This large upside-down image of the Mona Lisa holds some surprises. Modern viewers will have no trouble recognizing the iconic image, though pixelated as it is. We have been accustomed to seeing this famous painting altered, satirized and otherwise copied in so many ways that even the cliché has become banal.
However, this interpretation deserves another look. In fact, it requires one. Upon close inspection, the work of art is comprised of thousands of spools of colored thread carefully arranged to form the image. But to fully appreciate this piece, you need to view it through the glass globe stationed 10 feet in front of the work. Viewed through the sphere, the upside-down the work is both righted and sharpened into focus.
As if that weren’t clever enough, the artist portrays the image with a tourist’s hand holding a camera obscuring Mona Lisa’s face to show how most viewers would actually experience the world’s most famous work of art in person.
WAKE UP CALL: This piece holds lessons for us in giving new perspective and context in which to re-examine the familiar, subverting cultural clichés, and in the repurposing of materials in imaginative ways.
SOURCE: This piece is part of the exhibit titled Second Lives, on display at the Museum of Art and Design in Manhattan, running through April 19, 2009. The exhibit showcases artists who have breathed new life into mundane items such as buttons, beer bottle caps, plastic spoons, and discarded magazines – turning these utilitarian objects into works of great beauty or contemplation.
