Elle a chaud au cul
Upon his return to Paris in the summer of 1919, Duchamp purchased a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, the most beloved of the Louvre paintings and the ultimate emblem of sanctified, museum art. He then defaced the sitter’s famous, enigmatic smile with a hastily-drawn moustache and beard and added five letters underneath the image: L.H.O.O.Q. When spoken aloud in French, the letters spell out the sentence "Elle a chaud au cul" (She has a hot ass). Duchamp later provided an alternative reading:
"In reference to the Mona Lisa I also added a sentence of initials on the bottom of that reproduction—L.H.O.O.Q. A loose translation of them would be ‘there is fire down below.’"
Duchamp’s timing was by no means coincidental. 1919 marked the 400th anniversary of Leonardo’s death, prompting a renewed discourse around the Renaissance master. Also, the theft of the cherished painting from the Louvre and its subsequent return in 1913 had given the already instantly recognisable image even greater gravitas and visibility. The artist described his infamous act as follows:
"I had the idea that a painting cannot, must not be looked at too much. It becomes desecrated by the very act of being seen too much. It reaches a point of exhaustion. In 1919, when Dada was in full blast, and we were demolishing many things, the Mona Lisa became a prime victim. I put a moustache and a goatee on her face simply with the idea of desecrating it."
The artist’s embellishments of the original image also prompt considerations of sexual ambiguity, metamorphosis and identity—themes that were central to Duchamp’s practice. By transforming the Mona Lisa into a man, Duchamp created a hybrid, androgynous ideal, a character not unlike his feminine alter ego, Rrose Sélavy (indeed another source of evocative word play: ‘Eros c'est la vie’, or ‘Eros is life’).

Duchamp revisited his favourite target, La Gioconda, several times throughout his career. He created this edition in 1964 for the book Marcel Duchamp, Propos et souvenirs by Pierre de Massot, the French writer associated with Dada and Surrealism. Propos et souvenirs was published in a small edition of 35 plus three proofs: one for Duchamp, one for the artist’s close friend and scholar, Arturo Schwarz, and one for the author—the dedicated impression offered here.
This impression was subsequently acquired by Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd, an artist whose work was undoubtedly shaped by the oeuvre of his French predecessor. The kindred artists shared several enduring preoccupations, many of which are revealed in the present work: an interest in the complexity and obscurity of language; an appreciation of wit, parody and absurdity; and an inclination for irreverence, sedition and rebellion. Perhaps most significantly, Reuterswärd also took up Duchamp’s most notorious and momentous exploit: the use of the Readymade—an act so powerfully coopted in L.H.O.O.Q.—and one which irrevocably altered the trajectory twentieth-century art.
How Marcel Duchamp Used the Iconic Mona Lisa to Challenge Artistic Tradition | Sotheby's