Example of Detournement in the Fine Art World

Following our discussion of detournement last class, I stumbled upon a fine art example that was actually on display at the Denver Art Museum as a part of the temporary modern art exhibition RADAR two years ago.

When considering detournement, which could be defined as reapproprating well-known media to create work with a different message, Japanese artist Yasumasa Morimura's subversion of the iconic Mona Lisa immediately came to mind.

Morimura appropriates da Vinci's famous Mona Lisa in his triology, Monna Lisa in Its Origin (1998), Monna Lisa in Pregnancy (1998), and Monna Lisa in the Third Place (1998). In the gallery world of "high art," Morimura takes an almost religious image and subverts its meaning by inserting his own image into da Vinci's painting, as in the arms of Monna Lisa in Pregnancy.


Monna Lisa in Its Origin (1998)


Monna Lisa in Pregnancy (1998)


Monna Lisa in the Third Place (1998)

Defying the Mona Lisa's demure, feminine smile, Morimura turns her into a gender-bending interpretation of reproduction. Perhaps Morimura is commenting on the fact that the original Mona Lisa might have been a gender-transformed portrait of the artist, Leonardo da Vinci. His work could also be commenting on the limits of the binary gender structure by presenting the image of a pregnant iconic female, transformed into a sort of half-male.

I also thought the subversion of environment was interesting, as in the second image, where Morimura depicts scenes from the Allied bombing of Nagasaki in the background. In the third, we see the background of another one of da Vinci's works, The Virgin of the Rocks. Does this deterioration of location, from idyllic curving paths and majestic hills to an obviously barren, human-destroyed wasteland to a sort of dark, underground cave counteract the creation of life apparent in the Mona Lisa figure herself?

Whatever his purpose, Morimura obviously partook in a form of culture jamming that plays both on the pretension of the art world and gender barriers. Although his work may not be as ubiquitious as a remixed movie trailer on YouTube, Morimura takes detournement into a plane of "higher culture,"introducing the subversion of popular (if old, and even iconic) media into modern discussion.

In this vein, another example to point out would be the different versions of the Mona Lisa found on a Spanish-language blog, Antidepresivo. Even more examples can be uploaded by users at Mega Mona Lisa. These, which seem to fall more under the category of culture jamming, comment on the ubiquity of the Mona Lisa image while simultaneously commenting on the ubiquity of such pop culture phenomenons as reality stars (Paris Hilton), music icons (Marilyn Manson), fads (Barbie), and film (Pulp Fiction), among others.


Two of Antidepresivo's versions of the Mona Lisa, as Paris Hilton and Marge Simpson