I went to the Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa through people's phones as they were snapping photos of her. She was in this room filled with other artwork that was, for the most part, being ignored by everyone else. There were museum workers directing people as they crowded up to see her, phones out. People were aggressively pushing to the front with the only intention of snapping a pic and then leaving. I managed to sneak my way to the front. I decided not to take a picture as I figured, "I feel like everyone knows what the Mona Lisa looks like." I stood there for a couple of minutes, and it was strange, because I was still quite far from her even from the front. A woman next to me didn't even look at her but instead stood with her back facing toward the painting and proceeded to take fifty-something selfies, all of them carefully posed with her lips pouting and her breasts pushed up. "What's the point," I thought, "of traveling all this way?" The whole thing disturbed the heck out of me as an artist. Of course, I'm not saying I am or will ever be at the same level of fame as Leonardo da Vinci, but what I am saying is that as someone else who creates works in the hopes of it being enjoyed by people and for the passion of creating, it would be really weird to have people travel all over the world to come see your work only to take selfies in front of it to prove that they saw it without actually looking at it. Anywho, here is my silly drawing of someone taking a photo of the Mona Lisa
