You and me, both.
Like all art, its "greatness" is subjective and comes from various sources, those keepers of avant-garde and trend-setters in the art world.
Personally, I like this Vermeer--also at the Lourve--much better:
I have never understood why the Mona Lisa is considered the greatest painting of all time.
“Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa may be one of the most beloved artworks in the world. “
Seen it up close and personal and it’s a meh. There are probably at least 1,000 other paintings I like better.
if read the 1911 theft you’ll see this: ...and then took the painting, which at the time was considered a minor work by Leonardo...
Now you know it wasn’t till it was stolen
Because some "journalist" said so in a published article?
You and me, both.
Like all art, its "greatness" is subjective and comes from various sources, those keepers of avant-garde and trend-setters in the art world.
Personally, I like this Vermeer--also at the Lourve--much better:
“Greatest” is subjective, but it is the best known. It’s in the Louvre, and France is the most visited country in the world. It was famously stolen and attacked. The enigmatic smile attracted a lot of attention among writers. It is an oil painting on a panel and not something on a ceiling high above. It’s also not decaying like Leonardo’s “Last Supper.” And Leonardo got his reputation before Rembrandt or Velasquez and it’s been hard to dislodge him from the Number 1 position.
Same reason some people think Picasso, Rothko and Pollock painted actual "art." It's part of the trappings of elitism.
Tom Wolfe laws down the law on "modern art" in his book, "The Painted Word." Here's a snippet:
All these years I, like so many others, had stood in from of a thousand, two thousand, God-knows-how-many thousand Pollocks, de Koonigs, Newmans, Nolands, Rothkos, Rauschenbergs, Judds, Johnses, Olitskis, Louises, Stills, Frans Klines, Frankenthalers, Kellys and Frank Stellas, now squinting, now popping eye sockets wide open, now drawing back, now moving vcloser -- waiting, waiting, forever waiting for ... it ... for it to come into focus, namely, the visual reward (for so much effort) which must be there, which everyone (tout le monde) knew to be therre -- waiting for something to radiate directly from the painting on these invariably pure white walls, in this room, in this moment, into my own optic chiasma. All these years, in short, I had assumed that in art, if nowhere else, seeing is believing. Well -- how very shortsighted! Now, at last, on April 28, 1974, I could see. Not "seeing is believing," you ninny, but "believing is seeing," for Modern Art has become completely literary; the paintings and other works exist only to illustrate the text.Rich people buy art for more that it should be worth by any reasonable standard because it's a tax-free place to park their money. In the 1950s and 60s the CIA actually spread out tens of millions of dollars among well-placed art "aficionados" so they could buy modern art crap hoping it would cause the USSR to despair that our taste in "art" showed we were so "intellectual" and "cosmopolitan." Which is how modern art first got "monetized" on a grand scale.
As for the Mona Lisa, I've seen it in person and I can't tell if that's a smile or Bell's palsy. If I had seen it without knowing anything about it and you asked me to write a 100-word essay on what it looks like, I doubt I'd have mentioned any alleged "smile," even once. It's just not that extraordinary a piece of art (apart from being evidence of Leonardo's mastery of "sfumato"). The reasons(s) it's famous is because it was painted by someone extraordinarily famous, and because it has an exciting history."
When it was stolen in 1911, the art-loving Parisians breathed a giant group ... "Meh!." Up until then they'd never been much impressed with it and couldn't be bothered to shed a tear that it had been stolen. It wasn't until after it was recovered that she started becoming an art superstar.
The Froggies lent her to MOMAR in 1962 & 63. First Lady Jackie Kennedy looked at it and called it "the greatest painting in the world." And she was the most beautiful, stylish, most cosmopolitan woman on the face of the earth, so all the little speeple said, "Baa-aaa-aa-aaaa."