CINNAMON WANDERING WILLOWS FULL
They took a full two and a half minutes before they left.
I respected their unwillingness to bow to the unspoken thoughts of the crowd ( move along…I’m trying to get a picture…move along.) I was hoping they were discussing the portrait, not just planning a lunch date. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but while they talked, they stared at the painting. While that couple was taking their selfie, another young couple stood against the farthest point of the nylon barrier, pressed against each other, deep in conversation. He whispered, sotto voce “Quickly! Get in. At the barrier, he turned his partner’s back to the portrait, and raised his phone. He shoved his partner from behind with all his substantial height and weight. “Go for it, babe,” the man said, as if cheering on an athlete. The other two lined up the moustache in front of the Mona Lisa’s upper lip à la Marcel Duchamp and laughed hysterically as they snapped their photos.Ībout 10 meters from the barricade, a couple looked around at the crowd. In position, one of them held out his index finger on which he’d drawn a moustache in black marker. Three young men in their twenties inched their way forward and centred themselves in front of the portrait. Maybe this throng had something new to teach me. Bodies pressed, chests to backs, against the wooden and nylon barriers. One morning, I planted myself in the crowd in front of the painting.
There are so many other wonderful things to see. I see those “Mona Lisa” signs and arrows directing the hoards to the famous portrait and I seethe. When I visit the Louvre, I pay scant attention to the Mona Lisa.
0 kommentar(er)
