“The situation into which the product of mechanical reproduction can be brought may not touch the actual work of art, yet the quality of its presence is always depreciated.” (Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Section II)
The Mona Lisa (Leonardo Da Vinci, circa 1503) (and its circulation in popular culture) is illustrative of Benjamin’s argument regarding the status of the artwork in the age of technical reproduction. I’ve posted an image of the original painting along with one of its more recent cultural manifestations.* Describe one way the meanings associated with the original painting effect the product being sold. Provide one example of how the ad’s use of digital technology changes the meaning of the original (for instance, in this ad, how do we interpret her famous smile?) Comparing this advertisement to the Mona Lisas made by modern artists of the Dada and Surrealist movements (Below Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q., 1919. S&C: 129; also Benjamin, Section XIV), what does the ad suggest about our society’s ideas and beliefs about beauty?
*The text at the bottom of the ad reads: “Pantene Time Renewal. Restores age-damaged hair.”
17 comments:
Blog Response 1:
The Mona Lisa is known as one of the most beautiful paintings in the world. In seeing the use of this painting in advertisement, it is intended that the consumer believes that the product being sold will make them as beautiful and/or as priceless as the Mona Lisa. Therefore the Mona Lisa is a reflection of what the product can do for the consumer.
The use of digital technology is obvious in the painting on the left. Mona Lisa’s hair has been redone to look wavy and much shinier, the way women might like their hair to look in today’s times. Using this technology helps the consumer relate to the product being sold, as well as continuing to believe that the consumer may be as timelessly beautiful as Mona Lisa herself. When the consumer looks at Mona Lisa’s smile (the reason for which she is smiling is of great dispute) the consumer connects the smile with her newer shinier hair. Thus the product will make you happy as well as beautiful.
It feels as though the ad suggests that society isn’t interested in preserving beauty in it’s true form. We would much rather doctor the works of art to be used in things such as advertisements, entertainment and other forms of mass media.
Patrick M. Glapa
The Mona Lisas status as an international icon creates a prestigious ground for advertisers to manipulate and make their own, and still create great impact upon its target audience. Using the Mona Lisas fame advertisers are able to sell products with a familiar face, in this case Pantene hair products.
Although the value and reputation of the Mona Lisa are still very high, the mechanical reproduction of the picture I feel depletes its value. Access to the Mona Lisa is given to everyone not just art gallery perusing tourists and enthusiasts. By destroying the exclusivity of the painting its glamour and reverence I feel take away from the original meaning.
Suggesting that new is better than old is what the ad is trying to portray by digitally enhancing the picture of the Mona Lisa to have full voluptuous hair. By placing the images side by side it uses the before and after technique to sell the product with the Mona Lisa as its medium.
Nick Edmonds
When I look at the Mona Lisa, a few things pop out: how old the painting looks, her shirt, and of course, the smile. These are the things that make this portrait what it is. One way the meanings associated with the painting effect the product, Pantene, were described in the caption ”age-damaged.” This phrase can be used for describing the state of the picture but also the state of her hair. In many shampoo commercials, they often talk about age-damaged hair; Mona Lisa’s century old hair is the worst-case scenario. So the ad is saying if it can make her aged hair shine, Pantene can solve any bad hair-day. Technology is usually seen under a positive light, but in this case, as Walter Benjamin has pointed out, it can appear to have a negative effect. In a way, the technology kind of violates the principles that gave this painting its mystique. With her new hair, it kind of makes her look like how our generation believes it should look, making her not as unique, and being unique is what made this portrait famous, so that is why this techno-revision can be seen as harmful. I think this advertisement reveals that our culture sometimes holds a one dimensional view about beauty. The Mona Lisa was celebrated for its individuality; it was beautiful because of her outfit, because of her smile, because she was so different. This shampoo ad shows that our society is capable of having a narrow, artificial view on what beauty is. Our society often overlooks natural beauty; we often try to change things in an effort to make them look how we think they should appear; sometimes the best option is to not change things, and just enjoy them for what they are.
Ryan Bender
When most people hear about or see The Mona Lisa they think of it as a masterpiece of extreme elegance and beauty. That would be an obvious reason why an organization would use the picture to model their product. You would then relate the product to the beauty of the Mona Lisa painting.
When i look at this digitally touched up version of the Mona Lisa i see completely different meanings for the painting. In the original you see her smile and wonder what she is thinking about. It almost seems like she is hiding something. In the newer version it makes it seem as if she is thinking about this product and how good she looks. There are no hidden meanings, and no further interest for a viewer of the painting.
The new adaptations of this painting show that we have no longer any respect for the beauty of the original painting. The idea that anyone can make something like it. It shows that we no longer always look for the inner beauty in things. Beauty now has seemed to turn into only the outer beauty, which shows the beliefs of our current culture.
Logan Lovett
I believe that a big reason the painting gets sold is because of all there theories about the picture. Throughout the past three or four years I have heard many different “theories” about the Mona Lisa painting. People buy this picture because it is almost like a puzzle to them, they try to figure out if they can see some of the “theories” that other people talk about. By having the picture could make the consumer feel like a mystery.
By using digital technology, we are changing the meaning of the picture as a whole. The beauty of the picture isn’t there when people use digital technology on it. An example of how digital technology was not good for this picture was her hair. The wavy hairstyle stands out in the picture, and it takes away the pure beauty of the picture. The Mona Lisa painting is beautiful for what it was, not what we have made it with digital technology.
Robert Aldrich
When looking at the Mona Lisa's new picture as a consumer, the whole meaning of the original painting changes. This is most profound when looking at them side-by-side. With this new type of hair care product, it appears as though her smile is for a solid reason, not many of the theories out there. She appears to be smiling for the fact that her hair is bold and full, instead of flat and damaged.
The Mona Lisa has always been seen as the "ultimate beauty" and so, when used in an ad, the company is trying to show that even the most beautiful always need something to help them look better. Which is what most of society is believing. Our society is a very vain one, where beauty is seen as the ultimate social class. When someone is seen as beautiful, their next step is to see how to become more beautiful. We live in the age of plastic surgery, where one can stay young forever, so this ad is showing that what was once seen as the definition of beauty, can always be made more beautiful.
Steven Ball
The ad agency use such works of art for one main purpose. It's well known. If you take a classic piece of art that 80% of the population can recognize and make it your own, people will remember. The whole point of an ad is to make the consumer remember what they were looking at.
Tech wise, the image was obviously reconstructed to improve features like skin tone, hair color, and hair length. The image was also restored a bit to keep a little of the natural beauty that the image came with.
I think one main thing to look at with this image is the fact that society has a certain picture in it's mind of what beauty is, and if it doesn't look like that, it's more or less "ugly". Taking an image like the Mona Lisa and editting it to be something more appealing to the people of our time is both good and bad. In a way it's ruining a priceless work of art, but at the same time, it's revitalizing such works and keeping them alive to the youth of the world.
This painting has been around for a handful of centuries now. One of the most internationally recognized paintings of all time. I can see a negative and a positive effect the original painting would have on the product being sold. Since the painting is famous some people may not even bat an eye when seen in advertisement. In view of the fact of it’s popularity I have seen many regurgitated forms in both advertisement and humorous standpoints. On a more positive side for the company, her posture, her smile and her stare denotes self-belief and self-assurance. People may look at the digitally enhanced version and idolize her contentment.
Well, for one, I don’t think good ol’ Leonardo painting her intending to sell her to a hair care company. I don’t want to say “digitally enhanced” anymore because the word enhanced implies improvement. The original painting is pure and pristine. Everybody in the world can scan a copy of this painting onto a computer and modify the original. Wavy hair, mustaches, brighter colors, etc, etc. But there isn’t anyone in the world that can take away meaning from the original.
Pop culture is always duping people into thinking beauty is found only on the outside. The modified picture is a great example. Which is why I think the ad is inaccurate. I think Leonardo postured his subject in such a manner to depict how the woman felt inside.
Nathaniel Winter
Film 114-401
Leonardo De Vinci's painting, The Mona Lisa, is one of the most easily recognizable paintings in the world. With this recognition comes the understanding of the painting as "classically beautiful". This is to say that although the woman may not be beautiful the artistry it took to create the painting makes it visually appealing. In this way we directly correlate beauty to The Mona Lisa in modern culture. The advertisement for Pantene Time Renewal takes full advantage of this association. Through mechanical reproduction Pantene suggests that their product will indefinitely work for the consumer because it was sufficient for a beautiful, aged, and popular, work of art. The popularity of The Mona Lisa guarantees a larger chance of understanding by the consumer. The age of the original artwork brings home the message of "Age Renewal", and this solidifies the advertiser's message. Transforming the dated look of The Mona Lisa's hair changes the original interpretation of the painting. Rather than accepting it as "classically beautiful" we now see her hair style as ancient and unattractive. This suggests that our society is becoming more critical of visual appeal. In the days of Leonardo De Vinci the woman depicted in The Mona Lisa may have been extraordinarily beautiful, while today she may not be as attractive without the use of hair and make-up products that have become so popular. In this way our society may have grown passed a saying of "beauty is only skin deep," and progressed to believing that beauty is only product deep.
Modern society is all but inundated with digital technology. Here, the classic image of da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is being used to sell a new hair care product. The creators of this advertisement are using the classical beauty and grace associated with the original painting to convey the sense that their product provides beauty and grace in a bottle, a technique similar to the one described in Practices of Looking discussing the Neiman Marcus ad featuring the classically posed model. In so doing, they completely alter the meaning of the original work. What makes the original Mona Lisa so fascinating to those who study art is the ambiguity found within it. In this ad, the subject’s beguiling smile can now be attributed to her love for her rejuvenated hair. This ad also speaks to our society’s current standards of beauty. The reproduction of the Mona Lisa by Duchamp, featuring a mustache and goatee, was meant to be satirical. The Pantene ad is meant to play on insecurities. The ad implies that those with age damaged hair have some kind of flaw which needs to be corrected. This comparison of these three works harkens back to Benjamin’s discussion of mechanical reproduction in his essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” The “aura” of the original work here is being used as a marketing tool.
Joseph Otterson
The Mona Lisa, by the famous painter, Leonardo Da Vinci, is shown in an advertisement for a new hair care product. In this newly re-digitalized photograph, it shows Mona Lisa with wavy luscious hair, which draws your attention to better quality and crispness of the painting. A way that this painting affects the way that the product is sold is by making Mona Lisa’s hair looking better, which is the result of using the advertised hair care product. The Mona Lisa is a well-respected piece of art, and by using this popular painting; it’s a good idea for an effective advertisement. By improving the quality and look of Mona Lisa’s hair it shows that our society would rather have more luscious, shiny, and healthy hair; basically anything that makes us look better, we’ll buy the product(s).
Amanda M Silbar
The Mona Lisa is an icon when it comes to artwork. The piece of art is known for the simple beauty and the mysteriousness smile that she has. She has such strong posture that seems to represent a woman who knows who she is and is proud to be in her skin. Like in modern television commercials and ads we see they use icons of today's media world to help market their product. By using someone people look up to, to sell a product those people will do just about anything to even relate to them. Since the Mona Lisa is so well known through all the world why not use her?
Although in the actual ad the use of digital technology has altered the image. They take the bases of the Mona Lisa and apply what some women prefer in styling of their hair to her. They add volume and shine to her hair which most commercial for hair care products boast about their power to do just that. By doing this it takes away the mysteriousness of the painting because you no longer are wondering what her smile is for when it clearly is because she is proud of her hair.
What these images show about how our society views beauty is that beauty is found on the outside and the only way to be happy is to be beautiful. Even though beauty when someone takes the time to think about what it means is a combination of not only looks but the personality and confidence someone posses that makes true beauty. Most advertisements focus on demeaning us by comparing us to some picture perfect person so that we feel unsatisfied with ourselves and want to be in this case as beautiful as the Mona Lisa.
Zachery Holder
In the first picture, the viewer's attention is drawn to the most obvious digital manipulation: the Mona Lisa's thick, lustrous hair. The captioning and bottle in the lower left hand corner identifies the altered photo as an ad for hair products, particularly those purported to repair "age-damaged hair."
No one is sure why the original Mona Lisa is smiling; in fact, this mystery is part of her allure. In the second photo, her smile is open to imagination and interpretation; however, in the first, her hair, and by extension, her beauty, is implied to be the reason for her smile.
This ad seems to imply that beauty, especially youthful beauty, will lead to happiness/fulfillment; and that said beauty and contentment is easily attained simply by using a certain product. It panders to our basic desire for social acceptance and approval, particularly via a simple and painless solution. Actually, digital manipulation could be considered a manifestation of this desire; newer photographic technology has naturally replaced older methods because of their convenience and superior results. Even now, the most recent method or instrument of digital technology is frequently advertised as “newer,” “updated,” and “faster” than its predecessors—even if its only “improvement” is more attractive graphics/design and a marginally shorter loading time. This bears a striking parallel to the first picture’s negative connotations on age: namely, that old age and anything hinting at it is a blight to be avoided at all costs. I think this pattern can be traced partly to man’s innate fear of death and decay: a loss of beauty is often the most discomfiting sign that nothing last forever... not even the Mona Lisa.
Hannah Mann
CHRIS MOORE
It shows societies lack of preservation. I for one am sick of tacky reproductions of masterpieces. It conveys a simple point Even the oldest hair can be fixed. But what is sacrificed in the defiling of the mona lisa. Culture itself is going down the tubes in a hurry when some of the greatest works of art ever made can be used as some kind of cheap ploy to get people to buy hairspray. Please society get some originality FAST.
The Mona Lisa is commended as being one of Di Vinci's Greatest masterpieces. The advertisment takes this into consideration as it tries to partrait the message that their product can make even the most beautiful even prettier. Because of the Mona Lisas worldwide recognition as one of the greatest artistic acievements in history, the product can almost automatically be marketed worldwide.
In an attempt to market a product, advertisers were willing to deface the Mona Lisa in the most literal sense. In this day and age it goes to show that advertisements are weaseling their way into art and creative design whether it be a film made to get stoners to buy Whitecastle, or a doctored version of the Mona Lisa that makes women want to buy a hair product.
Jack Kirby
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