LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Mona Lisa: Paintings
built 297 days ago
With a fleet of luxury yachts set to conquer the seas, 60-foot Mona Lisa is geared up to be the new entrant, recently exhibited for sale. She is a beauty with an ice-reinforced aluminum hull and can take you for long adventure filled expeditions.
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Mona Lisa is a MMOG jigsaw puzzle game where the players co-operate and compete to solve the same jigsaw puzzle. There are hundreds of jigsaw puzzles to choose from. Tens or even hundreds of players could be working on the same mega huge jigsaw puzzle.
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Using the Mona Lisa to mediate between high and low culture is not new. Soon after the turn of the 20th century, the Dada movement revolted against the "high cultural" content of the visual arts. In doing this, in some cases the Dadaists elevated the mundane into the world of the "aesthetic" by forcing observers to look at everyday objects in surprisingly new contexts. At other times cherished objects and symbols were ridiculed. The most well known act of degrading a famous work of art is probably Marcel Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q., a cheap postcard-sized reproduction of the Mona Lisa upon which in 1919 the artist drew a mustache and a thin goatee beard. On one hand L.H.O.O.Q. must be understood as one of Duchamp's "readymade" works of art -- works that he didn't make, but which, by having been placed intellectually within a conceptual framework of "Art," he forces the observer to see ordinary objects from new perspectives.
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Since then, the public has held an unwavering fascination with the "Mona Lisa," and her mystique has only snowballed with the emergence of various popular theories over the years. "The Da Vinci Code" (Doubleday, 2003), Dan Brown's wildly successful novel, has helped out in no small part, with the painting figuring prominently in its riveting opening chapters. A film version will be released on May 19.
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At some point in its history, the Mona Lisa was removed from its original frame. The unconstrained poplar panel was allowed to warp freely with changes in humidity, and as a result, a crack began to develop near the top of the panel. The crack extends down to the hairline of the figure. In the mid 18th to early 19th century, someone attempted to stabilize the crack by inlaying two butterfly shaped walnut braces into the back of the panel to a depth of about 1/3 the thickness of the panel. This work was skillfully executed, and has successfully stabilized the crack. Sometime between 1888 and 1905, or perhaps at some point during the picture's theft, the upper brace fell out.
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Initial reaction in Paris to the Mona Lisa's disappearance is decidedly one of denial. Many believe it is only a bad joke. When the Louvre reopens a week after the theft, thousands of Parisians file through the Salon Carré like mourners at a funeral. According to Jean-Pierre Cuzin, current Curator of Painting at the Louvre, "The public came just to see the void where the painting had been hung, just to see the nails which held her. Everyone thought that she was lost forever. She was a national treasure!
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