Mona Lisa Images for a Modern
World - 7
Mona
Lisa Wrapped in a Mantle of Fable
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 When
Gary Larson took on the subject for the front cover of The
Far Side Gallery 3 (Kansas City, Andrews
and McMeel, 1988.) the human Mona is replaced
(characteristically) by the ever-approachable Larson Cow.
Larson uses these uncomplaining stolid animals as foils
against which human idiosyncrasies are cast -- where the
strange activities of the human species are recorded
against a backdrop that brings the human silhouette into
clear focus. And here, by rendering an essentially
anonymous bovine-mona, that common human conceit -- the
need to be individualized and recorded for posterity --
is exposed. But, while the Larson version of our famous
picture obviously parodies Leonardo's Mona Lisa, it also
reveals debts to several Western portrait conventions.
For instance, quite curiously, Larson's Mona is not
seated in Mona's famous chair, but plainly is standing
in front of a rather prominent parapet, beyond which the
landscape rushes to its infinity. [Note: Gould.] Clearly,
Mona's "arms" do not rest on the arms of a
chair, but on what appears to be the capital of a small
column. By employing this device, Larson seems to be
alluding to a conventional standing portrait type of the
sort sometimes used by Van Dyck, Joshua Reynolds,
Gainsborough or others, the purpose of which is to invest
the sitter with an appearance and demeanor of aristocracy
amid attributes of learning. In this way the contrast
between lowly cow and self-important upstanding human is
thus heightened. Like so many of Larson's animals, this
one inhabits human space -- a space that contrasts
markedly to the expanding landscape beyond; this cow is
no longer grazing about in the meadows and hills (such as
they are), but finds itself propped up for portraiture.
Is it possible that hidden in the iconography of this
upright mona-cow is a doubly ironic twist on the old
dairyman's joke: "Our cows are outstanding in their
field?" But this one seems to be standing out in front of her field
-- not unlike Leonardo, himself.
[Note: Paleontologist Stephen Jay
Gould, in Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet
of Worms (New York, Harmony Books, 1998, p. 31),
also thinks of the Mona Lisa as standing. He says: "La
Gioconda stands on a balcony overlooking a complex
geological background of flowing waters..."]
In literature, the
use of animals to express human values is certainly as
old as Aesop, who, if he existed at all, was probably
just a codifier of earlier lore or a name used as a
metaphor with which to unite a class of literature. Among
indigenous peoples, the oral tradition of telling moral
animal stories is spread worldwide. In the imagery of
medieval Europe, animals are given human tasks in the
bas-de-page of countless illuminated manuscripts. It is
in our own time, however, that they acquire the traits of
human personalities. Animals acting out human dramas,
certainly precede the illustrations of Beatrix Potter,
but they are never portrayed more sensitively than they
are in her works. Potter's civilized menagerie must be
credited with clearing a path for the manner in which
even Gary Larson uses animals to draw out human
peculiarities. Dressed as humans, acting and toiling as
humans, it would not be long before animals could take on
surrogate human roles as subject in art.
 Indeed, animals seem to be drawn to the
Mona Lisa -- magnetically, as it were. Illustrated in
Mary Rose Storey's Mona Lisas are two such
works: a poster from 1971 by Rick Meyerowitz called
Mona Gorilla (p. 51), and a miniature in oil on hardboard
from 1977 by Rita Greer, who depicts Mona as a mouse (Mona
Lisamouse, p.
63). To this writer, the intent of both works is contrary
to the tradition of Beatrix Potter. These artists are not
primarily interested in creating a universe parallel to
that inhabited by humans; but, rather, their purpose is
to shock the onlooker when confronted by the disparity
between the expected icon and the image in front of him.
The first of these depicts a gorilla, a gorilla quite
satisfied to be playing the role of Mona. While not
something ferocious and untamed, this gorilla glories in
the conceit of replacing a life of high regard and a
smile of consummate mystery with his clever mocking
monkey-shines. The second image, well, makes makes
Leonardo's self-satisfied Mona into something mousy.
[Note: Mona Gorilla is derived
from a National Lampoon traveling exhibition:
"The Gorilla in Art" and was used on the cover
of the National Lampoon issue (March 1971, Vol.
1, No. 12) dedicated to culture. The traveling exhibit
is described as follows: "The reconverted bookmobile
will also display such masterpieces as Duchamp's Gorilla
Descending a Staircase, Picasso's Gorillica, the original
manuscript of Kant's Critique of Pure Gorilla, a
recording of Schubert's Unfinished Gorilla and a
videotaping of Sir Kenneth Clark's cultural series
Gorillisation. Gorilla my dreams, I love you..." (http://www2.bitstream.net/~marksim/natlamp/issues/7103.html). Along the same lines may be placed The
Guerilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of
Western Art," Penguin Books, 1998. The
Meyerowitz poster also appeared in "The National
Lampoon Art Poster Book" (15" x 11"),
Harmony Books, 1975. -- In a letter dated April 11, 2005, Rick Meyrowitz
informs me that the "Gorilla in Art" exhibit was written by one of the
founders of The National Lampoon,
Henry Beard, who also conceived the idea of posing a Miss Piggy as Mona.
See below. Readers may be interested in consulting Rick Meyrowitz's
upcoming website:
http://www.rickmeyerowitz.com/ ]
 Closer to Potter is the
rabbit-Mona by
Sylvia Long (1993)
that appears in a greeting card put out by Peaceable
Kingdom Press of Berkeley California. Here a rather
domestic Mona sits contentedly in a landscape that more
closely resembles the high peaks and friendly brown hills
of California than the treacherous forbidding and
unfathomable vista of Leonardo's Mona. Sylvia Long's
"Mona" is a direct descendant of the carefully
civilized rabbit society created by Doris Susan Smith in
her intriguingly illustrated series about J.B.Rabbit (The
Travels of J.B.Rabbit, 1982, and The Country
Live of J.B.Rabbit, 1989). Content in her Peaceable
Kingdom and relaxed, the tension between sitter and
observer that animates Leonardo's picture -- a tension
somehow wound into her cryptic smile -- is gone in this
rabbit in repose, who, if anything, surveys the observer
with serene queenly dignity.
 While most animal
Monas turn a portraiture tradition into a device for
depicting generic (and therefore universal) subjects,
there are exceptions. In the Kermitage Collection of the
Jim Henson Studios may be found a portrait of the
irrepressible Miss Piggy,
Mona Pigga, a character from the creator's Muppet series.
Miss Piggy, of course, is not the passive cow that Gary
Larson illustrates, but, rather, more aggressive, more
assuming and more pretentious than even humans, yet not
particularly conscious of herself. Miss Piggy, who
deludes herself into thinking that she is sexy, and who
seems to believe that the world exists solely for her
pleasure and comfort, is immune from knowing defeat and
is invisible to insult. In this picture, true to form,
she hams for the camera, but in so doing the picture
indicates that she is cognizant of the observer in a way
that reminds us that in Leonardo's version, so much more
subdued, of course, Mona's smile beguilingly draws the
observer into her secret world and aesthetic spaces.
[Note: Rick Meyerowitz reports (4/11/05) that the Miss Piggy project
was conceived by Henry Beard (of the National Lampoon) and
"was carried out by the great art director
David Kaestle and photographed by John Barrett."]
In the photo of a painting
of Snoopy as the Mona Lisa at right, accompanied by photographer Joe
Farace, we are confronted with a mélange of Mona symbolic attributes.
Farace entitles this snapshot, "My artistic influence." To this writer
he might be referring to the dual nature of the Snoopy-Mona portrait. On
one hand it represents the so-called "high art," of Western
Civilization, while on the other it heralds just plain Snoopy. Is the
photographer telling us that his aesthetic roots lie in these dual
polarities, or is he just making fun of the obvious fusion of types
within the photo (which might, in the end, be the same thing)? If the
former is true, then we might liken this dual image to Duchamp's LHOOQ,
where an example of "high" art infamously is equated to one of "low"
manufacture. (See MONASV12.htm#Duchamp
). There is, yet, another way to read this photo. People enjoy being
photographed in the company of things or people they respect or with
witch they would like to be identified. From snapshots of tourists
standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, to souvenir photos of politicos
shaking hands with presidents, or ordinary folks hugging movie stars,
the photograph has served as a symbolic pathway to exhibiting the
subject's ersatz prestige. This photo may serve as an ironic inversion
of what we might call "the proximity photo" -- one that plays on the
tradition's triviality. [Addition of 6/13/2007.]
If Larson's cow makes humans seem
self-important, in contrast, Henson's Piggy turns humans
into docile cows, but in her excesses we see ourselves
reflected, and by laughing at her pretensions we can
laugh at our own. But Mona Pigga refers, as well,
to another convention applied to modern Monas -- the use
of the Mona Lisa as a frame in which to pose celebrity,
the function of which directly opposes the use of the
mona formula to elevate insignificant animals to the
realm of portraiture.
 It is
difficult to determine when the Mona Lisa first began to
be used as a setting for the portraiture of other
individuals. During the sixteenth century, as has been
frequently shown, Fontainebleau court portraits sometimes
followed the Mona Lisa type, but these early images were
not cast specifically to invoke the Mona Lisa. The idea
to make portraits self-consciously refer to the Mona Lisa
may be a result of the hot-house of 19th-century Mona
Lisa criticism (at first an idea with no image) that was
transferred to modern portraiture some time later. Among
the theories that had gained favor by the end of the 19th
century, of course, was the idea that the Mona Lisa was,
in fact, a disguised portrait of Leonardo, himself, or
that the Mona Lisa was a portrait of the artist's mother.
Without discussing these notions (They are referred to,
below.), one should note that the Mona Lisa served as a
self-conscious frame of reference in portraits of
notables such as Josef Stalin,
Salvador Dali, Barbara Streisand, Golda Meir, Jackie Kennedy,
and many others. Of the above, only the self-portrait of
Dali may be said to be "commissioned." Dali, of
course, is appropriating the framework of fame to flaunt
his own image. The other works, I imagine, are intended
as parodies of celebrity and fame, juxtaposing a
recognizable likeness with that of the Mona Lisa -- the
generic code -- the modern-day emblem, for fame. One wonders if it is
the fame of the Mona Lisa or the notoriety of
Duchamp's defaced version to
which he aspires.
[Note: For portraits, see Storey, pp.
47, 48, 49 and, above fig. 23, row 5, nos. 2
and 3.]
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