Jameson would say that the image is an example of postmodernism. The image is a “Simpsonized” version of the Mona Lisa. It’s fairly strange and a definite deviation from the original painting that is so well know. Jameson notes:
“What has happened is that aesthetic production today has become integrated into commodity production generally: the fantic economic urgency of producting fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods (from clothing to aeroplanes), at ever greater rates of innovation and experimentation.”
The image is an example of this “experimentation” as well as an attempt to create a new commodity. The artist is trying to be funny and creative and to juxtapose two well-know visual images to create something visually innovative. This is the image’s pastiche. It is imitating Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting and creating from it something new and different. Pastiche, according to Jameson, is a fundamental tenet of postmodernism.
Jameson would also classify this as postmodern because its very light and meant to be perceived as a joke. Jameson says this “essential triviality” differs from the “Utopian high seriousness of the great modernisms.”
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