Who's that girl?
When I see you next year, I might forget your face. I’m sure you’ll understand. With our faces half-covered in masks or fully covered in shields, and with us at least six feet apart, it’s a miracle we still recognize each other. In fact, if not for the economy crying for help, we aren’t even supposed to see each other until all is clear, that is,until a vaccine at last is available, affordable, and—more important—safe to use. Our homes now serve the purpose of a bomb shelter, except the bomb is an invisible, insidious virus that anyone with or without symptoms could carry, including you and I.
Art would have been the perfect refuge in a storm like this, in which isolation and disconnection are the prescribed behavior. I would not have minded being quarantined at the Louvre and spending my interminable hours of solitude meditating on Napoleon’s favorite Italian sculptor Antonio Canova’s Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss, imagining a world where kisses were not against protocol. Alas, the Louvre, like most museums around the world, had been shuttered, others permanently, and while some museums like the Louvre, the Tate in London, and the National Gallery Singapore are now open, who will fly me there? Here, the National Museum of the Philippines is closed and who knows when it will open?
So, in desperation, in this time of mandatory masks, home stays, and perpetual social distancing, I’ve decided to commit these faces to my memory, not only so I will instantly recognize them when I see them again, maybe next year, maybe two years from now, or—God forbid!—maybe in 10 years, but so I will remember, never forget that, though art is deemed non-essential in our struggle against this apocalyptic virus, it is essential to my humanity, it is essential to my soul, and it is essential to the rest of my days on earth in case they are already numbered.
Join me, if you agree. Tell me who each of these girls is. No cheating!
1. The best clue, alas, is beneath the mask.
Year: 1503
Medium: Oil on poplar panel
Artist: Leonardo da Vinci
Location: The Louvre Museum, Paris
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2. “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.”
Year: 1906
Medium: Oil on canvas
Artist: Pablo Picasso
Location: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
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3. She’s not Salma Hayek.
Year: 1940
Medium: Oil on canvas
Artist: Frida Kahlo
Location: Harry Ransom Center, Austin, Texas
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4. “Pink is the navy blue of India.”
Year: 1934
Medium: Oil on canvas
Artist: William Acton
Location: Private collection
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5. She met the artist when she was 17 and became his lover and model for many years.
Year: 1912
Medium: Oil on panel
Artist: Egon Schiele
Location: Leopold Museum, Vienna
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6. Through her portrait, the artists entered the Art Noveau scene
Year: 1898
Medium: Oil on canvas
Artist: Gustav Klimt
Location: Belvedere Palace and Museum, Vienna
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7. She started a controversy that led to the term Fauvism
Year: 1905
Medium: Oil on canvas
Artist: Henri Mattisse
Location: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
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8. She was the mistress of the Duke of Milan.
Year: 1489
Medium: oil on walnut paper
Artist: Leonardo da Vinci
Location: Princes Czartoryski Museum, Kraków, Poland
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9. “It’s not true I had nothing on. I had the radio on.”
Year: 1962
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Artist: Andy Warhol
Location: Tate Modern, London
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10. Scarlet Johansson
Year: 1665
Medium: Oil on canvas
Artist: Johannes Vermeer
Location: Mauritshuis, The Hague, The Netherlands
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Answers: 1. Mona Lisa 2. Gertrude Stein 3. Frida Kahlo 4. Diana Vreeland 5. Wally Neuzil 6. Sonja Knips 7. Amelie Matisse 8. Cecilia Gallerani 9. Marilyn Monroe 10. The girl with the pearl earring