How did Andy Warhol use the Mona Lisa in Thirty Are Better than One?

In his 1963 work Thirty Are Better than One, Andy Warhol utilized the Mona Lisa to challenge the status of the painting as a singular, iconic masterpiece. By creating a serigraph that featured multiple reproductions of the portrait, Warhol engaged in the artistic trend of distorting and playing with the image of the Mona Lisa to comment on its fame.12

Warhol’s approach followed in the footsteps of artists like Marcel Duchamp, who had previously mocked the painting's status through irreverent defacement. By endlessly reproducing the image, Warhol and other artists contributed to the transformation of the sitter’s face into one of the most recognizable icons in the world, effectively stripping away the aura of the original work through mass-media repetition.12