Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa
Project (1 of 3)
Leonardo DaVinci

Volunteer:
Date:
Grade Level:			2nd or 3rd Grade
Artists:			Leonardo da Vinci Andy Warhol Fernand Léger
Print Sculpture:			Mona Lisa (La Gioconda)
Art Vocabulary:			Renaissance Humanism, plus more specific art terms: sfumato chiaroscuro: contrasts of light and dark; linear vs aerial perspective: (as explained by Robert Wallace), "The principles of linear perspective were worked out by Filippo Brunelleschi. The effect of depth in a painting is achieved by the use of lines converging on a central vanishing point. The areas within the frames of paintings become illusionistic extensions of real space. Aerial perspective, on the other hand, is the creation of depth in a painting by the use of gradations in color and distinctness; The vanishing point is the point at which the ‘parallel lines’ receding into the picture space (for example, the lines of walls) appear to meet and therefore vanish on the horizon." Fresco

I.	The Artist: Leonardo da Vinci
	Leonardo is a superb example of the Renaissance universal or total man. Curious, open-minded, avid of knowledge, he accumulated facts and ideas in his encyclopedic memory and private notes. Emphasize that he was born at a very special time of intellectual ferment in the history of our civilization. The Middle Ages, that preceded the Renaissance, had not been the centuries of darkness and illiteracy that are all too often described. However, it was an age when men saw themselves primarily in their relationship to God, when they were more interested in theological discourse than in mathematics, the sciences and their practical applications, when life on earth was deemed a preparation for another world. Renaissance men rediscovered the writings and works of art of the Greeks and Romans, and took the human being, with all his beauty, potentials, but also his weaknesses and limits, as the center of their studies. They passionately sought after secular knowledge, studied nature around them, looked for plastic beauty and tried to reproduce it in their works of art. Florence was the birthplace of many new ideas. It was an exciting time to grow up there! Leonardo fulfilled the ideal of the total man, the opposite of today’s specialist. He was an accurate observer of nature and man, an artistic and mechanical genius, and applied himself to an incredibly wide scope of subjects. Give the children specific examples of his military and engineering inventions, and his discoveries in the fields of anatomy, botany, geology, and optics.
	Leonardo was a wanderer. Explain the system of patronage. The artist sought commissions from a nobleman, ruler, or guild, or became the retainer of some prominent personage who could give him all kinds of duties ranging from entertainer to diplomat, engineer to artist. Leonardo went from one patron to another, even worked for Cesare Borgia, one of the most depraved and ruthless men of his century. He had no loyalty to country, city, political affiliation or even person.
	Partly as a result of his wanderings, Leonardo was a solitary, lonely man. He formed few lasting attachments and moved about only with his precious cargo of 37 books (quite a library at that time), 3 paintings and volumes of personal notes and drawings.
II.	The Painting: Mona Lisa (La Gioconda)
	The Mona Lisa is a portrait of a single woman posing in a static, undramatic pose. The power of the portrait lies in the eyes (which seem to follow you as you walk around the portrait) and the mouth with its enigmatic smile. Everything else in the painting reinforces the impressions of melancholy and mystery created by these two features. The misty, strange, disquieting background is very closely related to the human figure. Indeed, it can be seen as an extension of the woman, a landscape of the soul. Outwardly, everything is peaceful, serene, beautiful. Inwardly, it reveals complexity, doubt, tortuousness. Note, for example, the many curving, twisting serpentine lines in the landscape (a trademark of Leonardo), and the murky, dreamlike character of the whole background.
	The total impact of the Mona Lisa must have been very different in the 16th Century, because a section of the background (the colonnades of a balcony on either side of the Mona Lisa) has been cut out. The composition was more anchored in the human world with those colonnades. Note, also, that many layers of varnish have been added to the painting over the centuries and have darkened it considerably. The background did not look as murky then as it does now.
	Despite centuries of controversy, no evidence exists to prove that this is not a portrait of the third wife of a successful merchant, Francesco di Bartolommeo del Giacondo.
	Layers of varnish have darkened the work but cannot hide what is the quintessence of Leonardo’s style. The blending of many thin layers of paint renders the curve of La Giaconda’s cheeks, the puffiness around her eyes and the folds of skin at the corners of her mouth. If those lips do smile, what is their secret? The enigma seems tied in with the landscape behind her. A bridge and a road, both cut off on either end, are the only signs of human life. Characteristic of the artist are the lunar precipices seen through the mist. The sfumato effect softens details – and deepens the mystery.
	If the sitter is indeed a bride, wealthy enough to have a portrait painted, she is curiously without adornment. No jewels relieve the somber tones of her dress. The only ornamentation, in fact, is a knot-design along the top of her bodice, a motif obsessively repeated in Leonardo’s drawings (and some of his paintings) without commentary or explanation.
III.	Composition of Artwork
	The sitter of the Mona Lisa has been placed in a reassuring, symmetrically balanced composition. The vertical axis of the painting runs precisely down the middle of the painting which is one of the more typical features of many Renaissance paintings. The "negative" areas to the left and right of the figures are similar in size and shape.
	The Mona Lisa appears completely at rest, her static bearing does not suggest how she came to such a pose or does it indicate what her future movement, if any, might be. The painting is imbued with a sense of underlying order and stability. Symmetry and balance were principle pictorial values of the Renaissance.
IV.	Artist’s Materials or Techniques
	Note the use of *Sfumato* and *Chiaroscuro* (see vocabulary, above). The use of those techniques is integral to the meaning (or if one does not want to talk about meaning) the impact of the painting.
V	Students’ Self-Expression: Guided Activity
	If the painting is presented just before Halloween, quote W. Pater's description of the Mona Lisa.
	Walter Peter's comments on Mona Lisa: "All the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there... the animation of Greece, the lust of Rome, the mysticism of the Middle Ages,... the return of the Pagan world, the [unreadable] of the Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas..."
	The kids will surely love the fact that she is associated with a vampire! The children could then draw a vampire take-off of Leonardo's enigmatic character. The Mona Lisa has been so often caricatured (see poster in storage room for example) that this might be the subject of a light-hearted activity.
OTHER (LESS TOPICAL) ACTIVITIES:
	1.	Practice mirror writing. Leonardo left thousands of pages of notes written with his left hand from the right to the left, so that most of us can only read them by looking in a mirror. Have the children guess why he did this, and then let them practice writing with their left hands from right to left. Bring a mirror to let them check if their handwriting is readable. This, of course, is only a side activity.
		When you have the mirror, look into it and try to make the same expression as Mona Lisa.
	2.	Create Mona Lisa's clothing and jewelry. Give each child a tracing of the face, neck, and hands of Mona Lisa. Let him or her turn Mona Lisa into a woman from current times. Add your own background if you like. Use pencils, crayons or markers. Be creative and don’t forget to sign your masterpiece. Some children may want to work on her hair too; therefore, some of the basic tracings included in the folder show the lady's hair, while others leave her head bald.
		Instead of using crayons or magic markers, the children might enjoy working with new textures, such as pieces of wallpaper, plastic, fabric, leather, tinfoil cardboard from spaghetti or cereal boxes, cut out in odd shapes, basic geometrical shapes or other shapes. They could also use pieces of tinsel, colored ribbons, wool, etc.
		The tracing of the head and hands could be cut out and then glued on a colored or designed background (wallpaper, for example) (or tag board), and the different materials used for the clothes could be glued or stapled or taped on afterwards.
	3.	Create a new background for the Mona Lisa. The children could be asked to draw a modern landscape or cityscape (a skyline of Chicago, for example) behind the Mona Lisa; or different groups could provide landscapes for the four seasons.
	4.	Color the tracing of the Mona Lisa.

Additional Information on da Vinci

Mona Lisa
Project (1 of 3)
Andy Warhol

Volunteer:
Date:
Grade Level:		2nd or 3rd Grade
Artists:		Leonardo da Vinci Andy Warhol Fernand Léger
Print Sculpture:		Print/Sculpture: The Mona Lisa Series, a very large, unframed poster to be hung on special gliders available in the storage room picture closet, on the left-hand side shelf. The poster is inside a long black cardboard tube located on the same shelf with the gliders.
Art Vocabulary:		Art Vocabulary: Pop Art (for popular art), a form of artistic expression which dominated the American scene in the 1960s. Instead of abstract forms, the Pop artists used images or symbols of everyday American life, especially those "popularlized" in magazines, comic strips, commercial advertising, and posters.

I.	The Artist: Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
	Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1928. In 1945 he entered the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) where he majored in pictorial design. Upon graduation, Warhol moved to New York where he found steady work as a commercial artist. He worked as an illustrator for several magazines including Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and The New Yorker and did advertising and window displays for retail stores such as Bonwit Teller and I. Miller. Prophetically, his first assignment was for Glamour magazine for an article titled "Success is a Job in New York."
	Throughout the 1950s, Warhol enjoyed a successful career as a commercial artist, winning several commendations from the Art Director’s Club and the American Institute of Graphic Arts. In these early years, he shortened his name to "Warhol." In 1952, the artist had his first individual show at the Hugo Gallery, exhibiting Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote. His work was exhibited in several other venues during the 1950s, including his first group show at The Museum of Modern Art in 1956.
	The 1960s was an extremely prolific decade for Warhol. Appropriating images from popular culture, Warhol created many paintings that remain icons of 20th-century art, such as the Campbell’s Soup Cans, Disasters and Marilyn Monroe screenprints. In addition to painting, Warhol made several 16mm films which have become underground classics such as Chelsea Girls and Empire. In 1968, Valerie Solanis, founder and sole member of SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) walked into Warhol’s studio, known as the Factory, and shot the artist three times in the chest. Doctors had to perform a risky procedure to stop his heart from stopping and he nearly died.
	At the start of the 1970s, Warhol began publishing Interview magazine and renewed his focus on painting. Works created in this decade include Maos, Skulls, Hammer and Sickles, Torsos and Shadows and many commissioned portraits. Warhol also published The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (from A to B and Back Again). Firmly established as a major 20th-century artist and international celebrity, Warhol exhibited extensively in museums and galleries around the world.
	The artist began the 1980s with the publication of POPism: The Warhol ’60s and with exhibitions of Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century and the Retrospectives and Reversal series. He also created two cable television shows, "Andy Warhol’s TV" in 1982 and "Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes" for MTV in 1986. His paintings from the 1980s include The Last Suppers, Rorschachs and, in a return to his first great theme of Pop, a series called Ads. Warhol also engaged in a series of collaborations with younger artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente and Keith Haring.
	Following routine gall bladder surgery, Following routine gall bladder surgery, Andy Warhol died February 22, 1987. After his burial in Pittsburgh, his friends and associates organized a memorial mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York that was attended by more than 2,000 people. In 1989, the Museum of Modern Art in New York had a major retrospective of his works. died February 22, 1987. After his burial in Pittsburgh, his friends and associates organized a memorial mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York that was attended by more than 2,000 people. In 1989, the Museum of Modern Art in New York had a major retrospective of his works.
	Andy Warhol was a controversial artist. Many would insist on calling him a mere decorator, because he kept using the same techniques and subject matter to the point of satiety. It cannot be denied, however, that he was a trendsetter. His life is a "rags-to-riches" story. He became a celebrity and enjoyed it greatly. Fame and money were more important to him than artistic integrity. He began his career in commercial advertising and designed window displays. In the early 1960s he began to paint his own works and assemble readymade images in series. His emphasis was on the reproduction of everyday objects (especially consumer goods) in magazines and newspapers. Later, Warhol turned to making movies marked with the same repetitiveness as his pictures. His important contribution to our culture was to bridge the gap between commercial advertising and fine art. Thus, he perfected the vulgarization of art which had begun in the second half of the 19th century through the efforts of the Impressionist painters. He accomplished this by narrowing down the subject matter of the artist as well as his personal contribution, and by reducing the amount of his effort to an almost elementary level through the use of mechanical means of reproduction.
	Some of the tricks he used include:
	the enlargement of images from the American mass-produced culture; the repetitions with slight variations or no variation at all of a single picture; the use of readymade images from the media and advertising; the use of rubber-stamping, stencilling, or silkscreening to give a mass-produced look to his works.
	Warhols’ art stresses the materialism of our society; the sensational character of our news coverage; the star-worshipping aspects of our culture; the monotonous uniformity of mass culture; and ultimately the absence of moral values and the lack of vision of a society deadened by green. There is nothing personal about his work. He duplicated images easily available in our society with no comments, no social or political intent.
II.	The Painting: The Mona Lisa Series
	Bring Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa for comparison. Point out Warhol’s reduction of the original work of art to the bar outline of a shape recognizable only because the Renaissance Mona Lisa is one of the famous paintings in the whole world and everyone has been exposed to more or less accurate and beautiful reproductions of it. Show that the mysterious character of Da Vinci’s painting as well as the sophistication of his artistry are completely lost in Warhol’s silkscreening. The Mona Lisa is popularized, and in the process, de-dramatized and cheapened.
	What Warhol does to the Mona Lisa, advertising agents do to the products they promote for sale, with the important difference that the Mona Lisa is an original, unique work of art, an uplifting food for the mind, while advertised products, such as Campbell Soup cans or Brillo Pads, are disposable consumer goods produced by the millions and limited to one specific utilitarian function.
	You might want to lead the children into a discussion of the characteristics of advertising:
	What kinds of products or values are advertised today? Foods, especially processed foods and junk foods, toys, fashions, cosmetics, cars, furniture, all disposable goods; but even tips for children’s safety, medical care, schools, churches, the value of reading, etc. Try to think of things or values that re not touched by advertising. What are the characteristics of most advertising? Loud, brash, colorful, big, repetitive, obtrusive. Advertisements simplify real life. They show everything as a simple choice between good and bad, easy and difficult. They create role models for people who do not know how to create their own, the arouse desires and appetite, and create needs which were not experienced before. Finally, they appeal mostly to low, selfish common denominators (something is good to eat, or fun to play with, or likely to impress others). Make sure you also show the children how advertising can and has been used to good purposes, such as in the "reading is fun" posters of a library.
III.	Students’ Self-Expression: Guided Activity
	A demonstration of silkscreening techniques (see C. Ilekis for additional information) An exercise in serial repetitions with variations: Give each student several photocopied pictures of on everyday object or symbol. (Examples in folder) As the children to cut out the shapes of the object, or cut out a shape around the object (rectangle, triangle, oval, depending on how the final montage is going to be assembled); ask them to color part of the object or background with magic markers, or to draw in their own variations of the background (dots, diagonal lines, little circles, etc.) Then create a montage of all the shapes on a large piece of cardboard or poster board. Variations can be introduced by orienting the shapes differently on the board. Repetitive drawings of a simple shape. Ask the children to draw and color something very easy which relates to food, such as a couple of donuts or a sunny-side-up egg. Give each one a square or rectangle into which the object will be drawn and a limited number of colors to be used so as to limit the differences between the drawings. Then, assemble all the drawings into a montage. An exercise in stencilling. Give each child a stencil. Ask him to create his own montage of 9 or 12 stencilled shapes. Commercial advertising. Bring soup can display and let the children design an advertising layout. Use cans or labels or drawings.

Mona Lisa Keys
Project
Fernand Léger

Volunteer:
Date:
Grade Level:		2nd or 3rd Grade
Artist:		Leonardo da Vinci Andy Warhol Fernand Léger
Print Sculpture:		Mona Lisa Keys
Art Vocabulary:

I.	The Artist: Fernand Legér
	Fernand Léger (1881-1955) was born in Argentan, Normandy and was apprenticed to an architect in Caen between 1897-1899. He then worked as a draughtsman in an architect’s office in Paris between 1900 and 1902, and in a photographic studio, retouching photos in 1903-1904.
	In 1903, he failed the entrance examination for the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and studied instead at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs and the Académie Julian. From 1909 he was associated with the Cubists and became a member of the informal Puteaux Group two years later.
	In 1913, he signed a contract with Daniel H. Kahnweiler who had already discovered Picasso and Braque. During his Cubist period his tubular and curvilinear abstractions contrasted with the rectilinear forms produced by these painters while he became the first of the Cubists to experiment with non-figurative abstraction.
	After having been gassed during the WWI, he was discharged in 1917 and became a close friend of Le Corbusier and Ozenfant. He collaborated with Ozenfant in the Atelier Libre and in 1925 he exhibited at Le Corbusier‘s Pavilion de I‘Esprit Nouveau.
	In 1925 also he did mural decorations in collaboration with Robert Delaunay for the entry hall of the exhibition Les Arts Décoratifs. During his collaboration with the leaders of the Purist movement his works exemplified the "machine aesthetic" which Purism exemplified. His paintings were static, with the precise and polished appearance of machinery, and he had a strong inclination for including representations of mechanical parts.
	During the late 1920’s and 1930’s he also painted single objects isolated in space and sometimes amplified to gigantic size. He also produced theatrical decors, especially for the Swedish Ballets, and worked with the cinema. His Ballet Mechanic (1934) was the first film without a script.
	During the WWII Léger lived in the U.S and taught at Yale University and at Mills College, California. His painting at this time consisted of compositions featuring mainly acrobats and cyclists. After his return to France in 1945 his works reflected more prominently his political interest in the working classes. But their static, monumental style remained, with flat and pure colours, heavy black contours and a continuing concern with the contrast between cylindrical and rectilinear forms.
	In 1949 he opened a studio for ceramics with his former pupil Robert Brice and made there his glass mosaics for the University of Caracas (1954). At the same time he was working on the windows and tapestries for the church at Audincourt (1951).
	A Léger Museum was founded in his honour at Biot with large ceramic panels that he designed. Memorial retrospective exhibitions took place at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, in 1956 and at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, in 1957. Léger had a considerable influence over many artists and was hailed as one of the greatest French painters of his time. His works are now rated between US $60,000 and 2 million.

Mona Lisa Projects
Project
Leonard da Vinci
Andy Warhol
Fernand Léger

Today we are going to learn about a very famous painting, "Mona Lisa." I'm sure many of you have seen it before. It was painted by Leonardo da Vinci from 1503-1505 (over 500 years ago). Many people have painted their own versions of Mona Lisa. You can see Mona Lisa on TV, in movies, books and even cartoons.
I'm going to read you a book about Leonard da Vinci. It will tell you about his life and his many interests.
	Read "DaVinci" by Mike Venezia. Show self-portrait, many Mona Lisa’s and Last Supper from "The World of Leonard 1452-1519." Show Mona Lisa with Keys picture and picture of Léger from "Homage to Fernand Legér." Show Warhol’s Mona Lisa and self portrait from "The American-Eve".
Fernand Léger was one artist that painted the Mona Lisa in his own way in 1930. He called it "Mona Lisa with Keys." Léger did not like da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. He found it not exciting and boring. To damage the Mona Lisa myth, he used her image in his painting next to a can of sardines (fish) and a ring of keys larger than she. He was asking, "How can we free ourselves of the Mona Lisa?".
Andy Warhol is an artist and filmmaker. He also copied the Mona Lisa in his own artistic way. His repetition of images became his trademark. He believed art should be fun and available to everyone.
You’ve seen three very different Mona Lisas.
Which one do you like the best?
Why?
How does it make you feel?
Why is she smiling?
Everyone tries to discover the secret of the expression in her eyes and soft smile on her face.
Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa Trivia:
	Lisa Gherardini Giocondo (Mona Lisa) was born in 1479 and would have been about 24 years old when Leonardo painted her. Her father was a Florentine Nobel Antonio Maria Di Noldo Gherardini. In 1495 at the age of 16, Lisa married Francesco Di Bartolomeo Di Zanobi del Giocondo who was twice a widower and 19 years her senior. He became wealthy in the silk trade and is believed to have commissioned da Vinci to paint his wife’s portrait though it did not end up in his collection. Leonardo da Vinci carried the Mona Lisa with him for years. Took it to Milan, Rome and France. Impressing other painters with his mastery of style and techniques never seen before. Sfumato [sfoo MAH toh] is an effect used by da Vinci to create the Mona Lisa. The word "sfumato" is derived from the Italian word "sfumare", which means "to evaporate". In the Mona Lisa, da Vinci used this technique by shading tones into each other to create soft blurred outlines. Tones blend (or evaporate) into one another to eliminate sharp lines and create an atmospheric effect. The name Vinci comes form the word for the rushes that grow in the banks of a local stream. Leonardo identified himself with the interlacing Vinci plant which was often woven and braided. It became a recurring theme in his work. He drew several elaborate entwined knots in his notebooks and painted them as details; including the bodice of Mona Lisa’s dress. In the 1530’s the painting was acquired by Francis I, King of France for approximately $105,000. Viewing was reserved for the upper class at the Fontainebleau, a 16th century chateau. By 1625 the painting was already famous and the Duke of Buckingham tried to acquire it for England. In the 1650’s, before it became a museum, the painting was moved to the Louvre, a royal residence. During the 1700s it was kept in the king’s private residence. In the 1800s it hung in Napoleon’s bedroom in the Tuileres until 1804 when it was moved to the Grand Galleries of the Louvre Museum. When the Louvre opened to the public, the Mona Lisa became accessible to the masses. Many painted copies and reproductions emerged. Writers and poets wrote about her, and idealized her. By the mid-1800s she was a legend. In 1911 the Mona Lisa was stolen from the museum. Newspapers wrote about it, printed her picture, offered rewards. She became the subject of plays, cartoons and tribute making her a household name. Pablo Picasso was brought in for questioning in 1911 when the Mona Lisa was stolen. He had previously purchased stone sculptures from an acquaintance (named Pieret) which had actually been stolen from the Louvre months before the Mona Lisa disappeared. Picasso thought Pieret might have also stolen the Mona Lisa. In 1939 when France entered World War II the Louvre evacuated most works of art including the Mona Lisa, loading them into freight trains taking them to more than 72 storerooms away from Paris. La Joconde a le sourire, or "the Mona Lisa is still smiling," served as a coded message during World War II to indicate the works of art in storage were safe. In 1963 the Mona Lisa was shown at the National Gallery in the U.S. where a million and a half viewers stood in line for a glimpse of her. In 1963 Salvador Dali wrote an article for Art News discussing his theories on why the Mona Lisa has provoked "violent and varied kinds of aggressions", such as Duchamp’s creation "L.H.O.O.Q." The article was reprinted by Art News in celebration of the publications 90th anniversary. It can be found in the November 1992 edition, page 166. The Mona Lisa was displayed in Japan at the Tokyo National Museum in the Spring of 1974. The painting attracted over 1.5 million visitors creating a record for exhibition attendance in Japan. This record has yet to be broken. The triplex glass box protecting the Mona Lisa was a gift from the Japanese after its tour there in 1974. In 1982, Japanese artist Tadahiko Ogawa of Kyoko Japan recreated "The Mona Lisa" in a toaster from 65 pieces of white bread. This was the first in his series of toaster made pieces. Others include da Vinci’s "Last Supper," and Botticelli’s "Birth of Venus." In 1502 Leonardo da Vinci designed a bridge to span the Golden Horn inlet at Istanbul. A smaller adaptation of Leonardo’s design was constructed in the town of Aas in southern Norway. The bridge, often referred to as the "Mona Lisa" of bridges now links Oslo with Aas. Lego artist Eric Harshbarger created a piece titled "Mona Lego" in November of 2000. Harshbarger masterfully recreated the Mona Lisa using over 30,000 Lego’s in the 6 basic LEGO colors: black, blue, green, red, white, and yellow. The smallest Mona Lisa was painted by Yves Gerard from Luxembourg. The piece measures 9x13 millimeters. It is currently housed at the Musee de la Miniature in Drome France. Contemporary artist Karen Eland created her rendition of the Mona Lisa, titled "Mona Latte," by using coffee as paint. A Mona Lisa character appeared in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Episode titled "Raphael Meets His Match." The Turtles (Raphael, Leonardo, and Donatello) join Mona Lisa (who is also a turtle) to capture the evil captain who transformed her into a mutant. The Mona Lisa appears on a limited edition Artifact card from the Star Trek: Next Generation customizable card game. The image of a Federation shuttle is visible in the background of the painting. You may grow a Mona Lisa in your garden by planting a "Mona Lisa" lily. This beautiful fragrant flower grows to about two feet high or less and is beautifully colored in various shades of pink. Since 1990, French performance artist Orlan has undergone plastic surgery six times in order to look like a computer generated ideal pieced together with traits found in art. Surgeons altered her face by giving the artist Mona Lisa’s forehead, the nose of Gerome’s Psyche, the chin of Botticelli’s Venus as well as other traits from various works. Each operation is treated as a performance piece Orlan refers to as "Carnal art." In 2000 a huge exhibition called "Les 100 Sourires de Monna Lisa (The 100 Smiles of Mona Lisa)" toured Japan. The exhibition featured works of artists who have copied and parodied da Vinci’s masterpieces over the past five centuries. Some works included in the exhibition were Duchamp's famous parody "L.H.O.O.Q" and Botero’s "Mona Lisa at the Age of Thirteen." A painting of the landscape background titled "Back in Five Minutes" was also included in the exhibition. A mini series titled "Mona Lisa no Hohoemi (Mona Lisa’s Smile)" aired in Japan from January 12 through March 2002. The show alleges that da Vinci secretly painted another version of the Mona Lisa that is believed to be somewhere in Japan. The main character, Tachibana Masayuki, is a famous auctioneer on a quest to locate the da Vinci’s work for his own collection. Because the Mona Lisa is priceless she is uninsured.