Black and white abstract painting with layered silhouettes and blurred forms suggesting museum crowd and icon by Ritu Raj

Mona Lisa in a crowded Louvre

Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Size: 6ft x 6ft
Creation Date: 2024
Collection: Black and White

Mona Lisa in a crowded Louvre (2024) is a reflection on looking — and being looked at. This 72 x 72 inch monochromatic acrylic painting from the Black and White Collection captures the tension between icon and audience, myth and moment, reverence and spectacle.

At the heart of the composition is a rectangular form — the suggestion of a painting — obscured by gestural marks, overlapping circles, camera flashes, and blurred silhouettes. It is not a depiction of da Vinci’s portrait, but a field of interruptions and echoes. White glazes simulate reflected light; smudged blacks evoke shifting crowds and fleeting glances.

I created this work after observing the Mona Lisa in person — or rather, observing people observing her. The painting became secondary to the crowd. Everyone looking. No one seeing. That contradiction fascinated me.

Inspired by the conceptual strategies of On Kawara and the visual layering of Julie Mehretu, this piece merges performance and memory. The crowd becomes the subject. The icon becomes an absence.

Mona Lisa in a crowded Louvre is not about the painting. It’s about what the painting means in the age of spectatorship.