L.H.O.O.Q.
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"The avant-garde art were the first to take note of the undeniable fact of the Mona Lisa's popularity. Because of the painting's overwhelming stature, Dadaists and Surrealists often produce modifications and caricatures. In 1919, Marcel Duchamp, one of the most influential Dadaists, made a Mona Lisa parody by adorning a cheap reproduction with a moustache and a goatee, as well as adding the rude inscription L.H.O.O.Q., when read out loud in French sounds like "Elle a chaud au cul" (translating to "she has a hot arse" as a manner of implying the woman in the painting is in a state of sexual excitement and availability). This was intended as a Freudian joke, referring to Leonardo's alleged homosexuality. According to Rhonda R. Shearer, the apparent reproduction is in fact a copy partly modelled on Duchamp's own face. Salvador Dalí, famous for his pioneering surrealist work, painted Self portrait as Mona Lisa in 1954." --Sholem Stein |
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L.H.O.O.Q. is a work of art by Marcel Duchamp first conceived in 1919. The work is one of what Duchamp referred to as readymades, or more specifically an assisted ready-made. Pioneered by him, the readymade involves taking mundane, often utilitarian objects not generally considered to be art and transforming them, by adding to them, changing them, or (as in the case of his most famous work Fountain) simply renaming them and placing them in a gallery setting. In L.H.O.O.Q. the objet trouvé ("found object") is a cheap postcard reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa onto which Duchamp drew a moustache and goatee in pencil and appended the title.
The added inscription L.H.O.O.Q., when read out loud in French, sounds like ''elle a chaud au cul (translating to "she has a hot ass") seems to imply that the woman in the painting is in a state of sexual excitement and availability.
The work is the size of a postcard (19,7x12,4 cm) and is part of the readymade tradition. It was produced in the Dada periodical 391. It belongs to the French communist party, who lent it for 99 years to the Centre Georges Pompidou. It was offered to the PCF by Louis Aragon, to whom Duchamp had offered it as a present.
Versions
- 1918 – Private collection, Paris, on loan to the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
- 1920 – Present location unknown.
- 1930 – Large scale replica, private collection, Paris
- 1940 – A color reproduction made from the original. It was stolen in 1981 and has not been recovered.
- 1958 – Collection of Antoni Tapies, Barcelona.
- 1960 – Oil on wood. In the collection of Dorothea Tanning, New York.
- 1964 – Thirty-eight replicas made to be inserted into a limited edition of Pierre de Massot's Marcel Duchamp, propos et souvenirs. Collection of Arturo Schwarz, Milan.
- 1965 – L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved is a playing card reproduction of the Mona Lisa mounted on paper. The Mona Lisa painting is unmodified but for the inscription LHOOQ rasée.
See also
