Marilyn is that he takes one of the most reproduced images in popular culture and drops it into a completely different world.
The elegance remains.
Everything around it changes.
The Marilyn we know is normally presented through the polished lens of Hollywood.
Here, that polish has been disrupted.
Pink and red explode across the background. Paint drips down the image. Hearts, marks and fragments of graffiti surround her.
And then Arron makes one final intervention.
He puts trainers on Marilyn Monroe.
It's such a simple idea, but it completely changes the image.
Suddenly, something belonging to the 1950s feels as though it could have been created yesterday.
High culture meets street culture.
Hollywood meets contemporary art.
An icon from one generation is reinterpreted through the language of another.
And that's what makes this piece interesting to me.
We tend to remember people through a handful of frozen moments.
One photograph.
One performance.
One story.
One version of who we think they were.
Marilyn became one of the most photographed women in history, yet behind those photographs existed a person infinitely more complicated than the image the world consumed.
Perhaps that's why this piece works so well within the philosophy behind our collection.
Because Arron isn't simply reproducing Marilyn.
He's changing the lens.
The famous pose remains, but everything surrounding it belongs to another time, another culture and another artist.
And suddenly you're looking again at an image you thought you already knew.
Like Air Max Ballet, this piece demonstrates something I particularly enjoy about Arron's work.
He isn't particularly interested in treating cultural icons with reverence.
He plays with them.
He disrupts them.
He brings them into his own world.
And somehow, underneath all the paint, graffiti and humour, the original icon remains completely intact.
That's quite an achievement.
Air Max Marilyn now sits within the Beyond the Originals section of The Allun Lewis Collection — another work collected along the way that reminds me why contemporary art can be so much fun.
Because sometimes you don't need to reinvent the icon.
You simply need to look at her through a different lens.
Arron Crascall
Air Max Marilyn
2022
Giclée print on archival smooth fine-art paper
Approx. 69.9 × 50.2 cm
Signed Limited Edition
No. 19 of 38