Mona Lisa

Role in popular culture and avant-garde art

The Mona Lisa has acquired an almost iconic status in popular culture. In 1963, pop artist Andy Warhol started making colorful serigraph prints of the Mona Lisa. Warhol thus consecrated her as a modern icon, similar to Marilyn Monroe or Elvis Presley. At the same time, his use of a stencil process and crude colors implies a criticism of the debasement of aesthetic values in a society of mass production and mass consumption. Today the Mona Lisa is frequently reproduced, finding its way on to everything from carpets to mouse pads.

Related Topics:
Popular culture - 1963 - Pop art - Andy Warhol - Serigraph - Marilyn Monroe - Elvis Presley

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As a cult painting, the Mona Lisa has enjoyed countless references in both popular culture and avant-garde art. It has been a subject of many songs, including:

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• "Mona Lisa" (1950), a ballad sung by Nat King Cole comparing his love to the painting, was the #1 Billboard Pop single for 8 weeks and went on to sell 3 million copies. The song was written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans for the film Captain Carey, USA and was awarded an Oscar. It was later used in the 1986 film "Mona Lisa". "Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you, you're so like the lady with the mystic smile."
• Bob Dylan's song Visions of Johanna (1966), which includes the lines "But Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues./You can tell by the way she smiles."
• "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters", a song on Elton John's 1972 album, Honky Chateau. It rose to #1 in the Billboard Music Charts
• "Mona Lisa", the first track on country singer Willie Nelson's 1981 album, Somewhere over the Rainbow. The album rose to #1 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart. http://www.luma-electronic.cz/lp/n/Nelson/nelson1.htm
• "Mona Lisa", a song on hip hop performer Slick Rick's 1988 album, The Great Adventures of Slick Rick. The album rose to #1 on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums chart.
• "A Mona Lisa", an unreleased song by the popular rock band Counting Crows. It was written by lead singer Adam Duritz http://users.pandora.be/andrecroes/cc/covers.html and recorded in 1992. http://users.rcn.com/rfuss/ccboots1.html
• "Mona Lisa", a song by the German electro-rock band Unheilig suggests her smile is the result of the singer's hand underneath her skirt.
• "Mona Lisa", a rare song by Britney Spears. The song tells of a legendary female icon named "Mona Lisa" who has fallen from grace and is simply remembered for being mysterious and enigmatic, much like the painting. Interpretations of the lyrics have led to the comparisons between the Mona Lisa and Spears' career.

There have been many films, inspired by the painting that used variations of "La Gioconda" and "Mona Lisa" as titles. Some of these are about the painting itself, while others, such as the 1986 comedy drama Mona Lisa or the 2003 feminist drama Mona Lisa Smile with Julia Roberts are about women whose characters were inspired by the painting.

Related Topics:
1986 - Mona Lisa - 2003 - Feminist - Mona Lisa Smile - Julia Roberts

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The avant-garde art world has also taken note of the undeniable fact of the Mona Lisas popularity. Because of the painting's overwhelming stature, Dadaists and Surrealists often produce modifications and caricatures. In 1919, Marcel Duchamp, one of the most influential Dadaists, made a Mona Lisa parody by adorning a cheap reproduction with a moustache and a goatee, as well as adding the rude inscription LHOOQ, when read out loud in French sounds like "Elle a chaud au cul" (translating to "she has a hot arse" as a manner of implying the woman in the painting is in a state of sexual excitement and availability). This was intended as a Freudian joke, referring to Leonardo's alleged homosexuality. According to Rhonda R. Shearer, the apparent reproduction is in fact a copy partly modelled on Duchamp's own face. http://www.artscienceresearchlab.org/articles/panorama.htm Salvador Dalí, famous for his pioneering surrealist work, painted Self portrait as Mona Lisa in 1954.

Related Topics:
Dadaists - Surrealists - Caricature - 1919 - Marcel Duchamp - Parody - French - Freudian - Homosexuality - Salvador Dalí - Self portrait as Mona Lisa - 1954

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Many works played, often in a humorous way, on the mysteries and controversies of Mona Lisa's history. Fantastic theories and conspiracies are often entertained by authors of fiction. The 1979 serial City of Death in the science fiction television series Doctor Who revolves around da Vinci making copies of the Mona Lisa. The story suggests that the painting now in the Louvre is painted on top of the message "This is a fake" written in modern felt tip pen.

Related Topics:
1979 - City of Death - Doctor Who

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In the 1990 ' episode "The Most Toys", an alien who is an obsessive collector owns the Mona Lisa. He also acquires the android Data, who tries to imitate the painting's smile.

Related Topics:
1990 - The Most Toys - Data

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An episode of the Disney cartoon Doug revolves around the making of a musical play about the painting coming to life and Leonardo having to find her.

Related Topics:
Disney - Doug

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In 1952, science fiction/fantasy author Ray Bradbury published a short story titled "The Smile", which dealt with the reaction of people in a dystopic future to the Mona Lisa. The story places the painting on canvas, while the real painting is on poplar wood.

Related Topics:
1952 - Ray Bradbury

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Good Omens, a 1990 novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman features a character called Anthony Crowley who owns the original cartoon of the Mona Lisa and displays it as the only piece of art in his London flat. Crowley is a demon who has been on Earth since the Fall of Man. He met da Vinci in 16th Century Italy and obtained the cartoon whilst drinking with the polymath. Leonardo and Crowley agree that the cartoon is superior to the finished version ("I got the bloody smile all right in the roughs.")

Related Topics:
Good Omens - 1990 - Terry Pratchett - Neil Gaiman - Anthony Crowley - London

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Eduard Gufeld, the late Ukrainian-American chess grandmaster, published a book in 1994 entitled My Life in Chess: The Search for La Gioconda. In 2001, a revised edition entitled Chess: The Search for the Mona Lisa was released. In the book, Gufeld discussed his quest to play the perfect chess masterpiece. He felt that he had realized this dream in his famous 1973 game against Bagirov.

Related Topics:
Eduard Gufeld - Ukrainian - American - Chess - Grandmaster - 1994 - 2001 - 1973 - Game against Bagirov

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The February 8, 1999 edition of The New Yorker ran for its cover Dean Rohrer's Monica Lisa, an amalgamation of the Mona Lisa and Monica Lewinsky.

Related Topics:
February 8 - 1999 - The New Yorker - Dean Rohrer - Monica Lewinsky

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In Kurt Wimmer?s 2002 cult film Equilibrium, the Mona Lisa is destroyed at the hands of tetragrammaton cleric John Preston.

Related Topics:
Kurt Wimmer - 2002 - Cult film - Equilibrium - Tetragrammaton - Cleric

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The painting features significantly in The Da Vinci Code, a popular novel written by Dan Brown in 2003. Brown's hero, Harvard professor Robert Langdon, claims that the painting expresses Leonardo's belief in the "sacred feminine" and that the title is a coded reference to the Egyptian gods Amon and Isis, "Mona" being an anagram of the former and "Lisa" being a contraction of l'Isa, meaning Isis. This hidden reference is supposed to signify Leonardo's secret opposition to orthodox Christianity and belief in the ideal union of masculine and feminine principles, as does the sitter's androgynous features. In this context he also refers to the self-portrait theory.

Related Topics:
The Da Vinci Code - Novel - Dan Brown - 2003 - Robert Langdon - Sacred feminine - Amon - Isis

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In the 2003 comedy ', stuntman DJ Drake (Brendan Fraser) looks through an embedded "X-ray" lens in a playing card — a queen of diamonds with Mona Lisa as Queen — to examine the original Mona Lisa at the Louvre, discovering a hidden map under the painting.

Related Topics:
2003 - Brendan Fraser

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