Mona Lisa, I Adore You

When I took the National Teacher's Exam years ago, and did rather outstandingly actually-the precursor to Board Certification notions- I remember being asked to identify the Mona Lisa.
I believe this was from the "art part" of my exam. I had credentials in art, math and education and took the exam in these areas. It took 6 hours for me to finish. Actually I was done in 4. I only mention it because I prepared as I had for art history- studying literally weeks the paintings and their time periods, artists, because someone told me to expect to be asked to identify paintings.
I was over prepared.
There was something so funny to me when I was asked to ID this painting.
I'd seen in it The Louvre. You can see why I laughed.

I had a thing for the work, the Mona Lisa, because I'd drawn it several times, studied it.
I felt it in my bones. When I saw it in person it was amazingly surrounded by incredibly beautiful paintings clumped all over the walls. Behind inches of glass, it was beautiful.
Still, to this day, I can remember having students work with the image in my first year of teaching and a child asking me, "Why is this painting so well known?"
Still to this day that kind of question throws me slightly.
Sometimes I wonder how to explain images of women as they paper the walls of our museums.
My daughter wrote to this notion once in a set of poems I wrote, and she joined.
I'd dragged her all her life through art museums.
This was where we went on her 18th birthday. I wrote her poems she wrote me poems.

"reflections on nudes"
Sylvia Puglisi
* * *

it was hot today
i wore long sleeves
with stripes
because the weather does not rule my clothes.

the museum was cold though, and full of cold marble statues
naked men without penises
blown off in this war or that war
or fallen off
eventually
through the slow decay of time.

the female forms are unblemished, timeless
no gawky appendages to erode
by salty air or
overzealous critics.
they are modest and unashamed.

in marble
the women are held to no unreasonable
standards of beauty
they are fat and fabulous
or thin
or just female with big
breasts and small breasts
thought they are hairless.
the men are hairless too.
not very hairy, the romans
or so they'd have us believe.

the men are all tall and
curly-haired with clean-shaven faces and
well-chiseled abs
and noble poses fighting mythical beasts
imagine that being compared to a standard that no man could ever emulate
who can fight a minotaur?

perfection like that is just tempting fate.
most of the man-sculptures don't have heads.

i like the statue-room because it reminds me of the
uniformity that the female nude room
doesn't have.
25,000 years of women real women
not gods
not minotaurs
women with arms akimbo and tapping feet
and breasts and big bare arms
and beautiful imperfections.

my sisters, my mothers
my ancestors who
posed naked even if they had small breasts and big thighs
because they wanted to stand her before me
in paint and stone
and look me in the eye to say
"remember me, future-child
not for what i look like
but for what i was,
what i am,
what you are."

i remember them.
i am.

Not that the Mona Lisa is a nude.
It is just that a child asked me several days ago why naked women are in art museums.
I don't know where it came from, it is a part of doing this after school new art set of classes I am doing.I asked them what they thought. Eventually one child said, "I think it's because of beautifulness."

As we were making our Mona Lisa's and I struggled to put art "back" into the dialog of school, I was opening the door to talk about this woman from so long ago. When we narrowed to the extent we have over the past few years in test emphasis, our shared cultural art history got lost, our art got lost, our music, our shared story...lost...it is so foreign and so irrelevant that the children dis-arm you easily asking you why they ought to even give that image their attention.
I had to right off the mark try to re-ignite a love of doing. Many would rather not make the effort. That's unacceptable to me as the direct result of letting this die in our children.
By telling them, it's all about the test.
I've never really had a group that seemed less connected to a painting.
So, I started art teaching after school on the run this last week, going back to a painting that seems to me to talk across time. Most children did not know cameras were inventions, that there was a time before cars and electricity. That paintings were how we shared ideas. Most weren't clear on paint, collage, drawing. Most of my 7 year olds were in shock to think of a painting like this as "older than we all are put together." When I asked all thought that it was made when their parents were little. It is not that "schools are awful." It's that what we teach was hijacked.
So it was great to introduce a time line, a discipline and to start my after school work. I could never meet the need we have.

I decided we'd make it a collage, mixed media. And cut and paste, muppet style, and so a part at a time like a mola we built our own mona's. I'd like to share them. To me they were wonderful.
The problem with a slide show is that you don't see them all, unless you turn it on, so bear with me and my titles. The artists are all 7.

What are you doing Lisa....

John L. Lewis Lisa

I mean it Lisa

Mother Superior Lisa

No or the Shame Lisa

Considering it Lisa

Jowl Lisa

Opps Lisa

Audrey Hepburn Lisa

Fear Lisa

Tummy ache Lisa

Magician Model Lisa

Lady Big Hands

Lady With a Stick Lisa

Woman with an Oven Mitt Lisa

Stop Lisa

Lovely Lisa

White eyed Lisa

I love the work so far. And I feel like I have my finger in the crack of a mighty dam-frankly.


See my Mrs. Puglisi's 100 National Standards
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