POST BY KAREN ARCHEY
The crowd salivating over Mona Lisa at the Louvre, image via Wikipedia
Splish splash, was Mona Lisa havin’ a bath?! Despite some histrionic reports about the Mona Lisa “narrowly escaping” destruction by a renegade tea cup thrown by a disgruntled Russian woman denied French citizenship, the painting is indeed alright thanks to its BULLETPROOF GLASS CASING. We know it’s August and the art world is “on hiatus,” but it really must be a slow news day.
Arguably the most famous painting the world, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa won’t be destroyed anytime soon. The artwork touts a security detail with multiple guards, a wooden “corral” warding off close spectators, and the aforementioned bulletproof glass casing. Perhaps the most recent actual near non-disaster occurred in 1963 when the canvas was rained on by the Met’s sprinkler system. On loan from the Louvre, the masterpiece faced a close call but remained impervious.
Of course, it would undoubtedly suck if Da Vinci’s painting was actually damaged, but such dramatized reports seem like overkill. What could this hysterically overprotective attitude toward masterpieces tell us about our culture? Perhaps it highlights the fact that collectively we still have an insatiable desire to see the “original” object, perpetuating the significance of in-person aesthetic experiences over that of reproductions. Although print-based and online reproductions now dominate the way we experience art, seeing such lionized works in person still clearly remains on a pedestal.
