THE NEED FOR CULT

Should you ever visit the Louvre, be sure to enter hall No. 6 on the second floor, to the right of the main entrance. It is not so difficult to do: all you have to do is to be guided by a plan and follow the stream of the hundreds of other visitors. In the hall, on the second-floor right-wing Denon?, you will see the picture, painted by a certain half-forgotten traveling master of arts Leonardo da Vinci, titled La Gioconda , also known to a few connoisseurs as Mona Lisa .

Frankly, we have become sick and tired of her throughout our adult lives. You have seen her on dozens (if not hundreds) reproductions, such as postcards, albums, catalogues, and slides; you also could not miss her depicted in history schoolbooks, on billboards, posters, labels, in caricatures, on plastic bags, T-shirts, wrappings, and on many other occasions. Moreover, songs have been composed in her honor, which you listened to in your salad years: one was sung by Nat King Cole, another by Aleksandr Gradsky, and still another by Marek Grechuta. In addition, she was once brought to the Soviet Union and shown in Moscow, with a squad of armed motorcyclists escorting a charming inflammable container, with her inside, to, if I am not mistaken, the Pushkin Museum. Then the empire's whole population rushed to see her: they were coming to Moscow from every corner of the country, by express, passenger, and freight trains, stood in a line for 12 hours in the rain, and walked in an endless flow just to approach what they thought was eternal. But this only a digression.

Going to the Louvre, you must remember that this is one of the world's largest museums keeping and exhibiting over 30,000 pieces of art divided into seven big collections and that no one is destined to pass through, see, comprehend, and commit to memory all this mass. You must be aware that, according to psychologists, you have not more than three hours of active attention: in the fourth hour all your senses become totally exhausted, and further examination makes no sense other than in terms of sport. So you should choose a three-hour itinerary, if only to see three percent of everything available.

Suppose you are destined to visit the Louvre only once. So you consciously reject the Middle East, Egypt, Etruria, Rome, household art, furniture, crockery, graphics, and temporary exhibitions. You only have a chance to see sculptures from the corner of an eye on your way to the right-wing second floor. What you leave for yourself is painting, to be more exact, Italian painting: a very long vaulted gallery. You should go down this gallery in one direction, then in the opposite along the other wall: you will have an ocean of emotions and impressions, and the very names will make you feel the sticky sweat of a winner in this well-ventilated hall (Fra Angelico! Piero della Francesca! Rafael! Signorelli! Giorgione! Caravaggio! Tintoretto! Palma! Bronsino!). But, in the long run, you will turn right to hall number six.

This hall also has many things. Suffice it to mention Marriage at Cana by Veronese, a wall-size solid blockbuster, ten by five meters, at a rough guess. But people bunch up in front of a different object, you know which. You will be drawn to it also once you get into this stuffy and narrow room (why, of all things, the air-conditioners do not work precisely here?!). And you see great adoration. Why do all these people from all over the world, the children of postmodern society and liberal values, brought up in the situation of a free choice and the rejection of lasting hierarchies, choose just this? Why do they so frantically, nervously, and thrilled elbow their way, cameras in hand, closer to the exhibit? Are they not satisfied with reproductions, postcards, song discs and bags, as well as with all that has been crammed into their heads about «the eternal secret of her smile?»

You surely guess that this is in fact the need for a cult, the vestiges of monotheism in atheistic structures. Or, in simple words, the desire for Something Singular, a Champion of the World.

So you push your way as hard as you can to approach closer to the picture in search of your personal association with all this.