Lady Gaga encounters the Mona Lisa at the Louvre and employs lipstick to sketch a smile on her visage in a fresh video clip unveiled Wednesday by the singer and the French museum. The American diva, who features in the new Joker film, embodied her Harley Quinn persona to engage in a bit of lipstick 'vandalism' on Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece to endorse the Louvre's forthcoming exhibition, Figures of the Fool, which, akin to the movie, debuts next month.
Lady Gaga stealthily navigates the Paris museum under the cover of night, sporting a red wig and crooning a song specifically composed for the video, which was distributed on her Instagram and TikTok profiles. She ultimately finds herself face-to-face with the Mona Lisa, where she draws a clownish smile using lipstick on the protective glass shielding the artwork. As she steps back, a tear of black mascara trickles down the star's cheek.
When queried about the prudence of encouraging such actions amid a period where paintings are frequently targeted in museums by climate activists, the Louvre maintained that the video was 'purely fictional' and a tribute to Leonardo, who was captivated by the smile. The museum affirmed that an extra screen had been installed for the video in front of the 3.8-centimetre-thick (1.5-inch) bulletproof glass safeguarding the canvas.
The lipstick smile mirrors a pivotal scene in The Joker: Folie a Deux, where Harley Quinn pays a visit to The Joker, her criminal counterpart, in prison. The Louvre disclosed that they collaborated with Warner Bros Pictures, the Hollywood studio responsible for the film, to shoot the video within the museum. This is not the inaugural instance where the Louvre has served as a backdrop for celebrities.
Rapper and producer Will.i.am notably inserted himself into some of the museum's most renowned paintings for his 2016 animated video Mona Lisa Smile, including taking the reins of Napoleon's white steed. Two years later, Beyonce and Jay-Z filmed their video Apeshit, utilizing Gericault's iconic The Raft of the Medusa, the Mona Lisa, and Napoleon's coronation to articulate poignant observations about the place and absence of black individuals in classical art history. More recently, the Louvre, the world's most frequented museum, stirred excitement with its images of a private tour granted to singer Celine Dion prior to her performance at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics in July.
