The Power of Facial Hair

The Dada art movement emerged following the outbreak of World War One, as a sharp rebuke of what the artists deemed “an insane spectacle of collective homicide” and the conditions that lead to such chaos. The movement developed into “anti-art,” revolting against the banal aesthetics and appealing sensibility of what was societally deemed fine work of the time— aiming to shock, to offend and to disconcert instead. Marcel Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q. does just this, and is representative of the entire trend away from reason and towards irrationality. With a few strokes, just small additions, Duchamp manages to reduce perhaps the most iconic piece of Renaissance artwork, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, to nothing more than a farce—exposing the delicacy of greatness, the destructive ability of one man and the meaninglessness of artistic esteem. Duchamp first establishes common, comfortable ground with viewers by using such a well-known piece. The Mona Lisa was considered to be untouchable— the holy product of an era of genius— and by suddenly destroying this painting so blindly revered, this common ground so mindlessly enjoyed, Duchamp proves the icon as breakable and the public conception as subjective to the whims of one man (namely, himself). The effectiveness of L.H.O.O.Q is in its shocking juxtaposition of historically feminine mystique with jarringly masculine touches—symbolic of the Dadaist struggle to walk the line between convention and creativity, between rationality and rage. Compounded with this is the piece’s humorous simplicity, using facial hair to raise fundamental questions about the principals of art. Does the artist have a duty to create beauty? But then, what exactly is beauty? Art should certainly reflect reality to some degree—is this piece not just mirroring the irrationality and ugliness of the war culture then, conforming to the generally accepted purpose even as it seems to rebel? By making a mockery of so-called genius, Duchamp gives the average man the power to answer these questions, to dictate what true beauty and art is. By snatching viewers’ attention, then startling them with such unpleasant changes to the norm, L.H.O.O.Q tears down stale, preconceived standards (represented by Da Vinci’s work) to allow for a new era of true creation.