Miro’s mannequin features a rather fetching moustache, reminiscent of Duchamp’s notorious graffiti moustache on the Mona Lisa L.H.O.O.Q.
“The curious thing about that moustache and goatee is that when you look at it the Mona Lisa becomes a man. It is not a woman disguised as a man; it is a real man, and that was my discovery, without realizing it at the time.” – Marcel Duchamp
This mannequin along with Duchamp’s also then plays with notions of gender but again the garment does not protect her from the viewer’s gaze with her female sexuality still clearly on display. She stands atop a drawing and a music sheet of a love song.
Linking the mannequin to the lines in space is a wheel so this had associations with Arachne, the spinner of man’s fate on her spinning wheel. An initial animation test created a rather monstrous figure with the moustache growing into claws and the whole figure becoming more insect like.
The lines also relate to the beginnings of drawing with light, the photo I thought of was of Picasso drawing a centaur which I went searching for and saw that Man Ray was experimenting in his photography with “space writing” in 1935, creating his signature with a pen light. My own childhood version was writing my name with a sparkler at Guy Fawkes.
