Mona Lisa Images for a Modern World - 10

Mona Lisa as Emblem of Power and Style
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The "refrigerator magnet" -- as the Cookie Jar -- has carried Mona from the exalted halls of the Louvre to the every-day locus of the kitchen. Leonardo and his most famous image have been "consumed" by modern culture which has now cast Mona in the dual oxymoronic roles of icon and consumable (apparatus for, anyway). But the need to take the Mona Lisa into the locale of mundane ritual is not new: François Ier, when he acquired the panel at Leonardo's death, placed it in the bathing rooms of the Château at Fontainebleau -- the place for the necessities of daily life, certainly, but in fact also a rarefied Renaissance environment designed by Primaticcio, in which the act of bathing was part of courtly ritual. These rooms also served as a gallery in which were displayed some of the king's most prized pieces of Italian art. We recognize that in Renaissance society there was a necessary connection between expressive and functional environments. Is there a corresponding formal connection between our "kitsch" Mona Lisas and the places in which we show them?

The king's purpose -- in many ways not markedly different from yours or mine, I suggest -- was to surround himself with objects that lent him their power and prestige. What is revealed by having to borrow prestige? As the dysfunctional "Starkist" Tuna, Charlie, never fully learned, that to taste good is not the quite same thing as having good taste. Similarly, as Clark Kellogg (Matthew Broderick) discovered in Andy Bergman's film, The Freshman, where the mobster Don Carmine Sabatini (Marlon Brando) possesses the true Mona Lisa, having replaced the original with a counterfeit when it was on loan in the United States, we live in a topsy-turvey world where society's foes may possess the authentic work and the museums are left holding the faux. In our commodified world, the personal and psychological implications of ownership may obscure and overwhelm an object's historical and aesthetic significance. In other words, the relation between "high" and "low" art and "high" and "low" collecting is not always parallel; symbols of status can be used to mask doubts of self-worth just as easily as they can certify power. Revered icons enshrined in temples of art can prove to be worthless, while authentic treasures can masquerade as facile facsimiles.

[Note: Martha Hollander, nucmxh@HOFSTRA.EDU, informs me that in the James Bond film Dr. No, the title character keeps the Mona Lisa in his "subterranean Jamaica hideout." The Freshman, continues the tradition of the Mona Lisa as an attribute of perverted power.]

But in The Freshman, the interplay of power and ownership is more complex. Here, of course, ownership of the Mona Lisa is used first as an attribute of absolute and absolutely corrupt power. But while the Mona Lisa stands as an emblem of the possessor's power, it also is used to reflect on and add depth to the unfolding narrative. The complacency with which Tina Sabatini, Don Carmine's daughter accepts this power, takes it for granted, displays no hint of self-doubt as she acts under the umbrella of its inheritance -- as she uses it erotically -- turns the naive Clark Kellogg into a foil against which Sabatini and Sabatini's daughter are to be measured. The scene at the Sabatini home, played out under the omnipresent visage of the Mona Lisa, is cleverly conceived so that while Leonardo's painting stands for the unquestioned power of its owner, Mona Lisa's presence is also being used as a metaphor to contrast Tina's private knowledge to Clark's innocence. Mona Lisa's smile here stands for secret knowledge, coyly revealed. It is the same as Tina's smile. Mona is the designated chaperon for the meeting whose perverted purpose, rather than to ensure decorum, is to ensnare Clark. In this sense Mona contrasts with Tina's hobbled aunt Angelina (Vera Lockwood), Carmine's sister (who should be the chaperon). She appears briefly, is introduced to Clark, and quickly disappears, perhaps fearing to tread where Tina is at play. Half the scene plays out while Nat King Cole sings "Mona Lisa." This song plays on the painting's mysterious smile, but updates its potential meanings to evoke the unknowns of modern romance:

Do you smile to tempt a lover, Mona Lisa?
Or is this your way to hide a broken heart?
Many dreams have been brought to your doorstep
They just lie there and they die there
Are you warm, are you real, Mona Lisa?
Or just a cold and lonely lovely work of art?
(Lyrics by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, 1949.)

It is not a stretch of the imagination to view these lyrics as the intended subtext of the scene: a quest for a love that can only be unrequited as long as it takes place in a world where the exercise of power is the primary means of human association. Tina tells Clark why her father had the Mona Lisa stolen: "It was just awful," she says, "such a masterpiece behind all that thick glass. And he had such a special feeling for it. His whole life. Such an obsession -- really." This is the first hint that there is something deeper in Don Carmine's makeup than the stereotypical Mafiosa mask would suggest -- Mona is his Rosebud, perhaps. Like the Mona Lisa, Don Carmine, himself, is a conundrum, the knotted meaning of which is unraveled only at the end of the film.

Whenever Andy Warhol chose the Mona Lisa as a subject (Storey, pp. 31, 32), in his typical manner he reproduced the crude commercial look of Mona Lisa reproductions (in one version even dissecting the color separations), and did not copy the painting itself. In this regard, I think Warhol is largely misunderstood; his subject to this viewer seems at once a lamentation on the prostitution of aesthetic values and a glorification of the results of their very debasement. For Warhol, however, as for the kitsch craftsmen who follow in his wake, the Mona Lisa is the quintessential "celebrity." While she is famous for being famous, unlike the instant evanescent celebrity of today, she is taken from outside of time -- her fame is outside of the ravages of time. She is an icon -- an emblem signifying the magical power of images and power of image-making to surpass and ignore style, fad, and even the awkward temporary skills of her many copyists.

The cult of the Mona Lisa (for that is what archaeologists of the future certainly will call it) should be compared to the worship of images of other great women whose symbolic presence in an image inspired such widespread and popular devotion as to cause their cheapened likenesses (as ex votos or tourist mementos) to be manufactured and distributed throughout civilization. What comes to mind, of course, are the Athena Parthenos, the Virgin Mary and the Statue of Liberty.

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