Aside from certain stretches of absence, Leonardo’s Mona Lisa has been on display on the Louvre for 228 years and relying. Although created by an Italian in Italy, the painting has lengthy since been part of French culture. In some unspecified time in the future, the reverence for La Joconde, because the Mona Lisa is natively identified, reached such an intensity as to encourage the label Jocondisme. For Marcel Duchamp, all of it appears to have been a bit a lot. In 1919, he purchased a submitcard bearing the picture of that the majority well-known of all paintings, drew a mustache and goatee on it, and dubbed the end resulting “artworkwork” L.H.O.O.Q., whose French professionalnunciation “Elle a chaud au cul” translates to — as Duchamp modestly put it — “There’s fireplace down under.”
A century in the past, this was a excessively irreverent, even blasphemous act, but in addition simply what one may anticipate from the person who, a couple years earlier, signed a urinal and put it on display in a gallery. Just like the much-scrutinized Fountain, L.H.O.O.Q. was one in every of Duchamp’s “preparedmades,” or artistic provocations exeminimizeed by modifying and re-contextualizing discovered objects.
Neither was singular: simply as Duchamp signed multiple urinals, he additionally drew (or didn’t draw) facial hair on multiple Mona Lisa submitplaying cards. In a single occasion, he even gave the okay to his fellow artist Francis Picabia to make one for publication in his magazineazine in New York as, neverthemuch less, “par Marcel Duchamp” — although it lacked a goatee, an omission the artist corrected in his personal hand some twenty years later.
In the 1956 interview simply above, Duchamp describes L.H.O.O.Q. as part of his “Dada period” (and, with characteristic modesty, “an ideal iconoclastic gesture on my half”). He additionally brings out a pretend test — belonging to “no financial institution in any respect” — that he created to make use of on the dentist (who settle fored it); and a system designed to “break the financial institution at Monte Automotivelo” (which stubbornly remained unbroken). “I consider that artwork is the one type of activity wherein man, as a person, reveals himself to be a real individual, and is capable of going past the animal state,” he declares. Together with his collision of Jocondisme and Dada, among the many other in contrast toly juxtapositions he engineered, he confirmed himself to be the premier prankster of early twentieth-century artwork — and one whose pranks transcended amusement to encourage a scholarly indusattempt that persists even immediately.
Related content:
What Makes the Mona Lisa a Nice Painting: A Deep Dive
How Did the Mona Lisa Change into the World’s Most Well-known Painting?: It’s Not What You Assume
How Marcel Duchamp Signed a Urinal in 1917 & Redefined Artwork
When Brian Eno & Other Artists Peed in Marcel Duchamp’s Well-known Urinal
Salvador Dalí Reveals the Secrets and techniques of His Commercemark Moustache (1954)
Primarily based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His tasks embody the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the ebook The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll by Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social webwork formerly often called Twitter at @colinmarshall.
