L.H.O.O.Q.

[2] The readymade involves taking mundane, often utilitarian objects not generally considered to be art and transforming them, by adding to them, changing them, or (as in the case of his most famous work Fountain) simply renaming and reorienting them and placing them in an appropriate setting.

the found object (objet trouvé) is a cheap postcard reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's early 16th-century painting Mona Lisa onto which Duchamp drew a moustache and beard in pencil and appended the title.

in his magazine 391 could not wait for the work to be sent from New York City, so with the permission of Duchamp, drew the moustache on Mona Lisa himself (forgetting the goatee).

interpreted its meaning as being an attack on the iconic Mona Lisa and traditional art,[8] a stroke of épater le bourgeois promoting the Dadaist ideals.

In 1919 the cult of Jocondisme was practically a secular religion of the French bourgeoisie and an important part of their self image as patrons of the arts.

[14] An example of this technology is a copy of Mona Lisa with a series of different superpositions—first Duchamp's moustache, then an eye patch, then a hat, a hamburger, and so on.

[16] According to the website at which the material is located: The layers paradigm is significant in a computer-related or Internet context because it readily describes a system in which the person ultimately responsible for creating the composite (here, corresponding to [a modern-day] Duchamp) does not make a physical copy of the original work in the sense of storing it in permanent form (fixed as a copy) distributed to the end user.

or Mona Lisa reproduce the elements of the original, thereby creating an infringing reproduction, if the underlying work is protected by copyright.