An artist reincarnates an icon out of steel and aluminum

October 2011 - Beneath the towering skyscrapers in Chicago, clad in her legendary wind-blown white halter dress atop a sidewalk grate, stands a steel and aluminum Marilyn Monroe. The monumental and controversial “Forever Marilyn” is a part of the Icons Revisited series created by artist J. Seward Johnson. “I thought that Marilyn, in this pose, not necessarily in her life or even this moment in her life, embodied a sense of our own uninhibited vivacity,” he says. The tendentious portrayal of the sex symbol is stirring up conversation as critics and spectators alike take in the colossal tribute to a worldwide paragon.

“This piece is part of my Icons Revisited series. The whole exploration centers around ‘why,’ not ‘who,’” Johnson says. Known for his life-size sculptures of ordinary people in contemporary life situations, Johnson shifted his sights to iconic portraits. He sought to capture why certain singular images “stick with us over decades, becoming a part of the universal unconscious,” he says.

Owned by The Sculpture Foundation, Santa Monica, Calif., and standing 25 ft. tall, 17 ft. wide and 18 ft. deep, the sculpture is comprised of cast 316 stainless steel alloy, 5/8 in. thick from her skirt, legs and hips. From her skirt, up, she’s made of hollow cast aluminum. The mild steel grate she towers over measures 14 ft. by 14 ft.

Marilyn’s figure weighs 14,500 lbs. and the base 22,000 lbs., making the total weight of the installation 36,500 lbs. It is built to withstand 150 mph winds.

The mechanics behind Marilyn

Employing the methods taught at the Mercerville, N.J.-based Johnson Atelier, a part of The Sculpture Foundation, Charles Haude, executive director, says artist Johnson first created a life-size version of Marilyn to submit for digital scanning. “We scanned a life-sized version of Marilyn and then used a five-axis CNC mill to make sections of her in polystrene foam that were coated with a urethane spray coating to make them hard enough to be used as casting patterns that would go to a foundry and then be sand cast,” Haude says.

The human-sized model’s scan data was input into a computer. Haude says the team was able to create dimensions for a 25-ft. version. “We have five-axis mills where we put big blocks, 4 ft. by 8 ft. foam blocks,” he says. “We carved the different sections: the legs, shoes, dress—all the sections were packed and sent to a foundry.”

Ordinarily, Haude says sculptures of this type are created using one metal. However, Marilyn’s unique figure warranted the use of two metals. “She has thin ankles and high heels,” Haude explains. “So we cast from the bottom of her shoes to the panty line in 316 stainless steel to the stainless section. These pieces of metal that come up from the lower section, and the aluminum tabs from the waist down, were then bolted together using stainless steel nuts and bolts for holding it together.”

The 5/8 in. stainless steel bolts are bolted through match plates measuring 5/8 in. thick. Welded struts onto each of the materials allowed for mechanical attachments in lieu of welding. The sand mold/ceramic shell mold hybrid was created using the lost wax process and painted with the chromabase DuPont Paint System.

Dream realized
“My goal has been realized. I wanted to watch people interacting with [Marilyn] and responding to her enormous scale,” Johnson says. “What I have already seen happening in Chicago is exactly what I’d hoped. All people, all ages, all reactions, are to be embraced.” The artist has more than 350 life-size cast bronze figures to his credit, appearing in private collections and museums in the United States, Canada, Europe as well as Asia.

Constructing the curvaceous figure was no simple feat. “She was two years in the making and a very difficult engineering challenge with the imbalance created by the cantilevered skirt,” Johnson says. “When you consider that it is all metal, you immediately see the things I had to overcome to keep her standing upright!”

When considering what icons to create for his series, Johnson says he looked at what stood the test of time and appeared over and over in homage and parody. Johnson relied only on the iconic photo taken by Bernard of Hollywood. “That is the only image that I was working with. We have a nice relationship with the heir to this photo,” Johnson says.

While Marilyn’s debut was in Chicago, she may be traveling elsewhere. “We have been receiving letters, calls and emails from all over,” Johnson says. “It is not certain yet where she will go next, but we are looking at Barcelona, Shanghai and Berlin. And of course, we do hope she will find her way to Hollywood at some point.” FFJ