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Bearded Lady.Qxd The Bearded Lady and the Shaven Man Mona Lisa, meet Mona/Leo Antoinette LaFarge THE AUTHOR CONSIDERS THE MONA LISA AS A MAJOR SITE of artistic investigations of gender and identity. Specifically, she analyzes the symbiotic relationship between two landmark reinventions of the Mona Lisa: first, Marcel Duchamp’s notorious L.H.O.O.Q. (Mona-Lisa-with-a-mustache), and second, Lillian Schwartz’s pioneering use of computers to demonstrate that the main model for the Mona Lisa was Leonardo himself. Both L.H.O.O.Q. and Schwartz’s Mona/Leo project are a striking instance of the Bearded Lady archetype, which finds its match in Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q. rasée (L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved), a variant of the Shaven Man. There is no discontinuity tache can be read as an abbreviated, transposed beard and thus between the Bachelor Machine and the Bride. as a metaphor for her actual “beard,” or pubic hair. By transfer- —Marcel Duchamp [1] ring Mona Lisa’s beard from her pubic region to her face, Duchamp conceptually strips her naked: her clothes no longer 1919, Marcel Duchamp drew a mustache conceal what they’re supposed to conceal. She is another and goatee on a reproduction of the Mona embodiment of the central figure in Duchamp’s most famous Lisa and called the resulting work L.H.O.O.Q. work, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (also (Fig. 1) [2]. Not quite three-quarters of a known as the Large Glass). Incentury after Duchamp’s graffito came what I think of as the Duchamp thus creates a kind of visual analog in which the sequel: Lillian Schwartz’s discovery that the chief model for the face stands in for the sexual organs instead of merely alluding to Mona Lisa was Leonardo da Vinci himself. Both acts are back- them, as the lips normally allude to labia [4]. The mustache- ward-looking in that their most immediate effect was to redefine over-lips structure directly echoes the pubic-hair-over-labia the Mona Lisa itself. At the same time, both are prophetic in the structure. In a sense, the entire woman has been vertically con- way they project major shifts in the grounds of art as a system of densed into an amorphous package of flesh—a kind of head-to- knowledge. genitals morph, to use an analogy from the digital world. On the simplest level, Duchamp’s banal gesture nominated Furthermore, this flesh package is recondensed through the title the Mona Lisa as a man. More exactly, Duchamp created a rudi- into one of the standard tags used to present women as nonindi- mentary sort of mask that reads instantly as male but does not viduals: hot ass [5]. even pretend to conceal the woman behind the mask. In a sense, I am not trying to present a full reading of L.H.O.O.Q. here; L.H.O.O.Q. is an artificial hermaphrodite, an image of a woman rather, for reasons which will become clear later, I am conscious- with that most superficial and nonfunctional characteristic of ly restricting my reading to a limited field that centers on issues maleness, a mustache. (The beard is superfluous to the effect of of gender, sexuality, and identity. In short, my concern is with L.H.O.O.Q., and in one version of the piece does not appear at L.H.O.O.Q. as an instance of the Bearded Lady archetype. That all [3].) At the same time, L.H.O.O.Q. is not a hermaphrodite at all Antoinette LaFarge, 235 E. 13th St. #2N, New York, NY 10003, U.S.A. but an intensified or exposed woman. The Mona Lisa’s mus- Email: [email protected]. © 1996 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol.29, No. 5, pp. 379-383, 1996 379 further interventions. As such, it is a lier, hidden portrait does match a separate paradigm of late modernist art; one could cartoon drawing Leonardo executed of even make a case that it is postmodern, a Isabella, Duchess of Aragon, before he point I will return to later. To construe it began work on the Mona Lisa. However, as an attempt at self-expression—a major neither the hidden X-ray face nor the car- objective of early twentieth century toon drawing of Isabella matches up in artists—is to miss the point. Still less is toto to the visible Mona Lisa—or to the L.H.O.O.Q. a demonstration of mastery Leonardo self-portrait [9]. in Arthur Danto’s sense, in which the Where Duchamp put the Mona Lisa’s work of art serves merely as a pretext for sexuality under tension, mocking the showing off one’s mastercraftsmanship female icon without wholly undoing the [7]. In fact, insofar as the mustache end- gender identity between image and (pre- ed up by serving as Duchamp’s signature sumed) model, Schwartz appears to for L.H.O.O.Q.—that is, the mark that explode it. Image and model simultane- made it unmistakably a work by ously merge (two aspects of a single Duchamp—it points the way to the sig- human being) and separate (male model, nature art of the 1950s and ’60s. By “sig- female image). This doubleness is epito- nature art” I mean artworks that serve mized in Schwartz’s Mona/Leo (also merely as a pretext for showing off the known, in an early working title, as It Is artist’s style instead of his or her mastery, I; Fig. 2), a 1987 image that shows the so that the style serves to make the actual right half of Mona Lisa’s face butted up signature redundant. to the left half of Leonardo’s self-portrait Fig. 1. Detail of L.H.O.O.Q., a 1919 work By declaring open season on the [10]. Although Mona/Leo appears to be by Marcel Duchamp that is an altered Mona Lisa, Duchamp laid the ground- an artwork (at least, Schwartz treats it as collotype of the Mona Lisa. (Courtesy of the work for Lillian Schwartz. However, such), I feel it is a kind of metonymy for Philadelphia Museum of Fine Art, Louise and where Duchamp’s gesture was deliberate, the primary artwork, which is to say, Walter Arensberg Collection; Schwartz’s discovery was essentially acci- Schwartz’s demonstration of the identity © Succession Marcel Duchamp) dental, a byproduct of her project to of Mona Lisa and Leonardo. For the sake compare and combine images of artists of simplicity in the following discussion, I any discussion of L.H.O.O.Q. can take with digitized versions of their work, will refer to this entire project, including off in many other directions is a tribute especially self-portraits [8]. When she both the discovery and the images to the richness of Duchamp’s gesture, was asked to test her colleague Gerard Schwartz generated to demonstrate her minimal as to form but maximal as to Holzmann’s computer program to do content [6]. Not the least of Duchamp’s this, she began with an obvious pair, the achievements with L.H.O.O.Q. was to most famous artist and painting in bring the Mona Lisa back from the dead. Western art. When the Mona Lisa and By attacking its iconic status, he removed Leonardo’s only known self-portrait were it from historical time and brought it aligned and juxtaposed on-screen at the into the present, the only place where art same scale, Schwartz was struck by the can be experienced. L.H.O.O.Q. was extraordinary congruences in facial fea- actually an act of rescue (even if only tures between the two portraits. Such temporarily) rather than an act of dese- highly individual measurements as the cration. However, it did not rescue the distance between the inner corners of the Mona Lisa as a traditional painting, an eyes matched so closely that Schwartz object of primarily visual pleasure. The concluded the similarity could not be a crude mustache functions as a scratch on matter of chance; ergo, Leonardo must the Renaissance picture window; it insis- have been the main model for the Mona tently draws our attention to itself and Lisa. thus irreparably damages the illusion of I use the qualifier “main” because which it fails to be a part. Schwartz concludes that Leonardo began What L.H.O.O.Q. did do, on the oth- the portrait using a female model before Fig. 2. Mona/Leo, a 1987 computer- er hand, was to nominate the petrified turning the painting into a disguised self- generated image by Lillian F. Schwartz in painting as a center of activity: a subject portrait. X-rays of the Mona Lisa reveal a which the left side of a 1512 Leonardo da of debate, parody, paradox, criticism, second face hidden under the surface that Vinci self-portrait is matched to the right thought, and reinvention. L.H.O.O.Q. does not match the one familiar to our side of Mona Lisa’s face. (Courtesy Lillian F. simultaneously documents Duchamp’s eyes. Using her comparative techniques, Schwartz; © 1987 Computer Creation Corp.; thought processes and implicitly invites Lillian Schwartz has shown that this ear- all rights reserved) 380 Antoinette LaFarge, The Bearded Lady and Shaven Man mirror image of L.H.O.O.Q. in that it a woman into a false man (L.H.O.O.Q.) reverses the polarity of Duchamp’s act: it and then into a real man (Mona/Leo) and converts the male-masked female then into a false woman (Mona Lisa (L.H.O.O.Q.) into a female-masked male again).
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