Marilyn Monroe (Good Girl Gone Bad)

2015-2017

Marilyn Monroe (Good Girl Gone Bad) revisits Warhol’s 1962 Marilyn paintings through saturated color, silkscreen, and the addition of a bandanna. Knowledge Bennett redirects a familiar emblem of glamour toward questions of agency, solidarity, and responsibility.

The series draws on Monroe’s advocacy for Ella Fitzgerald’s 1955 engagement at Hollywood’s Mocambo Club. Bennett treats the episode as an act of alliance within an unequal entertainment industry, preserving Fitzgerald’s artistic authority while examining how celebrity can challenge institutional exclusion.

The title redefines “bad” as a refusal of compliance. The bandanna disrupts the polished familiarity of the image and introduces a language of defiance. Bennett’s Monroe asks how public visibility can become a means of intentional action and how an icon’s meaning can be renewed through history.