Ceci n'est pas une femme

Rene Magritte reminded us almost a century ago that a painting is not a thing itself but a re-presentation of that thing. So the Mona Lisa smile that has garnered out attention for several centuries now is but a representation of that enigmatic woman we have never been able to meet in the real world. Sure we have written songs about her, people have made the pilgrimage to the Louvre just to stare at her surrounded by throngs of other tourists and separated from us by a huge glass encasement and the painting has been reproduced in books, posters, prints and on the Internet. But we might soon be able to move from the dessert of the virtual to the DNA of the real, as archeologists in Italy are seeking to exhume remains they believe are of the original model: Telegraph. The woman, Lisa Gherardini (a Florentine wife of a rich silk merchant) is believe to be housed in a tomb beneath a convent in Florence. But I wonder if the mystery that surrounds her really adds to the aura of the painting and its transcendental quality. Will we destroy her allure if we know who she is? Does her wealth and status undermine the rather radical nature of his framing and subject at the time? Will people be heading off to wherever the cranial remains are ultimately housed rather than the famous Paris museum? I'm not sure; and I'm not sure I care, but I suppose it does provide a respite from the disaster of the dessert of the real we live in.

On a slightly related note, a woman attacked a Gauguin painting in the National Gallery in Washington DC last week, screaming "This is Evil." The painting, Two Tahitian Women, portrays, you guessed it, two Tahitian women, both topless. While many feminists have faulted Gauguin's paintings for exoticizing these native women he often took as lovers, my guess is the woman thought the painting was evil because it dared to show the naked breasts of women -- a clearly unnatural sight that is destroying the very fabric of American society. Thank God we have defenders of decency and religious rectitude around to protect us from seeing those shameful symbols of sexuality and, um, our sustenance for the first several "sinful" months of our lives!