Mona Lisa's Curse, AP
ROBERT HAGUE
Mona Lisa's Curse, AP, 2014
hand-coloured lithograph on cotton rag paper, edition of 10, dark stained Australian hardwood frame
100 x 60 cm (paper size)
110 x 71 x 5 cm (frame size)
$1500
Additional Info
"The title references a TV documentary on the art market by the late Robert Hughes, in which the art critic decried the commercialisation of the art market by the commodification of masterpieces such as da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Hague's sculpture's in marble presents a wrapped skull that references For The Love of God, British artist Damien Hirst's now-notorious diamond-studded human skull, itself a reference to a gemstone encrusted Aztec skull held in the collection of the British Museum. Hague's reference to those works is oblique but apt – the form of the skull is just detectable beneath the cloth - both suggestions of something that is not actually there. The skull is a classical symbol of mortality and it seems where Hirst's statement was to overlay the funerary tradition of symbolic mortality, Hague's work is more final – everything will pass from view, and life."
Dr Andrew Frost. 2014