A year ago, Kane Powell, a musician from Maryland, was at an Applebee’s with his friends, talking about the multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos. At some point in their conversation, Powell suggested that Bezos buy the Mona Lisa painting, and then eat it. It seems that he didn’t leave that idea where he was at the time, as he made a petition on Change.org about it.
“Nobody has eaten the mona lisa and we feel jeff bezos needs to take a stand and make this happen,” he wrote.
Now, a year later, the petition has gained thousands of signatures, meaning thousands of people are interested in seeing this happen. This might be one of the weirdest things that I have encountered. But apparently, in the art world, eating a painting is not that weird.
Amy Adler, an art law expert and professor at the New York University School of Law, told the New York Times that the hypothetical idea of Bezos buying and eating the painting would fall “within the tradition of destruction of art as a way of creating art.” Other artists have carried out this practice in recent decades, Adler noted, such as Robert Rauschenberg, who spent a month erasing a drawing by Willem de Kooning in 1953.
The Louvre Museum has already seen the petition, but the institution said that they will not comment on said petition.
(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)