Since it was painted, there have been many parodies of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, but she has remained an unknown woman, a famous woman, without characteristics or background. Nick decided that here was a model, giving the Treadwell gallery artists the opportunity to make clear the individuality of their treatment of a single subject. Furthermore, it was likely to inspire humour, and since it was such a historic and publicly well known image, it would certainly be a very entertaining and easily promotable theme exhibition. In fact, the Treadwell Gallery’s 1974 “Mona Lisa Show” received world wide publicity, including a four page article in the American Art News by the legendary critic, Peter Fuller( 1947-1990). Works were lent to the Duisberg Museum(Germany) for their later exhibition and six of the thirty five exhibited works were published in Mary Rose Storey’s book on the Mona Lisas, Published by Abrams, New York. A few years after the event, Nick was pleased to receive a request for a copy of the catalogue from the Louvre.
