I’m going to talk about the Mona Lisa, the famous portrait Leonardo Da Vinci painted during the Renaissance (1503 and 1507). Indeed she is a major figure in the communication sector particularly because she’s one of the most used pictures for advertising. So we are going to talk about what makes her popular, by analyzing her history (who she is and how she has been stolen), by seeing in what way she has been made a myth (a symbol of France, but also a disappointment because of great expectations, and also a master piece for painters), and by studying her secrets (her smile, her eyebrows). And last but not least how is she related to advertising and more generally non-media communication.
HISTORY: WHAT MAKES HER SO FAMOUS
WHO IS SHE?
The identity of the Madonna Lisa is one of the biggest issues about the painting. After many researches, people, among who Giorgio Vasari an expert on Mona Lisa, found out that she was Lisa Gheridini, the wife of a Florentine merchant named Franceso del Giocondo (it explains her nickname La Gioconda). Mona is a contraction of mia donna which means “my lady”.
But there are others rumors about some Italian princess and even a transvestite self-portrait of Leonardo Da vinci (according to the study of some of his drawings)
THE THEFT
The famous portrait was stolen on the morning of August, 21th in 1911. The story of this theft is so epic that a book on it was published last April. After the theft, it took more than a day for the museum to realize that she had actually disappeared. A lot was done in order to find what was already the most famous painting in the world. They used dust for fingerprints, which as said in the article was a brand new technique at that time. And there were controls at all the French borders. Paradoxically, it brought a lot of people into the Louvre when it re-opened nine days later. The painting is so famous, that even when it was missing people were queuing to see the empty wall where she hung.
The newspapers made it a front page story. And a man, Honoré Pieret, introduced himself at the Paris-Journal as the thief of Mona Lisa among many other pieces of art. He was a relative of Guillaume Apollinaire who got involved in the affair and made his friend Picasso part of it. More than the Mona Lisa theft, they were guilty of buying stolen pieces of arts from Honoré Pieret.
But the real thief, named Vincenzo Perrugia, was caught in Florence two years later when he tried to sell it. He explained that he did it as a patriotic act in order to send the painting back to where it belonged: Italy. He used to be employed at the Louvre that’s why he managed to steal the piece of art quickly. But it remains a shameful episode for the French police who didn’t succeed in catching this man.
People started to think that this theft could be part of a bigger plot. For instance there was an American journalist who wrote an article in which he explained that a theft was a way for an aristocratic man to sell mock paintings of Mona Lisa throughout the world. But all those stories appeared to be unfounded.
Nevertheless, this whole theft-story helped the painting become a myth.
A SYMBOL AND A MYTH
The Mona Lisa is such a famous piece of Art that she has her own mailbox at the Louvre because of all the love letters she gets. Many people agree on saying that it is the most famous painting in the world. She transcends space and time limits. The 6 millions visitors that go to the Louvre every year can testify of this.
SYMBOL OF FRANCE
When tourists want to visit Paris (and more generally France), they go to see the Eiffel Tower, have lunch on a river boat for sightseeing but also go the Louvre in order to see, among many master pieces, the Mona Lisa. She actually embodies the French culture even if she was painted by an Italian artist. Unfortunately, visitors are not looking for any particular aesthetic aspirations when gathering in front of Mona Lisa; they are just here to see someone famous. Indeed, when the painting was stolen people were still queuing and gathering in front of the empty wall.
An incident last summer at the Louvre illustrates this idea. A Russian visitor actually threw a cup or a mug at her (nobody actually knows but I don’t think it is really relevant). It didn’t damage the painting, that remained safe behind the glass protection which is bulletproof. A security man quicly took control of the offender who explained that she was frustrated because she hadn’t been granted French nationality.
A DISAPPOINTMENT?
The article of Amelia gentleman in the guardian clearly explains why Mona Lisa can be a disappointment for tourists. Due to the myth and the secrets of the Mona Lisa, tourists have great expectations about the Mona Lisa but when the journalist says that “you get one small, dark picture surrounded by a jostling crowd of a hundred” she is not far from the truth. Everyone is taking photos, even if it is forbidden in the Louvre; no guards are brave enough to struggle with this.
No one can really enjoy the painting because of the crowd, the flash of the dozens of camera or the guardrail. The journalist explains that you have to wake-up early to be almost alone in front of the painting and it doesn’t last more than few minutes.
People come to see Mona Lisa because she is famous but not because of the aesthetic aspect of the painting. It can explain the disappointment of many visitors. Yes, indeed she’s ugly, to quote the teenager of the article, and above all, she is small and looks small behind the guardrail. She is only twenty inches high and fourteen inches wide.
As said by an experimental psychologist in one of the articles “The Mona Lisa is probably the single most disappointing piece of work in the entire world”. Indeed everyone has already seen the pictures dozens of times before seeing it for real in the museum and she often seems smaller and darker than what people have in mind.
The Mona Lisa is often quoted as one of the possible reasons of the Paris syndrome which is a psychological disorder due to disappointment of tourists, particularly the Japanese one, when they visit Paris. Indeed they often have in mind a beautiful city as described by the Nouvelle Vague or seen in movies like Amelie Poulain and the reality doesn’t fit.
A MASTER PIECE
The author of Stealing Mona Lisa: What Art Stops us From Seeing, Darian Leader, says that the Mona Lisa “in no longer a painting, but has become a symbol of a painting.”
Almost immediately, the distinctive pose of crossed hands and turning body became a classic of portraiture. Indeed, it was imitated so often by Leonardo's contemporaries that it came to be known as the Gioconda pose.
Lots of artists chose to make their own version of Mona Lisa. The most famous version is the one of Marcel Duchamp where Mona Lisa still has no eyebrows but a mustache. The title, L.H.O.O.Q which is quite explicit may refer to the charm power of the Mona Lisa who embodies womanhood. Dali also chose to give Mona Lisa a mustache and he gave her the same one as his.
Most of the recreated versions of the Mona Lisa are provocative ones in order to stand out from the classical iconic painting. Bansky made her showing her bottom or carrying a bazooka, David teixidor made her on the moon with a spaceman suit, Andy Warhol made her in multiple colors and Coloma Robert Anerson even made a sculpture of her in the bath with George Washington.
A LOT OF SECRETS
So she is the symbol of French culture but more generally the symbol of womanhood and her look and smile became a very big issue. All the secrecy linked to Mona Lisa has been embodied (?) by Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code..
Danold Sassoon wrote a book entitled Becoming Mona Lisa –The history of the world’s most famous painting. This title illustrates that the painting has become a myth and this because to all the secrets and issues around her.
SMILE
Freund himself was fascinated by the Mona Lisa’s smile and studied it in Leonardo da Vinci: A Study in Psychosexuality (1910). Not really surprising, he concluded that this smile was the one of the mother of Leonardo Da Vinci.
The smile of the Mona Lisa is enigmatic because nobody actually knows what it means. For some experts, her smile means that she is mocking us but different people see sadness in her smile. Others think that it is going to vanish. But it is also famous because it’s one of the first smiles in the history of Art.
In 2005, the British paper The New Scientist made a scientific study that revealed that her face, thanks to her smile is 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% timid and 2% angry. The mystery is quite solved!!!
EYEBROWS
The eyebrows of the Mona Lisa are a mystery that has also been recently solved. Indeed, observers can notice that the Mona Lisa does not actually have any eyebrows. But according to a French art expert she used to have some. He used a special camera of 240 megapixel to see what was under the multiple layers on the painting particularly the glaze on top which is supposed to create a three dimensional effect. New technologies such as this camera or infra-red can reveal details such as eyebrows or fingers. The x-ray photographs reveal the original colors of the painting. An exhibition explaining the ageing of the picture has opened last November in Manchester and is entitled “The Secrets of Mona Lisa”.
THE MOST SEEN PICTURE IN ADVERTISING
The Mona Lisa is one of the most used pictures in advertising. For Rochelle Gurstein who wrote an essay about Mona Lisa entitled the mystic smile, becoming Mona Lisa all the use and abuse of the painting in advertising is endangering the picture.
In his study The Story of Art, Gombrich worries that nowadays nobody is able to see the painting with “fresh eyes”.
The Mona Lisa is no longer a product of ‘high culture’ but an object of popular consumption to use the formula of Ms Gurstein. Postcards, mugs, posters, all the by-products with the Mona Lisa’s face are making a great business. The use of the Mona Lisa like any old object for advertising is bad for the integrity of the painting according to Sassoon, an expert on the Mona Lisa.
I put some examples in the file: the one of Pantene for a shampoo that prevents hair-ageing, one of Fuji’s for a camera. A make of glue focuses on her smile in order to say that she wanted to smile but couldn’t. Audi did an advert on which the Mona Lisa is standing up with the slogan “Audi Q7, a masterpiece with much more”. I think that the use of the Mona Lisa in advertising can be explained by her celebrity, her ideal of perfection but also because everybody knows her and it is important for an advert to create a feeling for the people who watching it.
IN NON-MEDIA COMMUNICATION
By non-media communication, I refer to all those strategies of communication that are not publicity in the media (TV, newspaper, radio…).
For instance last August, Mona Lisa was recreated thanks to coffee (more than 3 500 cups) and milk (more than 500 pints of milk). Cups of black coffee with more or less milk were spread out next to one another in order to recreated the Mona Lisa’s face It took 8 people during three hours to produce such a thing. It was a communicational project to promote The Rocks Aroma Festival in Sydney.
So as to finish on a funny episode : another company decided to paint Mona Lisa thanks to burger grease in order to show how fatty his competitor’s burgers were.
Some of the articles I used : in the Time, the guardian two times, the telegraph
What an interesting article!
RépondreSupprimerAnd thank you to make me practice my english!