L.H.O.O.Q. _{(Marcel Duchamp, Dadaism)}

In 1919, Duchamp performed a seemingly adolescent prank using a postcard that represented the ideal of feminine beauty, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. He drew a mustache and goatee on her face and added the letters "L.H.O.O.Q." The caption combines Duchamp's gleeful sense of wit with his love of wordplay: eliding the letters in French sounds like, "Elle a chaud au cul" ("There is fire down below"). The image trespasses traditional boundaries of appropriation by presenting a reproduction, however tarted up, as an original work of art. The masculinized female introduces the theme of gender reversal, which was popular with Duchamp, who adopted his own female pseudonym, Rrose Selavy, pronouced "Eros, c'est la vie" ("Eros, that's life"). La Joconde instantly became his most famous readymade and a symbol for the international Dada movement, which rebelled against everything that art represented, particularly the appeal to tradition and beauty. The term "rectified and readymade" indicates that the artist has altered a found, mass-produced object.

Duchamp's Other Works