The Mona Lisa and Tourist Imaginaries
Image 1: Tourist meets the Mona Lisa (Source: Traveller)
The ever-famous Mona Lisa. Engulfed by the romanticization the painting attracts, those who have yet to see it are filled with expectations of what coming face-to-face with the masterpiece might be like—both their self-created expectations and the expectations that have slyly merged with their own from the painting’s existence on the internet. The more sought-after and photographed the attraction, the higher the expectations will be, leaving the Mona Lisa's existence in one's imagination to be just that, imagined, and surrounded by unreachable hopes of what seeing the painting will feel like for the tourist, will accomplish for the tourist. In this paper, I will speak about my experience visiting the Mona Lisa and how the painting relates to tourist imaginaries, concluding that these imaginaries persist because of the tourist idealization of ‘Old Europe,’ the constructive authenticity of the painting, and the urge to take and consume photographs of these attractions, however staged they may be.
Before visiting the Mona Lisa this February, my mind filled in the blanks for me; it imagined a world outside the borders of the photographs I had seen, crafted the room in which the painting hung, colored the walls a tasteful cream, gave the atmosphere a romantic and intellectual feel, and placed me as the sole observer in an impossibly quiet space. One imagines the humbling awakening to be had, the incredible beauty to be seen. How disappointed I was when I was met with the reality, my first reaction upon entering the room being to let out a laugh for how severely I had been deceived.
Image 2: The Expectation (Source: BBC)
I am not alone in my frustration. As a Daily Mail (2019) headline reads, “Famous painting is most-disappointing tourist attraction for Britons, survey finds”—86% of which agree. As Jason Farago (2019) writes for the New York Times, “my fellow visitors and I could hardly see the thing, and we were shunted off in less than a minute. All this for a painting that (as the Louvre’s current show confirms) is hardly Leonardo’s most interesting,”… “People come out of obligation, and leave uninspired.”
In place of the marvelous admiring I foresaw arising as I came face-to-face with the Mona Lisa was rather a depressing epiphany of what this deception meant for other tourist attractions I was yet to see, the expectations and images I had created, whether they held any truth whatsoever.
Believe it or not, there is a phenomenon called ‘Paris Syndrome,’ whereby “a collection of physical and psychological symptoms” is brought on when the tourist is met with the disappointing realization that Paris is a normal city with its normal city problems (Fagan 2011). It seems rather absurd that one’s expectations of the city can be that romanticized, that idealized, yet the unsettling truth behind this phenomenon is that the internet and world at large have instilled these idealized notions for us. The image of Paris in one’s mind is a deeply engrained tourist imaginary, constructed through consuming the world’s portrayal of the city. As Maria Gravari-Barbas (2019) explains, the city has been reconstructed in all its grandeur worldwide; take Paris Las Vegas or Paris in Disneyland, for example. It is, I believe, through these reconstructed places, the movies that create false sets and capture only the best sites, and most importantly, the incomplete images of Paris found on the internet, that engrain these unreliable imaginaries in our minds. However, what isn't also engrained in us is that the images we see vary drastically from the reality found by the person taking the photo. What one sees of the Mona Lisa online is a perfectly framed photo of the tiny painting, not the fact that, as Farago (2019) writes, “guards shooed along irritate, sweaty selfie-snappers who’d endured a half-hour line.” The tourist photos will not reveal the other 99% of the world outside their borders, the world in which the tourist exists to take the picture in the first place—the non-romanticized truth.
Image 3: The Disillusionment (image taken by author)
As Salazar (2012, 865) notes, “seductive images and discourses about peoples and places are so predominant that without them there probably would be little tourism, if any at all.” With the Mona Lisa, this is undoubtedly true. Even without the backing of a statistic, I find it safe to say the vast majority of tourists who visit the painting have little to no knowledge of the 16th-century Italian art world, let alone the 'art world' at large. It is, I believe, the seduction, the romanticization, the discourse around this one tiny painting and the notions of what one achieves if they see it for themselves that propels and sustains the incredible number of tourists who visit the Louvre each year (over six million according to The Travel).
Paris, I would argue, provides an interesting case for these tourist imaginaries, as the city is the object of a particular type of tourist gaze. In tandem with the exotic tourist imaginary, I would argue there exists a powerful imaginary surrounding the ‘exoticization’ of ‘Old Europe’—the desire to be blown away by the regality and beauty of Europe’s past, which is kept alive in the city's architecture, artwork, and overall atmosphere. Following Salazar’s (2012, 871) argument, “discourses of the past—orientalism, colonialism and imperialism—seem to be fertile ground for nostalgic and romantic tourism dreams.” I would add that periods of European intellectual, cultural, and artistic flourishment, periods such as the Enlightenment and the Renaissance specifically, spark a deep desire within the tourist to enter into these past worlds, to feel a part of their magic, subsequently sparking tourist imaginaries as such.
It's no wonder then that the Paris tourist flocks to the museum. As Salazar (2012, 866) notes, “tourism imaginaries in particular become tangible when they are incarnated in institutions, from archaeological sites, museums, and monuments to hotels, media, and cultural productions.” There is a profound notion of authenticity attached to museums; after all, one witnesses each painting and its history for themselves. Walter Benjamin (2005) explores this notion, explaining that no matter how many productions or how widely available an image is to see, “the presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity.”
In this discussion of tourist imaginaries, Nina Wang (1999, 351) supplies a helpful differentiation in the types of authenticity seen in museums; she compares objective authenticity, whereby “the authentic experience is caused by the recognition of the toured objects as authentic,” with constructive authenticity, which is instead “the result of social construction, not an objectively measurable quality of what is being visited.” There is a critical difference between how authentic objects appear to be versus how authentic they are. From this differentiation, I would argue that seeing the Mona Lisa is a deeply inauthentic, or at the very least constructively authentic, experience. One goes not to see the Mona Lisa so much as to say they've seen the Mona Lisa, and to say it proudly. I find it impossible to go and actually ‘see’ the Mona Lisa; due to the consistent length of the line, each viewer is given a fraction of a minute to stand in front of the painting, hardly enough time to study it. At least with other, less tourist-crazed paintings, one can spend as much time as they want observing, following the artist's brush strokes and decisions. Due to romanticized tourist imaginaries that have caused the constructive authenticity of the Mona Lisa, not only has the painting been symbolized as a tourist milestone, but the craze around seeing the painting hinders one’s ability to actually appreciate it.
I would argue that there that is an overwhelming desire for visual consumption of these attractions that the internet has exemplified through tourist photography. Tim Edensor (2018, 913) highlights this process; he writes that “in The Tourist Gaze (1990), the most prominent visual practice enacted is the romantic gaze, inspired by historical constructions of the picturesque and the sublime. The enaction of this often-solitary gaze has inspired the promiscuous photographing of scenes viewed at length during ‘sightseeing’ escapades [… and] relies on the consumption of similar images in promotional media before the trip has been undertaken, creating what [John Urry] calls a ‘hermeneutic circle’, the endless recycling of similar images through which the representation of tourist sites becomes reified.” Despite the lack of an (or in fact negative) impression the painting had on me, I still took a photo. In fact, I took many. Each of us who visits the Mona Lisa, or any tourist attraction, perpetuates its tourist imaginary by this simple act of photographing. Despite learning the tourist reality, I still wanted the perfect photo; tourist imaginaries shatter on-site, but the tourist still wants the perfect shot.
In the age of technology, this need for visual consumption strays far beyond tourism. However, I would note that this need to involve oneself by photographing is heightened by these tourism imaginaries—the Mona Lisa conundrum serving as the perfect example. One must step back and ask, why does everyone feel the urge to photograph the Mona Lisa when they reach the front of the line? Can the urge be traced back to a desire to admire the painting long after leaving the museum? In a perhaps slight generalization, I would argue not. One brings out the camera, takes the photo, to prove they have been, even if their experience was utterly disappointing. However upsetting to admit, I’ve found there to be a level of self-accomplishment involved whereby the tourist feels proud for having consumed, the sense of even unconscious superiority building as one joins the worldwide club that 'has seen.’ Not only is the idea of entering the world of ‘Old Europe’ seductive to the tourist, so is (if not more) the idea of being able to say that you have—and no matter how disappointing the reality of seeing the painting is, the tourist can still fall back on this comfort.
Bibliography
Sources:
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Trans. Harry John. Schocken/Random House: 2005.
Edensor, Tim. “The more-than-visual experiences of tourism,” in Tourism Geographies 20(5): 2018.
Fagan, Chelsea. “Paris Syndrome: A First-Class Problem for a First-Class Vacation.” The
Atlantic, 18 October, 2011. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/10/paris-syndrome-a-first-class-problem-for-a-first-class-vacation/246743/.
Fagaro, Jason. “It’s time to take down the Mona Lisa.” The New York Times, 6 November 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/arts/design/mona-lisa-louvre-overcrowding.html.
Gravari-Barbas, Maria. “What makes Paris being Paris? Stereotypes, simulacra and tourism imaginaries.” Taylor & Francis Online, 6 January 2019.
Kazimierska, Marika. “Going To The Louvre To See The Mona Lisa? Here's What To Expect.” The Travel, 19 February 2020.
Reporter, Daily Mail. “It’s the moaner Lisa! Famous painting is most-disappointing tourist attraction for Britons, survey finds.” Daily Mail, 25 April 2019. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6961321/Mona-Lisa-painting-disappointing-tourist-attraction-Britons-survey-finds.html.
Salazar, Noel B.. “Tourism Imaginaries: A Conceptual Approach,” in Annals of Tourism Research 39(2): 2012.
Wang, Nina. “Rethinking Authenticity in Tourism Experience,” in Annals of Tourism Research 26(2): 1999.
Images 1 & 2:
