'Marilyn chapel' to star again after 40 years

Five famous images of Marilyn Monroe which marked a turning point for portraiture and caused a sensation on the New York art scene are to be reunited in a "Marilyn chapel" for the first time in 40 years.

When the portraits of the actress, created by the founding fathers of the Pop Art movement, were unveiled in a 1967 tribute show, they were said to inspire "bewilderment, high amusement and astonishment" among the critics. Now, the National Portrait Gallery will re-assemble the works - which range from Andy Warhol's screen-prints to Richard Hamilton's contact sheet of photographs duplicating her image - to form the heart of an exhibition devoted to portraiture in Pop Art.

As well as works by Warhol, Ray Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns and Ray Johnson, paintings by the British artists Sir Peter Blake and David Hockney will reveal the way in which Britain breathed new life into Pop Art.

The Marilyn gallery will recreate the tribute show, Homage to Marilyn Monroe, held at the Sydney Janis Gallery in New York, five years after she died.

Paul Moorhouse, the show's curator, said: "Marilyn Monroe gripped the psychology of America and Europe. After she died, people were even more fascinated by her. The Pop Artists represented that preoccupation with her image. The work by Richard Hamilton, in which she has crossed out her own image on the contact sheet, is, in a sense, a denying of oneself, a statement which says, 'I'm not good enough'."

Mr Moorhouse added that the show hoped to demonstrate how Pop Art and its representation of the cult of celebrity was still relevant today.

Sandy Nairne, the director of the National Portrait Gallery, said the show provided an insight into the way in which portraiture has been reinvented and invigorated by photography and film. "Pop Art Portraits creates an exciting opportunity to see an important art movement in a new light - the portrait is recreated through the work of these artists," he said.

In all, 52 works by 28 artists working on both sides of the Atlantic during the 1950s and 1960s will be shown, brought together from the worlds of advertising, pop music, cinema and print.

Highlights include a Warhol self-portrait and Lichtenstein's seminal cartoon portraits, whose "flat, bland emotionless features" became the hallmark of Pop Art.

Warhol's famous "screen tests", in which unknown faces as well as the likes of Salvador Dali and Marcel Duchamp are filmed sitting immobile in front of a screen, will be shown next to the work of the British artist Peter Gidal, who did the same thing with "models" including Hockney and Francis Bacon.

The show will run from 11 October to 20 January.