Mona Lisa World Tour
You’ve gotta admit, art these days is such a hoot. And even events where art congregates are starting to resemble a circus – or an amusement park. All the fun of the fair, something to delight and entertain everyone from adults right down to tiny tots. Catering to what everyone wants to see, to everyone’s desires, by ensuring everyone has a good time. Which is all perfectly splendid, I suppose. Maybe that’s how art is meant to be. Even I hope that people are going to actually enjoy my work.
But if – as usual – I may deliberately throw a spanner in the works here, let’s just say that sometimes, a person needs more. There are things out there apart from what everyone wants to see, what everyone desires: important things, and to my mind it’s “art” that will show us what they are. As a great admirer of art, (reality aside) I’d prefer it to be free from considerations of money and power, and from the pressure to be all things to all people.
Which is precisely why people choose art to convey new messages. Surely this is what makes art an asset to society? Who isn’t heartily sick of messages administered with a large dollop of syrupy sweetness, wrapped up in pretty packaging? One starts to long for a more bitter pill, a message better for the health. Hanging beautiful paintings in beautiful museums and looking at them: what’s that really about? Nice pictures in a nice building to make us feel nice – surely one experience of this message will suffice?
So the proposal this time is to take none other than the Mona Lisa and display it in places around the world that are definitely not nice: on stinking mountains of garbage, in cities wracked by civil war, near endangered animals.
Imagine that beautiful, timeless smile suddenly materializing in the shabbiest, nastiest places; encountering the enigmatic lady while holding our noses, or dodging gunfire. What would the people living in those places see in the Mona Lisa? Would the audience see something there quite apart from the Mona Lisa? And what would the Mona Lisa herself perceive in the gaze of people different from the usual crowd?
I suspect the lady might find this a worthwhile tour. No doubt she’s bored after centuries swanning about in palatial luxury. And perhaps such a radical change of venue would inspire us to revisit questions on the nature of art, beauty, and the world.
Sure there would be a few sticky issues to overcome, like what if something happened to the Mona Lisa, and how to recover the massive costs involved in staging the tour, but hey, it would be all in the name of art, and that can’t be a bad thing, can it?
Originally printed in ART iT No.24 Summer 2009