«The Mona Lisa (1)»

On 21 August 1911 the Mona Lisa disappeared from the Louvre. The thief was Vincenzo Peruggia, a man who had worked at the Louvre, and the painting stayed missing until it was recovered in Florence in 1913. That story is the starting point of this mona lisa pop art painting.

She sits in her usual pose, but the surface has been hacked. A black square and a dash sit on her forehead, and a horizontal strip across her mouth has slid out of line, with a black bar running through it. A dollar bill takes the place of her neck and chest: the Federal Reserve seal, the line about legal tender for all debts public and private, a treasurer's signature and a big 100 at the collar. Her hands are tattooed with a dollar sign, a crescent moon, a triangle, small crosses and a heart. Orange and yellow paint drips down the sleeves, and loose pixel squares in blue, yellow, red and pink drift around her against a black, textured background.

Artists have been taking this face for a long time. In 1919 Marcel Duchamp drew a moustache and goatee on a postcard of it and titled it L.H.O.O.Q. In 1963 Andy Warhol repeated the image thirty times in Thirty Are Better Than One. Both treated the most famous painting in the world as public property. I did the same, with a glitch, a banknote and a few tattoos.

The original is from 2021. I like that her smile survives all of it, and that a modern Mona Lisa can wear a hundred dollars and still look unimpressed. I see this mona lisa pop art painting as contemporary pop art first and a Leonardo joke second. It is statement wall art: give it a big dark wall and not much else.

Most of my original paintings are already in private collections, but I paint originals to order in any size. To ask about this one, message me on Instagram or by email. There is also a hand-finished lithograph of it, ordered through Instagram or email.