It looks excellently done and I understand why it’s faceless but my first reaction was still:

I have to admit i hoped for something that was more quintessentially Chinese when i read the headline. This is pretty clearly inspired by western Renaissance art styles in the choice of pose and colors, the way the fabric is rendered, etc. It’s obviously deliberately reminiscent of traditional Virgin Mary paintings. I dig the anti-consumerist twist though, with all the unnecessary “bling”. Not sure if I like the facelessness. It underscores the message but it’s off-putting. Maybe that’s the point.

I don’t know, i’ve never been a big art critic. I just know what i like and what i don’t like and this one doesn’t do it for me. It reminds me too much of the West’s cultural hegemony in art, like when Asian composers feel they have to write music that follows all the conventions of classical European music in order to be taken seriously, instead of drawing on their own countries’ musical traditions which the western culture snobs view as inferior to “real art”… that sort of thing always gives me the ick.

In most cases, it’s the arts that make the artists famous, but in Mona Lisa’s case, it’s the artist that gives the art its worth. Leonardo Da Vinci was famous not because of the Mona Lisa, but because of his other works of science. The Mona Lisa was but a side project to him, he needed to do commission because he needed to survive.