Mona Lisa Images for a Modern
World - 6
Imitating
Leonardo
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In the Louvre, of course,
the real
Mona is exhibited behind glass and is raised some degree above comfortable
viewing height. Enshrined in the vitrine that serves as
the icon's reliquary, she is
 placed at once outside of
time and made remote from most human contact. In the Louvre, to experience the real Mona Lisa is to confront
the crowds surrounding her, to see her through their
experience, to fathom her through phantom reflections of
ghostly images from nearby works. In contrast, the
popular arts turn the Mona Lisa into an intimate and
accessible object. Perhaps, nothing epitomizes this
tendency more, than the many
jigsaw puzzles based on Leonardo's celebrated painting. Unlike
the Louvre visitor whose distance from the object is
pre-defined by the protocols of tourism, the jigsaw
constructor is invited to touch and handle each piece and
to become intimate with every nuanced tone and with the
repeating variability of the syntax in the interlocking
geometries. Building the jigsaw forces the observer to
become an active participant, recapitulating in a
formulaic and ritualized manner a process of invention
and construction learned in childhood, which now
encourages him to fancy himself in the role of the famed
artist. In the eighty piece 8 x 10" puzzle shown
here, it does not seem to have mattered to the publisher
that the printer accidentally (or was it on purpose)
reversed the image. In the popular arts,
 it would seem
that the icon that is the Mona Lisa obtains its potency
less from how the image looks, from its style or from its
humanity, than from the observer's ability to identify
the pictogram. Paradoxically, as the observer becomes
more and more familiar with the surrogate Mona Lisa of
the puzzle, the real Mona Lisa is made ever more remote.
As the puzzle takes shape one piece at a time, the
surrogate Mona slowly reaches its epiphany. But, at the
same time that it is forming, the image is receding and
becoming ever more unapproachable behind the curvilinear
grill of the jigsaw contours. In the example shown here,
when (or if) the constructor realizes that he has been
making a mirror Mona, and not the vere icon (see below) he imagines, he must suddenly learn that
unwittingly, his goal has been traduced. In the
wrapping-paper sequence, Mona disappears in a spasm of
uncontrollable laughter; and in the puzzle she is
imprisoned behind the matrix of surface grid that is the
tell-tale mark of the jigsaw. In either case, the
painting, itself, is held back from the observer.
Other works of this sort turn the
observer into a surrogate maker. In Mary Rose Storey's Mona
Lisas is illustrated another (more elaborate) jigsaw
puzzle (p. 44) and a version to be painted according to a
number/color scheme (p. 46). To these may be added a
cross-stitch version by Charles Craft (http://www.charlescraft.com/), and versions for children to color and send
to friends (Pigment & Hue, Inc. 800-850-8221).
Note: The metaphor of observer or user
as Leonardo the creator is carried into advertising art
as demonstrated in a page selling a Fujifilm digital
camera. See
illus.
Other works, such as the
Mona Lisa made of 1,426
slices of burnt toast, cited
above, exist to show off the virtuosity of the artist.
Here the artist acknowledges the greatness of his
predecessor by imitating him and by recreating his
masterwork out of lowly, ostensibly inartistic materials.
"Anyone,"
 they
seem to be saying deterministically, "can fashion a Mona Lisa out of
oils, anyone can paint one by filling in numbers, or by finishing the
jig-saw puzzle; but, who can
create Mona from toast, or even from
pasta?" In this
way virtuosity is used to advance the dialogue between
"high" and "low." The "low"
unknown artist can thrive by imitating the
"high," and lowly materials can be elevated in
the process of re-making great art. These new Mona Lisas
become keys to notoriety. The resulting work has more in
common with a performance than an accomplishment. Toast
cannot last indefinitely; pasta perishes soon enough. The
lasting products of these acts are fame and fortune,
documented photographically. These goals are more in
keeping with the virtues and values of our own time. And
here, too, the artist casts himself in the role of
Leonardo -- Leonardo the experimenter -- whose fallible
techniques and unstable materials caused his best works
to decay, but whose fame has lasted forever. In this age
of the Guinness Book of World Records, one must be very
clever to achieve even temporary fame or notoriety.
 An advertisement for Savin Copiers in
the form of a paper
sculpture of the Mona Lisa by
artist Jeff Nishimaka takes virtuosity one step in the
opposite direction. Here the virtuosity of the paper
work- and the authority of the masterpiece fuse in the
advertisement's conceit to lend their attributes to the
product. The Savin copier, by extension, becomes the
"Leonardo" of the age of office equipment.
A Hologram
Magnetic Puzzle
offers a simplified graphic rendition of the familiar
composition. Here
 the hologram pushes the landscape back
into a three-dimensional but flat plane at the rear
(unfortunately rendered out of focus in the scan). As in
the wrapping paper, the puzzle moves Leonardo's image
into an imagined dimension, and, as in the wrapping
paper, it correspondingly reduces verisimilitude in order
to underscore these changes. May we go so far as to
suggest that the jigsaw and other devices signify that in
today's world the riches of the past can serve as a
quarry from which new emblems and new objects may be
mined? In our minds Leonardo is the flawed painter who
could bring few projects to completion; he is the
fashioner of impractical practical jokes; and, he is the
master of technologies not invented for hundreds of
years. Is the hologram Mona a reference to these Leonardos; does Leonardo's legendary personality play a
role in the conceit of this object, is the hologram a nod
to Leonardo's cutting edge technology, or is its
surprising three-dimensionality merely a device to bring
patrons to the check-out counter?
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