Thousands Want Jeff Bezos to Buy and Eat the Famous Mona Lisa

The Mona Lisa at the Louvre Museum in Paris on January 8, 2021.

The Mona Lisa on the Louvre Museum in Paris on January 8, 2021.
Photo: Martin Bureau / AFP (Getty Images)

For some weird cause, thousands of people need Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to purchase and eat the Mona Lisa. To make clear, the Mona Lisa in query just isn’t meals, it’s in all probability the identical Mona Lisa you’re considering of—the portray by Leonardo da Vinci that lives within the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Earlier this week, an online petition for Bezos to purchase and eat the well-known portray immediately began choosing up traction. The humorous factor is, the petition isn’t even new, it was began a yr in the past by a Maryland musician named Kane Powell. Powell told Vice that he and his buddies have been at an Applebee’s speaking about Bezos, provided that Amazon was within the information at the moment, and mentioned he can buy it “just because he has the money to do it.” It would make an enormous assertion, he mentioned.

However, Powell and his buddies weren’t carried out. Powell mentioned that not solely ought to Bezos purchase the portray, he must also eat it. When requested why he really useful that Bezos eat the portray, Powell gave a easy reply: “I honestly don’t know.”

Back when he created the petition, Powell appeared to have a clearer concept, although.

“Nobody has eaten the mona lisa and we feel jeff bezos needs to take a stand and make this happen,” he wrote.

As loopy because it appears, there at the moment are individuals speaking about what it might really imply if Bezos purchased and ate the Mona Lisa and what may occur to him.

When it involves what Bezos is most identified for, being the richest man on this planet, the cash seems to be the simple half. It’s not simple to place a worth on the portray, though some have tried. Last yr, French tech CEO Stéphane Distinguin advised it could possibly be bought for not less than $60 billion, Vice identified. The cash could possibly be used to handle losses associated to the pandemic, he maintained. It can be greater than 100 occasions the price of the best worth of bought paintings in historical past—Salvator Mundi, additionally by da Vinci—however with a web price of $200 billion, Bezos may afford it.

The different query, consuming it, apparently wouldn’t be that bizarre within the artwork world. Amy Adler, an artwork legislation skilled and professor on the New York University School of Law, informed the New York Times that the hypothetical concept of Bezos shopping for and consuming the portray would fall “within the tradition of destruction of art as a way of creating art.” Other artists have carried out this apply in current many years, Adler famous, akin to Robert Rauschenberg, who spent a month erasing a drawing by Willem de Kooning in 1953.

The ensuing Erased de Kooning Drawing is a part of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s everlasting assortment.

“The power of Erased de Kooning Drawing derives from the allure of the unseen and from the enigmatic nature of Rauschenberg’s decision to erase a de Kooning. Was it an act of homage, provocation, humor, patricide, destruction, or, as Rauschenberg once suggested, celebration?” the museum writes. “Erased de Kooning Drawing eludes easy answers, its mysterious beginnings leaving it open to a range of present and future interpretations.”

Even although cash and notion wouldn’t be an issue, plainly the most important problem would come from really ingesting the Mona Lisa. Da Vinci painted it on a thin-grained tree plank and coated it with a thick coat of lead white primer, Vice defined. You know, lead, the identical substance that may kill you. The artist additionally used pigments in his palettes manufactured from silica, iron oxide, tin oxide, and bone mud, amongst others.

Nonetheless, judging by the Louvre’s response, there seems to be little likelihood that Bezos would have the prospect to purchase the Mona Lisa, a lot much less eat it.

“We have seen the petition but the Musée du Louvre will not comment,” Sophie Grange, the museum’s deputy director of communication, mentioned in a statement.

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