Dada Movement: The Mona Lisa with a Mustache

Title: L.H.O.O.Q.

Created By: Marcel Duchamp

Written By: Madison Herley

The portrait painting "L.H.O.O.Q." known as the Mona Lisa, altered look was a work of art created by Marcel Duchamp in the year of 1919 during Dada Movement. The Dada movement was a artistic and literary movement that begun in Zurich, Switzerland. It first emerged when a couple of Zurich artists and poets declared an all out artistic assault on a modern society degraded by nationalist politics, repressive social values, conformity, and an overemphasis on reason and logic. Marcel Duchamp was one of the artist who led the Dadaism era to spread throughout much of Western Europe and to New York. Dadaism artist transformed art and society through their work based around the ideas of irrational, chance, intuition, absurdity, and humor. It also had an impact onto Surrealism art work which followed some of Dada's tradition. Therefore, the Dada movement was short but made an impact on society. 

Marcel Duchamp was a French-American painter and sculptor whose art work could be associated with Cubism, Post-Impressionism and Dada. Duchamp was also referred as a readymade which is someone who takes art already made and transforms them by adding to them or changing them completely. 

I choose the potrait painting "L.H.O.O.Q." because I liked how the artist, Marcel Duchamp took a famous potrait in society and transformed it to have a humorest and absurd look. Duchamp took a postcard reproduction of the famous Mona Lisa created by Leonardo Da Vinci and drew a mustache and beard in pencil. In addition, Duchamp liked to create his art in order to serve the mind of people. Therefore, I liked this photo because Duchamp made it more relaxed for society.