Well owing to a combination of boredom and some arm twisting from one of the forum members who shall remain anonymous (unless this is a total flop in which case I am passing the blame on to them) I decided to do something constructive with my time and being as my one 14day trial run of WOW ran out (after a mere 6 months) I decided to do a review of various art pieces. Rather than risk getting risk getting hung upside down over some burning coals by the moderators (again) I decided to review more traditional art pieces rather than anything on IFX.

I was originally going to review Jackson Pollack but decided I shall save that for a Special occasion so instead I decided to review the Mona Lisa by Leonardo De Caprio, err no that’s not right. *Checks wiki* Ah, De Vinci. I knew that, just testing you.

As any good review will tell you should start with a controversial statement (Just made that part up to sound like I know what I am doing, which I so totally do and am not making it up as I go!). Well I guess the controversial statement is that the piece is boring.

I suppose this is just me being fickle, I mean the flesh is painted beautifully and the detail in her garments is very nice, but it all just feels too safe. Realistically if you place this piece next to a man who has just been set alight people would flock around the burning man (either out of sheer terror spawned from the hapless victims screams of agony or out of sadistic curiosity in seeing if anyone else gets caught ablaze).

So let’s get down to the nitty gritty (and oh god doesn’t that sound girly). The picture itself is a portrait of a woman sitting with a smug look on her in front of some outdoor scenery. The woman has a smug look on her face as if to say I am better than you, and even goes so far as to avoid looking at you directly as if you are the only drunk at a high class party (oh and apparently pants were mandatory to that party). Composition seems to be based on triangles as her body fits into one right in the centre of the canvas, thus dividing the remainder of the picture into a triangle on either side of her. On a side note, how much of this ****in’ image does she want, attention seeking cow.

There is no doubt that Da Vinci was a master of his craft. Subtle things like a complimentary colour pallet (red tint of her face and hair vs green errr… everything else) are used very well as nothing feels overpowered in this piece. I suppose this is another reason why I find this piece boring as there is no conflict what so ever. (I know the point of this piece is simplicity but still he could have thrown in a set of BEWBZ, or a tiger, on fire, with lightning swords … with bewbz etched on them). This leads me to believe one of the reasons that this piece has become such an icon of art is because of it’s theft in 1911, along with the numerous parodies of the piece such as the pieces done in the Dadaist style. This leads me in a random fashion to my next area of scrutiny, her legs.

As you may have noticed the legs are not painted and this was done for an oblivious reason. You see Da Vinci was an inventor so obliviously the lower half of the painting was of mech legs. Ah yes, you can’t fool me Da Vinci, your conspiracy has been unravelled. Speaking of hidden issues in or around the picture did you know that Da Vinci had no close relationships with any woman which leads me to believe that he painted this so he could get some action with the model (like playing backgammon and if you thought I meant getting down and dirty please get your mind out of the gutter. Actually … … … Okay I am never going to that part of my mind again).

The picture has undoubtedly had an effect on most of the pieces here on IFX as a lot of artist seem to want to blend skin in a similar fashion to Da Vinci where there are no clear transitions of shades (Hard brush with hardness at 0% in Photoshop), so I guess we all owe a lot to this piece but I can’t help but feel if it was created today and placed on any internet art forum it would be quickly forgotten (right after it was stolen and placed on a motivator).

Next time I will slaughter … er I mean provide an unbiased review on the works of Tracy Emin.