Mona Won’t You Be My Baby Tonight

In one of my art school classes this semester I did a series of collages based on famous paintings: the Mona Lisa, Whistler’s Mother, and American Gothic. The point was to draw a parallel between visual collage, a long-accepted art form, and audio sampling as “aural collage”, which has been villified as copyright infringement. My Mona piece appears at right (click for a larger version).

Brian, my teacher for that class, spent the spring break on a long-planned trip to Paris. Being a professional illustrator and art school teacher, he of course went to the Louvre. Can you see where this is headed?

Yes, he saw the one and only original Mona Lisa. And when he did, all he could think about was my project. Yes, I completely ruined it for him! I have that power. He couldn’t so much as glance at that masterpiece without asking himself “But what about the blue hands?!?”