Name: The Controversy Surrounding the "Male Mona Lisa"
Uploaded: 2021-05-08T17:31:59.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Controversy Surrounding the "Male Mona Lisa"' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-05-08. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Controversy Surrounding the "Male Mona Lisa"' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-05-08. Transcript available.

The Joe Rogan Experience. Are you aware of the controversy surrounding the male
Mona Lisa?
Do you know the story about this? The male-a-lisa? No. No. Yeah, it's um, there's
the most expensive painting ever sold.
It was sold for four hundred million dollars to the
Bin Salam, what is, excuse, what is his name? Salaman? Mohammed Bin Salam, the,
am I saying his name right?
The head of Saudi Arabia? MBS. MBS. Okay.
What is his actual name though? I'm sorry. I think you were close. I fucked it
up. It's probably Brian Saunders.
Mohammed Bin Salaman. No, close. Salaman. Salaman, yes. Okay, the MBS, the head
of Saudi Arabia, bought it for
four hundred and fifty million dollars. This is it. And the crazy thing is
someone bought it at one point in time in the past,
I want to say for fifteen hundred dollars. And they didn't realize that it may
or may not be, because this is where it gets controversial, may or may not be
the work of Leonardo da Vinci.
So, it was, it was restored. So, do the history of this, the controversy and
the history of it.
There's a documentary about it. Yeah, there's a, there's a crazy history to it,
um, where someone bought it for extremely low amount and then a Russian oligarch
bought it for over a hundred million dollars. See, one thousand one hundred and
seventy five dollars at an attic sale in New Orleans for a dirty painting that
he hadn't even seen.
After a painstaking restoration that I think took a decade, some began
whispering that it might be that by the master himself.
So, an art dealer in 2005 paid one thousand one hundred seventy five dollars
for it. So, sixteen years ago, someone paid a thousand one hundred seventy five
dollars for the most expensive painting ever sold.
So, then, this guy, go down, scroll down. I can't get, this article is, uh. Oh,
it's one of them. Oh, it's the economist. Um, there's a bunch of other articles
that are free that you can read about it, but it's, uh, it's a crazy story.
So, this, this person, I believe, started working on it in 2005. Started the
restoration. And then, by the time, I think it was around 2015, they started
realizing, like, holy shit.
Because I guess, sometimes, in the past, someone would take a great painting
and they would paint over it.
Uh huh. Yes, I've heard of this. Which is crazy. Yes.
And so, then, there's this insanely painstaking restoration project. Holy shit.
Where you're removing layer upon layer upon layer. What?
Sixty dollars. This was sold for in 1958.
Sixty dollars. So, it gets even crazier.
Yeah. This is an article from 2017 where it was on auction for even less than
it just sold for it.
Yeah. So, it was on auction for a hundred million dollars then, and that's when
it was bought by the Russian oligarch, before MBS bought it.
So, is the controversy that the person who originally bought it should get a
kickback because they didn't know the value?
No. No. Here's the controversy. The controversy is, it may not be by Leonardo
da Vinci at all.
I see. And, or it might be partly by da Vinci. I see.
And so, google this. There's a scan of the image, and I don't understand the
technology involved in the scan,
but the scan apparently revealed that there's more than one era of painting, or
there's more than one
application of painting, meaning that more than one person worked on it at more
than one time.
Like an exquisite corpse. Hidden drawing.
So, this might not. No, no. This doesn't reveal it. This is not it. It's, it's
about,
there's a digital scan of that painting. What is it called again?
It said male Mona Lisa. I don't know.
There's another name for it. There's a, there's a name for that painting. I
forget what it is, but.
Salvatore Mundi. Mundi.
Salvatore Mundi. So, when they did the scan, there's something about the hands
and the way the paint
is done on that in relation to the rest of it that it's like, you know, they're
talking about like
fucking microns. They're measuring depth and layers and age and all sorts of
different shit.
And they try, but it's, well, you're dealing with $450 million for a fucking
painting.
Jesus.
So, it gets down to this dispute. This is a long page about it.
Okay. See if you can see this, the images, because there's images of the, the
analysis.
Have you scrolled down? It's a beautiful painting.
Yeah, it is very beautiful. Oh, there we go.
There's, there's images. Is that what it used to look like on the right?
I think that's what it used to look like. And then they slowly, but surely
restored it
to the point where it's at now. Is that what it looked like?
There's versions of it too. People would, yeah, there's more than one version
of it.
So people would buy paintings like, you know, a hundred years ago, 500 years
ago,
and just fucking start scribbling on it, paint over it. Yeah.
So they had to go over these things to restore them like insanely painstaking.
Like I said, it took like 10 years to, to restore this.
I see. I see. They're doing like these, this is a, what do you call it?
Cross section analysis. Yeah. Yeah.
Wild shit.
Yeah. Cause they have to find like, what is the original paint color?
So they have to find the original layer.
Exactly. So that's what it used to look like. Imagine that.
And then they bring it from that to what you see now. Like, look at that.
Oh wow.
Crazy. So, but what does that mean then? Do they paint over it?
Like, how do they do that?
I mean, does someone paint over the old paint and make it look better? Is that
better?
Like, isn't it better to be scratchy and all fucked up and the original
painting?
I know. I know. It's, it's, yeah, I guess it just depends on what you want,
right? I mean.
But that's the problem with this painting. So after all that, after buying it
for $450 million,
it's currently in controversial dispute as to whether or not it's actually the
work of Leonardo da Vinci.
So they, he, they wanted him to, uh, donate it to the Louvre in Paris.
Yeah.
But they were like, we're not going to put it next to the Mona Lisa.
He wanted it to be next to the Mona Lisa as the male Mona Lisa, the Mona Lisa,
the male Mona Lisa.
And they're like, uh-uh. They're like, we don't, we don't, we're not going to
give this the red stamp.
We don't even know if this is real.
- Wow. - Yeah.
- Interesting. Yeah. It's just, oh man, could you imagine that, that feeling of
being rejected like that?
- Well, imagine when you're that guy, you're that guy. I mean, this is the guy
that allegedly killed, uh, Jamal Khashoggi.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah. - For criticizing his regime.
- Yes, right. - Um, and have you ever seen that movie, The Dissident?
Which is an incredible movie, but Brian Fogle that details all the, the, the,
the events that took place.
- Oh no, I haven't seen that. - Crazy.
- But so he, he's the one that's in possession of this painting and now it's
currently on his yacht.
So this $450 million painting is on his yacht. And so art fanatics are like,
you can't have a painting on a yacht.
Like that's, that's 400, well, not just that, the, the climate, like to have
these.
- Oh, you're right. The seawater.
- Yes. To have these paintings. I mean, maybe he only had it for a day or maybe
he only had it like to tell
everybody he had it there. - Yeah.
- Maybe he actually has it in a climate control room. - Yeah, I imagine he
would. I mean, come on.
- I don't know, I mean, he's, he's balling out of his mind. - Yeah, that's.
- He's buying $450 million paintings. He might be paying on it right now.
- But that's nothing, that's nothing to him. - Might do whatever he wants.
- Yeah, he can do whatever you want. - He can do whatever he wants.
If you've got the kind of money for a $450 million painting, but it might not
be, it might not be legit.
And apparently, so I go down a rabbit hole. - Yes.
- Apparently there is a massive market for illegitimate paintings and people
get robbed all the time.
And there was in fact a guy who was a master. There's, I believe there's a
documentary about him.
- Oh. There's a big one on Netflix about this right now. I thought that's what
you're getting at.
- Oh, like the master forgers? - The horror of the theft.
- Well, there was a guy who was, that was his trade. What he would do was make
fake Picassos.
So he would make his own work, but in the style of Picasso. And they would
claim that this was a lost Picasso.
- Whoa. - And he sold these things for millions, millions of dollars.
- This is the Netflix one. This lady got, they found she was selling fake shit
for a long time.
- Oh, okay. I didn't, I don't know. - Just a lot of people off.
- I've not seen that one, but there's a guy, um, he was, he did time and he got
released eventually.
And he did time for creating fake masterpieces. And it's really crazy because
the guy was insanely talented.
- Right. - Like his art was magnificent.
- Right, right, right. - But it wasn't Michelangelo's.
- But he conned people. - Yeah, he conned people.
- I mean, the art was great, but he conned people. - But it was, it's, it's
weird.
It's like, it's so, my uncle said this to me once. This is really a funny thing.
Because when I was a kid, I would pretend I brushed my teeth, right? But I, I
really didn't brush my teeth.
And my uncle, my uncle Vinny, who's a really interesting guy. He's a very
creative guy. He's an artist.
And he said, it's funny because I used to do the same thing. But once,
eventually I realized,
I put so much effort into pretending that I brushed my teeth, that I could have
just brushed my teeth
with that same amount of effort. And I wouldn't have to pretend. And I thought
about it. I'm like,
God damn, he's smart.
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