An audience holding up a mobile phone in front of the Louvre Museum in France, holding up a mobile phone
Inside the Louvre in Paris, a young couple walked through the crowd to the Mona Lisa. A few seconds later, the wife turned around, smiled, held up her phone, and pressed the selfie. She then handed her phone to her husband to take some pretended photos; then the two took selfies arm in arm and turned to leave.
"The painting is too small, it's too crowded to see the details up close." The wife said she was a 28-year-old financial analyst from Shanghai who was on a honeymoon in Paris with her expatriate husband. This was the first time she had seen leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, but she wasn't impressed. "In the album or on the Internet, I can see the Mona Lisa more clearly." She chose to visit the Louvre because the Mona Lisa is famous for its mysterious smile, and dan Brown's The Code of Leonardo da Vinci gave her more imagination about the work and the Louvre Museum.
The couple's interaction with a 500-year-old painting exemplifies the artistic experience of the digital media era. During the opening hours of the Louvre, the Mona Lisa was surrounded by about 150 visitors at about all times, most of whom were filming the Mona Lisa or Mona Lisa with themselves. In the age of digital media, people in front of the Mona Lisa are not just looking at the actual artwork, but also an experience and experience, and when they post photos of the Mona Lisa on social media, it becomes evidence of "I've been there."
In 2017, the Louvre attracted 8.1 million visitors and has long maintained its status as one of the most visited museums in the world. The Mona Lisa is an infinitely reproduced female portrait, and she is believed to be the wife of the Florentine cloth merchant Lisa Giorcondo. At the beginning of the 16th century, Leonardo da Vinci completed it with the technique of oil painting. The mona Lisa was first collected in the French royal palace of Fontainebleau, which was moved to the Louvre after its completion. Earlier this work was not well known and was not used as a town hall. Until August 20, 1911, Perugia, who had worked as a painter in the Louvre, hid in the storage room when the museum was closed, took advantage of the closure of the following Monday to take off the paintings, and stole them in his coat. The museum found that the Mona Lisa had been stolen on the 22nd, so it conducted a week-long closed investigation and offered a high bounty. Due to the continued lack of whereabouts of the paintings, the Mona Lisa gradually gained popularity under the coverage of various newspapers. Two years later, Perugia tried to sell the Mona Lisa to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and was arrested by the police. After returning to the Louvre, the Mona Lisa attracted 100,000 people to watch it in two days, perhaps because the theft made it a "world famous painting". Today, the 77-centimeter-long and 53-centimeter-wide "small painting" is displayed in the Louvre under the protection of bulletproof glass and layers of temperature control.
In October 2014, American music stars Jay-Z and Beyoncé took a group photo of the Mona Lisa at the Louvre.
In October 2014, American music stars Jay-Z, Beyoncé, and their daughter Brie Ivy visited the Louvre together, and posted photos of the visit on social media Instagram that caused huge attention and repercussions, which was described by buzzFeed, an American online news media company, as "No image is more important than Beyoncé and Jay-Z standing in front of the Mona Lisa!" And added, "This is probably the best picture of our time." ”
Perhaps it may seem simple enough for a professional artist, critic or curator to watch the Mona Lisa just as a selfie while traveling, but for Louvre visitors such as Jay-Z and Beyoncé, posting photos on social media containing the original Mona Lisa shows that they have indeed seen the original.
For critics or curators, it's simple enough to think of the Mona Lisa Experience as just a selfie tour. Yet Jay-Z and Beyoncé, like almost everyone who visited the Louvre, did see the painting.
In fact, the current way of viewing the Mona Lisa represents the saturation of most art forms in the era of digital media and visual culture.
"She is older than the rock in which she sits; like a vampire, she has died many times and knows the secrets of death." In 1873, the most famous passage in the Famous Renaissance by the British critic Walter Pat was about the Mona Lisa. Long before mass tourism, smartphones, apps, etc., he evoked the eternity of the Mona Lisa.
But the era of mechanical reproduction has changed art, and the advent of the digital age has made this change even more pronounced. Another British critic, John Berg, wrote in his 1972 book The Way of Seeing that in the age of digital reproduction, "the meaning of a painting is no longer an appendage of the picture, but becomes communicable." ”
John Berger, who died last year, may also have noticed that Beyoncé's Instagram photo with the Louvre's Mona Lisa in 2014 garnered nearly 840,000 likes.
Beyoncé posted photos of her visit on social media Instagram and received nearly 840,000 likes
Similarly, wealthy art collectors don't need to spend hours viewing the original before spending millions of dollars on Christopher Wool and Gerha Richter, because in the age of digital reproduction, collectors have seen digital versions of the work many times and already know exactly what it looks like.
Although the quality of contemporary art at designer institutions is enough to reassure collectors, they will still enhance the value of their works through printing. Classics, on the other hand, weaken their sanctity by reproduction, as exemplified by the Mona Lisa.
"It's incredible, it's small and black." A 33-year-old engineer who saw the mona Lisa for the second time said.
In contrast, watching "The Savior" at Christie's Preview has a quasi-religious experience, and this work, which is considered to be Leonardo da Vinci, was helped by an advertising agency video called "The Last Da Vinci", which touched tens of millions of people and also affected the record of "The Savior" finally making $455 million.
John Berg argues in The Way of Seeing that the value of original works of art in the "mechanically reproducible era" is market price, and that the current means of reproduction have destroyed the authority of art.
Back at the Louvre, millions of visitors every year ignore the "Madonna of the Rocks" and go straight to the Mona Lisa, the "Madonna of the Rocks" in the Louvre collection is considered to have been completed between 1483 and 1486, and it is a complete record of Leonardo da Vinci's work, imagining it appearing on the market and breaking the record of hundreds of millions of dollars. Therefore, professionals may not necessarily squeeze the bustle of "Mona Lisa", but will stay for a long time in front of "Our Lady of the Rocks" that no one pays attention to.
Leonardo da Vinci, Our Lady of the Rocks, the Louvre Collection
As the world's most famous work of art, the Mona Lisa is burdened by her fame, and her meaning is not just Leonardo da Vinci's original work, but the "show off" of the hustle and bustle of social media.
Perhaps this is the contemporary "way of seeing".