The Theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911, and Marcel Duchamp's Subsequent Response: L.H.O.O.Q: Related?

 Here's something I would like to point out about Marcel Duchamp's, “L.H.O.O.Q., Mona Lisa with a Mustache,” the famous scribble of a mustache on a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, and also the Mona Lisa itself and its emergence from relative obscurity after the highly sensationalized thievery at the Louvre. In 1911, before the outbreak of World War I and at the height of the Futurist movement, there was a deep questioning of the origins and enforcement of the concept of aesthetics and aesthetic taste. The core idea was that museums and aesthetic ideas existed simply to reinforce the social order, and that the royal academies were tied to monarchy and elite groups—those who were the taste makers. Already a bit of rebellion had started to break out in France in the form of Impressionism, which was spreading also to England, but not quite to the same degree. It’s worthwhile to note that subversive ideas about artistic representation had also spread to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiel, and the poet Srecko Kosovel were producing “shock-wave” work. Sadly both, both Schiel and Kosovel would die very young in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918.

In the case of the Mona Lisa, that modest canvas was safely ensconced in the Louvre in a wing dedicated to Renaissance painting, and there it was mildly respected but nothing special. But in 1911 something happened—the painting disappeared. It was stolen, and suddenly its disappearance created all kinds of scandal. Different people were accused of having stolen it, and in addition to that, people who were considered anarchists were also accused. So after two years of newspapers selling many, many special editions with sensationalized headlines tying the theft of the Mona Lisa to anarchist groups and people trying to make an anti-monarchy statement—let's say the Futurists, potentially, and especially anarchists (absolutely not monarchy, but anarchy)—it was recovered in 1913. It had been stolen by an Italian employee of the Louvre, who was caught when he tried to steal it.  So much for grand Anarchist hijinks or Futurist “performance art.” 

Theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911

Now, by 1919, Marcel Duchamp had already been doing his own subversive artwork—the so-called “readymades,” where he would, for example, mount a toilet on a stand and call it a fountain. And then he also had his famous Nude Descending a Staircase, which looked like stills from a motion picture film. His works were questioning the status quo in terms of art. During that time, I'm sure he got very tired of headline after headline: "Where's the Mona Lisa? Who stole it? They caught the thieves—who are they? Are they anarchists?" All that sensational information overload and publicity overload—I'm sure it made it so that every person in Paris saw a reproduced image of the Mona Lisa many times a week. Everyone in Paris knew it was a Leonardo da Vinci painting, and at that, a modest painting that had been pretty much ignored until its highly publicized theft in which the publicity quickly turned into spectacle - spectacle with a capital S ! 

Relentless and continuous sensational press coverage involved the public in the mystery of the disappearance of the Mona Lisa

So being so tired of the Spectacle of a Stolen Master, what a great opportunity to make a statement about not only elite types of paintings and priorities and hierarchies and aesthetics, but also to mark the incredible attention and sensationalism and the triggering as a hoi polloi ploy to boost buying newspapers that were focusing on that theft. 

By putting a mustache on a cheap postcard reproduction of the Mona Lisa, Duchamp was basically mocking not just the idea of aesthetics, but also all the sensationalized brouhaha around the theft of the piece—the newspaper headlines, the excitement, the melodrama. He's mocking the idea of essentially newspaper headlines and lowbrow entertainment regarding a theft from the Louvre.

Marcel Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q. response to the Mona Lisa in a Paris over-saturated with sensational journalism related to the theft and recovery of the Mona Lisa ("La Joconde"), and later, the trial of the accused thieves. 

Consequently, I think there are different dimensions to Marcel Duchamp's mustachioed Mona Lisa, and if we understand the context, it's even more enjoyable and fun to look at. The equivalent might be to put a mustache on something that's been promoted and promoted and promoted—an image that's come out over and over and over that we're supposed to consider high art and revere it. I can't really think of anything right now, but I'm sure it's out there.

Revisiting “Black Chalk” (1994) by Rochelle Owens

May The Future be alive

Like apple seeds with the promise 

         Of The forbidden Fruit 

That Eve Mother of All Living ate--

        Thus, the world gained

 Knowledge and Frightful Liberty!

                           ---Rochelle Owens

In Your skull reigns anarchy... 

                           ---Rochelle Owens

It’s hard to believe it has been almost 30 years since the long poem, “Black Chalk,” was published as a chapbook by Texture Press in Norman, Oklahoma. A companion video was filmed and produced in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, to be debuted at the Fred Jones Museum of Art on the campus of the University of Oklahoma.  

Video: https://youtu.be/EdTdsfaessY?si=6aUtiW3-ptsXfsiD 

The text: https://rochelleowens.net/poetrybooks.php?book=black_chalk 

The poem consists of three interwoven threads. The first consists of the arrival of the Spaniards in North America and the brutality and mass death. The second thread ties to the work of Leonardo da Vinci, not only his works of art the studio, but also his anatomical investigations. The third interwoven thread is one of societal malaise, where there is a great gulf between social classes, privilege vs homelessness, and consumer culture.  The interweavings and the repetition had an incantatory effect which generates levels of meaning as discordant sounds and disparate concepts are juxtaposed. 

Black Chalk (1994) by Rochelle Owens

In the video, the layering, interweaving of dialogue is manifestly powerful and the visual narrative adds levels of gallows humor, horror, and bourgeois creature comfort stripped bare. The experience of watching the video “Black Chalk” is both disconcerting and enlightening as the inescapable realization dawns on one that the discomfort is evidence of a deep connection with the text. 

Themes

Greedy devouring insatiable hunger.

The scene where a curly headed young man who could well have been a model in Leonardo 's studio devours a Peach. The extreme close up continues and lingers almost excruciatingly and is repeated a number of times just after lines about the Spaniards and the conquest are intoned which graphically illustrates the relentless, munching, finger licking horror of the Europeans rapacious destruction and ingestion of all that had pulp, which is to say, living value.

Gleeful celebrations of death.

Evoking the idea of an ecstatic dance macabre four privileged wealthy summer residents in a convertible luxury car echo medieval images from Bruegel or Hieronymus Bosch gleefully chatting blankets infected with plague which invokes the smallpox outbreaks in Mexico and North America which killed indigenous on a genocidal scale and also the ship of fools plague infested ship refused quarter in all ports of call until a fateful “yes” with devastating consequences. The actors shriek with carnivalesque glee which invokes horror. The “hungry bum” refers to an existential state. 

The hungry bum played by George Economou picks up a fanny pack containing an empty wallet and then he repeats the act many times as the camera encircles him creating a dizzying vertiginous journey into a disruption of the boundary between self and other. The bum’s hands rip through the wallet and the emptiness of that very wallet reflects the bankrupt morality of 20th century Americans who are comfortable in their neat New England town and expensive cars and studios but the search for self ultimately yields empty seams and compulsively repetitive digging and searching.

The Studio: The “Chalk” of Art

A black chalk dirtied hand moves over ink and chalk sketches of hands, bodies, and fingers but all are fragmentary and none are fully formed. The scene suggests process, the work in progress, and the ultimate goal, perhaps Leonardo’s Vitruvian man from 1490. The only fully formed complete images in the studio are those the artist and young man who could be the artist’s model or an angel coming to give the gift of artistic creation. In the scene, a slender, aged but attractive woman, the artist, contemplates work in her studio. Her art elicits ideas of fragmentation or even dissection. The angel touches the artist’s withered hand and arm. The lines and the body parts on the canvas are smudged which gives an idea of creation, but also that there is an essential horror at the core of creation. It is simply not possible to have creation without contact with dissection, disruption, and a canvas smudged black and gray with cremains, which could be the “chalk” of art. 

There are many other repeated scenes, repeated snippets of dialogue and behaviors, all which build to a climax of vulnerability, invasion by the other, and profound grief. Some elicit visceral revulsion such as when we are confronted with the lusty munching of a peach, which represents the way the Europeans devoured the civilizations of the Americas.

The Artist

At the end, the artist’s chair is empty. This means, at the end of the day, the artist is obliged to depart. The artist’s white plastic beach chair is empty.  In the world of Black Chalk, the artists is not a god or even Shiva. It is important to consider that the artist could even represent nothingness. The responsibility of meaning is in the consciousness of the viewer.

---Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D.