"The Last Mona"
~ Dolk
This is a relatively new print by British street artist Dolk. Although he released it in May, I can't stop thinking about it. I guess any good woman will do that to an easily charmed boy.
What gets me though isn't just the image, but a perfect example of what graffiti art has come to represent. Everyone knows the basic premise of street art: artwork of rebellion. That is, artwork that is for the public but at the same time created to defy society and authority. The idea that you make something beautiful through destruction, with a twist of revolution through imagery. But what grabs me about this image in particular is that Dolk has transcended the idea that graffiti art defies pop culture (or modern culture) and puts forth a challenge to historical culture as well.
The challenge isn't a new idea for artists by any means, as the concept of forgetting or erasing art history was first spawned in the early twentieth century by Italian artists who could no longer stand the site of one more Madonna and Child fresco or another fifteenth century building 'scaped within the ever changing scenery of modern industry and mechanics. These artists were call Futurists, and the only reason they would be caught in a museum was to burn an old master's painting or deface an ancient idol. They lived for technology and rebellion, and sought to destroy any evidence of those who had preceded them:
"We want no part of it, the past, we the young and strong Futurists!"
Is that what we're looking at above? Is art today relaunching a modern version of the Futurists revolution, or simply making a statement of creative progression?
Or maybe Dolk is just more of a fan of Jack Nicholson's "Joker" than Heath Ledger's version...
