As you approach the inner entrance of the Louvre in Paris, there is an arrow that will lead you to the exact location of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
It is as if there is no other painting, or anything else at all, to catch your attention anywhere in this world-revered museum.
On entering the small hall where the masterpiece is shown, you will be surprised by the bustling crowd surrounding it. Everyone is holding mobile phones to take a selfie with the woman whose smile is so often described as mysterious.
From @reuterspictures: Visitors take photos of the Mona Lisa painting after the Louvre museum in Paris reopened its doors to the public after an almost four-month closure pic.twitter.com/jkanQ1SEty
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 8, 2020
The people are unlikely to have seen or scrutinised her expression before, in person. Instead, they've relied on accounts and descriptions they've heard or read. Now, they are keen for another picture, to flaunt on social media, even as time in the room with the work of art itself is short.
Even if you were to be a regular visitor, you would always find yourself in the crowd, without the chance for a moment of quiet contemplation. Should you arrive more than five times, say, you may become content with waving to her from a distance, seeing more of the other onlookers huddled nearer than you do of her.
A universal smile, only for you
Your mind wanders to the Mona Lisa may feel, in all the clamour and noise enveloping her, if only she could. You think she winks at you, indifferent to the presence of the others. This notion inspires you to think about writing an article on the Mona Lisa's wink, which you have seen and no one else has discovered.
This is what you will take away with you from the small hall because, with all its clamour, no one can properly appreciate the painting or perceive its inherent aesthetic qualities. Visitors often fail to see the magnificent masterpieces nearby in other halls at all.
Even these one-painting visitors depart convinced the Mona Lisa was looking at no one else, smiling exclusively as well as shyly.
Cake on a famous face
A year ago, a young man smeared the painting’s laminated glass with cake. It was an effort to raise awareness of the risks of climate change.
Now, he cannot be dissociated from the very pollution he sought to highlight, since he chose to target a painting universally regarded as a Renaissance icon and a symbol of its aesthetic excellence.
Of course, this is not the first attack on a painting or a work of art. Some have done so for psychological or emotional reasons, as was the case with Michelangelo's Statue of Mercy when a visitor hit it with his camera because he was so moved by it.
People can attack anything that is exciting and striking. I remember an article by the Egyptian writer Hussein Ahmad Amin that he published in Al Musawwar magazine in the mid-1980s, in which he claimed responsibility for an incident that had occurred in Cairo at the time.
Vandalism or marketing?
He said that he visited an exhibition of one of his artist friends and found him alone in the hall with no visitors, despite many invitations going out. Then, during the conversation, at the door to the hall, the son of Ahmad Amin raised his voice:
“Do you want people to come to the exhibition while you paint naked women? Do you draw naked women in the city of a thousand minarets?”
