Mona Lisa
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Mona Lisa, or La Gioconda. (La Joconde), is a 16th century oil painting on poplar wood by Leonardo da Vinci, and is one of the most famous paintings in the world. Any work of art has been subject to as much scrutiny, study, mythologizing and parody. It is owned by the French government and hangs in the Musée du Louvre in Paris. The painting, a half-length portrait, depicts a woman whose gaze meets the viewer's with an expression often described as enigmatic. It is considered to be Leonardo's magnum opus.
Leonardo da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa in 1502 (during the Italian Renaissance) and, according to Vasari, "after he had lingered over it four years, left it unfinished...." He is thought to have continued to work on it for three years after he moved to France and to have finished shortly before he died in 1519.
Role in popular culture and avant-garde art
As a cult painting, the Mona Lisa has enjoyed countless references in both avant-garde art and popular culture.
- 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.
- The Mona Lisa has acquired an iconic status in popular culture. In 1963, pop artist Andy Warhol started making colorful serigraph prints of the Mona Lisa. Warhol thus consecrated her as a modern icon, similar to Marilyn Monroe or Elvis Presley. At the same time, his use of a stencil process and crude colors implies a criticism of the debasement of aesthetic values in a society of mass production and mass consumption. Today the Mona Lisa is frequently reproduced, finding its way on to everything from carpets to mouse pads.
