Even those of us immune to the mythology of the tragic blonde, can recognise the importance of the image of Monroe isolated against an extraordinary landscape of sand and distant mountains. She is learning her lines, gathering herself for a difficult scene and it is as though she is bracing herself to face more than the cameras.
Behind her is a single sound boom, a reminder that even in this wild place the Monroe persona still exists only for the apparatus, the game. It is a tender yet unmistakably sad image. Arnold was unique in her photos of Monroe, in favouring her humanity over her sex appeal: the hard graft and the elaborate artifice behind the public image. For all that this is merely a celebrity shot, the combination of sympathy and utter ruthlessness on the part of the artist puts much of the rest of the work on show to shame.
Back in the RSA building after refurbishment, the annual show feels far more confident in the windproof and watertight surroundings. Year by year the silly historical formalities over hanging seem to be eroding, and the result looks more and more like a real exhibition. Much of the work is large scale this year, but with the show extending over two floors, there is no sense of overcrowding.
The academy's new exhibition co-ordinator, Colin Greenslade, who is providing a welcome breath of fresh air, seems to have been doing overtime persuading "honoraries" and invited artists to take part. It's essential if the show is to have some sense of international perspective and if the RSA is ever to show artists who don't care to fit the rigid mould. It is a trick pulled off in London by Sir Peter Blake, who invited a generation of artists in their thirties to show at the stuffy RA, to predictably lively discussion.
As a result of Greenslade's efforts there is a fine, melancholy John Byrne self-portrait and a wildly complex tour-de-force by Steven Campbell, a kind of contemporary Bosch roaring with every imaginable sort of horror and pleasure, which seems to be painted on unstretched and unprimed canvas.
Another honorary is Craigie Aitchison, represented by a series of saucy male portraits and a crucifixion. Normally I find the latter a bit mannered, but sharing a wall with an overblown painting by Peter Howson of gruesome, cartoonish he-men, it begins to look like a genuinely subtle and devotional work of art.
For the most part, the sculpture is spectacularly bad. The sculpture court itself is dominated by a succession of ludicrous bronze maidens, legs akimbo, pert breasts clearly the result of plastic surgery. The ever-lively George Wylie has submitted Cosmic Cathedral, a lump of quartz, a lightening rod and some copper wire. Looking at the dismal works surrounding it one is tempted to test whether the flex might work for self-electrocution.
But downstairs, three enigmatic pieces by Gareth Fisher save the show. These plaster, and possibly mineral, forms are truly weird and ambiguous, with an appearance that is part-bleached animal bone, part mutant plant form. Under cool bell jars they are specimens in some unknown scientific museum, but despite the clinical setting, they look like they are still emerging from some primordial swamp.
In painting, the surprising presence of the recently-elected Callum Innes, takes things up a considerable notch up market, in printmaking, Glasgow's Ashley Cook has won the city's arts club prize. In architecture, there is a well-deserved Latimer Award for Oliver Chapman's elegant and economical community centre, designed with some nods to eco-principle for Glasgow's Hidden Gardens. However, the award of the RSA<
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