''L.H.O.O.Q.'' () is a work of art by Marcel Duchamp. First conceived in 1919, the work is one of what Duchamp referred to as readymades, or more specifically a rectified ready-made.Marcel Duchamp, ''L.H.O.O.Q. or La Joconde'', 1964 (replica of 1919 original)
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena. The readymade involves taking mundane, often utilitarian objects not generally considered to be art and transforming them, by adding to them, changing them, or (as in the case of his work ''Fountain'') simply renaming and reorienting them and placing them in an appropriate setting. In ''L.H.O.O.Q.'' the

found object A found object (a calque from the French ''objet trouvé''), or found art, is art created from undisguised, but often modified, items or products that are not normally considered materials from which art is made, often because they already hav ...

(''objet trouvé'') is a cheap postcard reproduction of

Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 - 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested o ...

's early 16th-century painting ''

Mona Lisa The ''Mona Lisa'' is a half-length portrait painting by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, ...

'' onto which Duchamp drew a moustache and beard in pencil and appended the title.

Overview

The subject of the ''Mona Lisa'' treated satirically had already been explored in 1887 by (aka Sapeck) when he created ''Mona Lisa smoking a pipe'', published in ''Le Rire''. It is not clear whether Duchamp was familiar with Bataille's interpretation. The name of the piece, ''L.H.O.O.Q.'', is a gramogram; the letters pronounced in French sound like "''Elle a chaud au cul''", "She is hot in the arse",Unmaking the Museum: Marcel Duchamp's Readymades in Context
or "She has a hot ass"; "''avoir chaud au cul''" is a vulgar expression implying that a woman has sexual restlessness. In a late interview (Schwarz 203), Duchamp gives a loose translation of ''L.H.O.O.Q.'' as "there is fire down below".

Francis Picabia Francis Picabia (: born Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia; 22January 1879 – 30November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, writer, filmmaker, magazine publisher, poet, and typography, typographist closely associated with Dada. When consid ...

, in attempting to publish ''L.H.O.O.Q.'' in his magazine '' 391'', could not wait for the work to be sent from New York City, so, with Duchamp's permission, he drew the moustache on Mona Lisa himself (forgetting the goatee). Picabia wrote underneath "Tableau Dada par Marcel Duchamp". Duchamp noticed the missing goatee. Two decades later, Duchamp corrected the omission on Picabia's replica, found by

Jean Arp Hans Peter Wilhelm Arp (; ; 16 September 1886 – 7 June 1966), better known as Jean Arp in English, was a German-French sculptor, painter and poet. He was known as a Dadaist and an abstract artist. Early life Arp was born Hans Peter Wilhelm Ar ...

at a bookstore. Duchamp drew the goatee in black ink with a fountain pen, and wrote "Moustache par Picabia / barbiche par Marcel Duchamp / avril 1942". As with many of his readymades, Duchamp made multiple versions of ''L.H.O.O.Q.'' of differing sizes and in different media, one of which, an unmodified black-and-white reproduction of the ''

'' mounted on card, is called ''L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved''. The masculinized female introduces the theme of gender reversal, which appealed to Duchamp, who adopted his own female pseudonym, Rrose Sélavy, pronounced "Eros, c'est la vie" (" Eros, that's life"). Primary responses to ''L.H.O.O.Q.'' interpreted it as an attack on the iconic ''Mona Lisa'' and traditional art, a stroke of épater le bourgeois promoting Dadaist ideals. According to one commentator:

The creation of ''L.H.O.O.Q.'' profoundly transformed the perception of'' La Joconde'' (what the French call the painting, in contrast with the Americans and Germans, who call it the ''Mona Lisa''). In 1919 the cult of ''Jocondisme'' was practically a secular religion of the French bourgeoisie and an important part of their self image as patrons of the arts. They regarded the painting with reverence, and Duchamp's salacious comment and defacement was a major stroke of ''epater le bourgeois'' ("freaking out" or substantially offending the bourgeois).

According to Rhonda Roland Shearer, the apparent reproduction is in fact a copy partly modeled on Duchamp's own face.

Parodies of Duchamp's parodic ''Mona Lisa''

Pre-Internet era

Salvador Dalí Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (11 May 190423 January 1989), known as Salvador Dalí ( ; ; ), was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, ...

created his ''Self Portrait as Mona Lisa'' in 1954, referencing ''L.H.O.O.Q.'' in collaboration with Philippe Halsman. This work incorporated photographs of a wild-eyed Dalí showing his handlebar moustache and a handful of coins. *

Iceland Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...

ic painter Erró then incorporated Dalí's version of ''L.H.O.O.Q.'' into a 1958 composition that also included a film-still from Buñuel's '' Un Chien Andalou''. * Fernand Léger and

René Magritte René François Ghislain Magritte (; 21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgium, Belgian surrealist artist known for his depictions of familiar objects in unfamiliar, unexpected contexts, which often provoked questions about the nature ...

have also adapted ''L.H.O.O.Q.'', using their own iconography.

Internet and computerized parodies

The use of computers permitted new forms of parodies of ''L.H.O.O.Q.'', including interactive ones. One form of computerized parody using the Internet juxtaposes layers over the original, on a webpage. In one example, the original layer is ''Mona Lisa''. The second layer is mostly transparent but opaque in some places (for example, where Duchamp located the moustache), obscuring the original layer. This technology is described at the George Washington University Law School website. An example of this technology is a copy of ''Mona Lisa'' with a series of different superpositions—first Duchamp's moustache, then an eyepatch, then a hat, a hamburger, and so on. The point of this technology (which is explained on the website for a copyright law class) is that it permits a parody that need not involve making an infringing copy of the original work if it simply uses an inline link to the original, which is presumably on an authorized webpage. According to the website at which the material is located:

The layers paradigm is significant in a computer-related or Internet context because it readily describes a system in which the person ultimately responsible for creating the composite (here, corresponding to modern-dayDuchamp) does not make a physical copy of the original work in the sense of storing it in permanent form (fixed as a copy) distributed to the end user. Rather, the person distributes only the material of the subsequent layers, o thatthe aggrieved copyright owner (here, corresponding to Leonardo da Vinci) distributes the material of the underlying riginal ''Mona Lisa''layer, and the end user's system receives both. The end user's system then causes a temporary combination, in its computer RAM and the user's brain. The combination is a composite of the layers. Framing and superimposition of popup windows exemplify this paradigm.

Other computer-implemented distortions of ''L.H.O.O.Q.'' or ''Mona Lisa'' reproduce elements of the original, thereby creating an infringing reproduction if the underlying work is protected by copyright. Leonardo's rights in ''Mona Lisa'' would, of course, have long expired had such rights existed in his age.

References

External links

''L.H.O.O.Q.'' – Internet-Related Derivative Works
{{Authority control Works by Marcel Duchamp 1919 works Mona Lisa Parodies of paintings Found object Dada Bridges in art Rivers in art