Mona Lisa - Art is for everybody

ML - Welcome to Mona Lisa. A weekly newsletter for artists with timeless quotes, ideas and light bites for curious & wandering minds.

Lite Bites

📜 The ancient Egyptian scribe Amenhotep, son of Hapu, is among the earliest known artists to have signed their work, over 3,000 years ago.

🌊 Katsushika Hokusai, the artist behind The Great Wave, reportedly moved 93 times during his life, often relocating when his studio became too cluttered.

💡 "When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it." – Sigmund Freud

🧑‍🎨 Leonardo da Vinci was a rival of Michelangelo, whose muscled figures he claimed looked like “bags of walnuts or bunches of radishes.”

Mona’s notes

My first-ever trip to an atypical white-cube contemporary art gallery was in my early 30s, where I touched something ambiguous and got told off. ❗️🤏🏽 

I hadn’t visited an art gallery or museum, outside of a school trip, until my mid-to-late 20s. I observed contemporary art the way I did Michelin-starred morsels of food on white plates with a sprig of parsley, wondering whether I lacked the palate to understand.

Artworks felt like celebrities because of pop culture rather than merit, at least as far as I could tell. I just trusted the experts.

I confused museums and galleries constantly, and my idea of art was limited to marble sculptures or a Da Vinci. 😏

I had little grasp of historical context, movements, or value, other than how expensive the pieces seemed, judging by the layers of security I had to get through just to see them.

None of this, however, had any bearing on whether I could experience, create or receive art. I had no expectations or limitations about what I considered art. But I did consider it inaccessible. ⛔️

All this probably sounds like a confession, which makes me feel gross because it implies I’m looking down on my former, pre-Art self (…art with a capital ‘A’). But the reason I bring this up is because I took my parents to see a show at the Barbican this winter, and it felt like I was re-visiting my former self, and I found something I felt I’d lost.

I watched my parents view art with a purity I could no longer experience. Their reactions and observations were faithful to their personal context, and their honesty was visible.

My parents see ‘Art’ as my world. I found myself observing them observing art. For two hours, they stayed with me, witnessing the churn of colours, shapes, forms, sounds, and textures created by artists seeking a language beyond words.

I was desperate to hear their thoughts, but in the end, I never asked. Why reduce the visuals into words? 🤔

Afterwards, we had lunch and talked about everything except the art we’d just seen. Finally, as we finished our pizzas, Dad paused, leaned back smiling, and said the food was exactly what he needed, and the art—“I didn’t think it was that great really...”

And in that moment, I felt the most relaxed I had in ages. 🍕✨

Until next week,

Love Mona x

^{“Nothing will work, unless you do” — Maya Angelou}

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