The Bearded Lady and the Shaven Man: Mona Lisa, meet Mona/Leo

THE AUTHOR CONSIDERS THE MONA LISA AS A MAJOR SITE of artistic investigations of gender and identity. Specifically, she analyzes the symbiotic relationship between two landmark reinventions of the Mona Lisa: first, Marcel Duchamp’s notorious L.H.O.O.Q. (Mona-Lisa-with-a-mustache), and second, Lillian Schwartz’s pioneering use of computers to demonstrate that the main model for the Mona Lisa was Leonardo himself. Both L.H.O.O.Q. and Schwartz’s Mona/Leo project are a striking instance of the Bearded Lady archetype, which finds its match in Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q. rank (L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved), a variant of the Shaven Man.