Ghanaru Tranggono | 0754139

THE MONA LISA CURSE REVIEW

The Mona Lisa Curse is a documentary film created by

Robert Hughes that offers a devastating critique of contemporary art

and its over commercialization. He describes with astounding clarity the

forces seeking to tame art by putting it in the service of the plutocrats, in

other words, the rich and the ignorant people. He opens the film by

comparing Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa with Damien Hirst’s For the

Love of God, a skull sculpture consists of a platinum cast of an 18th-

century human skull encrusted with 8,601 diamonds. I strongly agree

on his quote regarding the big shift in the art world, “What ties the Mona

Lisa to this glittery bobble is their role in a giant shift in the art world,

that shift is all about money”. Money basically has corrupted the art

world. It makes society blinded on what the art was supposed to be

admired from, not through any critical perspective, but for its price tag.

The auction houses are the new critiques and their job is to strike you

blind about what art is actually is, so that you can’t make your own

judgments. I admit that I am also the victim of this effect, since I often

see paintings and sculptures by their price tags and I can confirm that
 Ghanaru Tranggono | 0754139

people are often to glorify any kinds of art that being categorized as

“expensive” since this would give them a value to be judged or for some

people a tool for an investment. Art museums have become into

business franchises where the plutocrats build and fund museums to

further their business agenda to use art as investments to multiply their

values, only for their profits. One part of the film that I really like is

when Hughes corrects the word “The Founders of The Museum of

Modern Art” into “The Funders of The Museum of Modern Art” since the

names listed on the wall of its museum only lists the rich people who

funded the museum. What has driven me mad is that the artists do not

get royalties of this business scandal and the rich are just simply using

their arts as a tool of investment for their profits. This also makes me

question the society, “What is art? Is art dead?”. If art is just a tool for

making money and profits for the rich and for mass consumption for

society to give everyone their Mona Lisa, then what is art today? One

portion that I really like from the film is how Hughes interview with

Alberto Mugrabi shows between to philosophies, one that extols art as

spiritual and necessary to the human heart, and the other that sees art

strictly in business terms as Mugrabi attempts to hold his own but he is

clearly outgunned.