Experimentation with Media

A playful man? Duchamp challenged conventional thought about artistic processes and art marketing? not so much by writing? but through subversive actions such as dubbing a urinal "art" and naming it Fountain. He produced relatively few artworks? while moving quickly through the avant-garde circles of his time. The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. In 1919? Duchamp made a parody of the Mona Lisa by adorning a cheap reproduction of the painting with a mustache and goatee. To this he added the inscription L.H.O.O.Q.? a phonetic game which? when read out loud in French quickly sounds like "Elle a chaud au cul" (Guiles? 33). This can be translated as "She has a hot ass"? implying that the woman in the painting is in a state of sexual excitement and availability. It may also have been intended as a Freudian joke? referring to Leonardo da Vinci's alleged homosexuality. Duchamp gave a "loose" translation of L.H.O.O.Q. as "there is fire down below" in a late interview with Arturo Schwarz. According to Rhonda Roland Shearer? the apparent Mona Lisa reproduction is in fact a copy modeled partly on Duchamp's own face. Research published by Shearer also speculates that Duchamp himself may have created some of the objects which he claimed to have been "found" (Bockris? 4-5).

The painting is a half-length portrait and depicts a woman whose facial expression is often described as enigmatic. The ambiguity of the sitter's expression? the monumentality of the half-figure composition? and the subtle modeling of forms and atmospheric illusionism were novel qualities that have contributed to the painting's continuing fascination. It is probably the most famous painting that has ever been stolen from the Louvre and recovered. Few other works of art have been subject to as much scrutiny? study? mythologizing? and parody. A charcoal and graphite study of the Mona Lisa attributed to Leonardo is in the Hyde Collection? in Glens Falls? NY (Bockris? 4-5).

Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973) was an artistic virtuoso who co-founded Cubism? and produced an astounding 20?000 paintings? prints? drawings and sculptures during his brilliant 70-year career. Picasso's unparalleled body of work was so vast? and its phases so unique? that art historians have divided it into specific periods. A child prodigy? Picasso took advanced classes at the Royal Academy of Art in Barcelona when he was only 15. His revolutionary Cubist works? with their distorted shapes and fragmented forms? established art as a genre that does not need to literally represent reality. Zealously embracing every medium from primitive art to sketches to Surrealism? Picasso had an unrivaled influence upon 20th century art (Guiles? 33).

Created in c. 1965? this original color lithograph is hand signed by Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973) in pencil in the lower right margin and numbered 213/250 in pencil in the lower left margin. Published by ...