Critical Review
Low Res Mona, a limited edition screen print by the French street artist Invader, depicts a low-res, highly pixelated image of Leonardo’s Da Vinci’s ubiquitous Mona Lisa.
In his signature, chunky, retro and pixelated style, Invader has re-made the image of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa; her posture still discernible. The background of mysterious, atmospheric mountains has been distilled into crude, chunky pixels of bright yellow, green and orange. Yet, it is unmistakably Mona Lisa.
Mimicking the heavy pixelation of a highly magnified computer file, Invader dubs his style ‘Rubik’s Cubism’, as the colourful pixels comprising the image echo the colourful squares covering the face of a Rubik’s cube. One of the most recognisable faces in the world, Da Vinci’s Mona is one of the most replicated and reinterpreted, and Invader’s version reinterprets the image to suit his iconic, video-game aesthetic.
