slide school w substitute teacher | marcel duchamp

slide school is a bi-weekly education session (with myself ;) in which i attempt to remember bits and pieces i learned about specific artworks in my university art history classes. i get to peek at my notes, but not online. for more details about slide school - visit this post.

as i am away this week - i've arranged for you all top have a substitute teacher - artist meghann rader. you may know meghann as the one who made the most insightful comment ever or you may have visited her etsy shop. let's see how she leads us in slide school today! 

image via

hello! my name is meghann and i spend my days making small scale artwork and handpainted jewelry inspired by my home on the beautiful west coast of canada. in 2006 i graduated from the emily carr institute of art and design in vancouver. i hope you enjoy my attempt at remembering one of the many fine pieces of artwork i learned about while studying there!!

title | LHOOQ
artist | the mutt toilet guy? 

date | 1955 (random guess) 

medium | marker or paint on a photograph

art historical period | pop art 

three facts | i seem to remember that LHOOQ had two meanings. it could represent the english word “look”, and also sounds like a phrase in french that i believe means “i want to sleep with you”, or something along those lines. i think that these are both a comment on the whole mystery surrounding the mona lisa's famous smirk and the meaning behind it. corrections first of all, wow! i totally forgot there was a moustache. trend in the making?

corrections:

title | L.H.O.O.Q.
artist | marcel duchamp. another one of his famous works was a porcelain urinal, signed with "r. mutt". 
date | 1919. i was way off on that one. 

medium | pencil drawn onto a cheap postcard reproduction of the mona lisa

art historical period | dada
i have now found out from wikipedia that when pronounced, the letters LHOOQ sound like the french sentence "elle a chaud au cul", which is translated as "she has a hot ass." also, i couldn't find any information referencing the smirk in regards to this work, so i guess i was wrong there. the word in the history books is that the graffitied postcard represents the theme of gender reversal, which was popular with duchamp and also ties back to da vinci himself and the sexual ambiguity of the original artwork.