For some weird motive, 1000’s of individuals need Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to purchase and eat the Mona Lisa. To make clear, the Mona Lisa in query just isn’t meals, it’s in all probability the identical Mona Lisa you’re considering of—the portray by Leonardo da Vinci that lives within the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Earlier this week, an on-line petition for Bezos to purchase and eat the well-known portray out of the blue began choosing up traction. The humorous factor is, the petition isn’t even new, it was began a 12 months in the past by a Maryland musician named Kane Powell. Powell informed Vice that he and his pals had been at an Applebee’s speaking about Bezos, on condition that Amazon was within the information at the moment, and mentioned he can purchase it “simply because he has the cash to do it.” It could make an enormous assertion, he mentioned.

Nevertheless, Powell and his pals weren’t carried out. Powell mentioned that not solely ought to Bezos purchase the portray, he also needs to eat it. When requested why he really helpful that Bezos eat the portray, Powell gave a easy reply: “I truthfully don’t know.”

Again when he created the petition, Powell appeared to have a clearer thought, although.

“No one has eaten the mona lisa and we really feel jeff bezos must take a stand and make this occur,” he wrote.

As loopy because it appears, there are actually individuals speaking about what it could really imply if Bezos purchased and ate the Mona Lisa and what may occur to him.

In terms of what Bezos is most recognized for, being the richest man on the earth, the cash seems to be the straightforward half. It’s not simple to place a worth on the portray, though some have tried. Final 12 months, French tech CEO Stéphane Distinguin instructed it may very well be bought for at the very least $60 billion, Vice identified. The cash may very well be used to maintain losses associated to the pandemic, he maintained. It could be greater than 100 occasions the price of the best worth of bought paintings in historical past—Salvator Mundi, additionally by da Vinci—however with a web value of $200 billion, Bezos may afford it.

The opposite query, consuming it, apparently wouldn’t be that bizarre within the artwork world. Amy Adler, an artwork legislation knowledgeable and professor on the New York College College of Regulation, informed the New York Occasions that the hypothetical thought of Bezos shopping for and consuming the portray would fall “throughout the custom of destruction of artwork as a means of making artwork.” Different artists have carried out this follow in latest many years, Adler famous, comparable to Robert Rauschenberg, who spent a month erasing a drawing by Willem de Kooning in 1953.

The ensuing Erased de Kooning Drawing is a part of the San Francisco Museum of Fashionable Artwork’s everlasting assortment.

“The ability of Erased de Kooning Drawing derives from the attract of the unseen and from the enigmatic nature of Rauschenberg’s choice to erase a de Kooning. Was it an act of homage, provocation, humor, patricide, destruction, or, as Rauschenberg as soon as instructed, celebration?” the museum writes. “Erased de Kooning Drawing eludes simple solutions, its mysterious beginnings leaving it open to a variety of current and future interpretations.”

Although cash and notion wouldn’t be an issue, evidently the most important problem would come from really ingesting the Mona Lisa. Da Vinci painted it on a thin-grained tree plank and coated it with a thick coat of lead white primer, Vice defined. You recognize, lead, the identical substance that may kill you. The artist additionally used pigments in his palettes manufactured from silica, iron oxide, tin oxide, and bone mud, amongst others.

Nonetheless, judging by the Louvre’s response, there seems to be little likelihood that Bezos would have the possibility to purchase the Mona Lisa, a lot much less eat it.

“We’ve got seen the petition however the Musée du Louvre won’t remark,” Sophie Grange, the museum’s deputy director of communication, mentioned in a assertion.