By John Soltes / Editor in Chief
RUTHERFORD (April 22, 2010, 3:45 p.m.) — Victor Victori is an artist who likes to show his audience tangible evidence — evidence of his artistic skill, evidence of his visionary sculpting and even evidence of the birth date on his New Jersey driver’s license.
“Look, it’s right here,” Victori said during a recent interview with The Leader. The Rutherford-based painter, whose work has been commissioned by politicians and bigwigs alike, pulled out his photo I.D. and pointed to the line showing his date of birth: 04-15-1943.
The reason behind the disclosure is the crux of Victori’s latest work of gargantuan and exhausting proportion. In honor of Leonardo da Vinci, Victori painted, over the span of nearly 24 hours, 10 exact renderings of the famed Mona Lisa, the celebrated portrait of a lady with a deceptively alluring visage. The connection between the well-known local artist and the great Italian master is simple, yet profound: they share the same birthday.
“And he died at 67,” Victori said with a laugh. “I’m 67 now.”
The Mona Lisa challenge was a thought that came to the artist several years ago when he was trying to convince the Guinness World Records organization to recognize his accomplishments. After all, who could say they drew several exact representations of the Mona Lisa in 24 hours?
To prove he had the determination, he painted six Mona Lisas several years ago in a similar time span. One of them was 6 feet tall and, according to the artist, was sold to MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann for $10,000. “Keith Olbermann walked into my gallery and said, ‘Wow,’ ” Victori remembered. “So I sold it to him.”
That massive painting took him 10 hours to complete. The other five took a total of 12 hours. But that was years ago, when Victori was “much younger.” In the time since, the artist has become interested in the growing fascination with the Mona Lisa, perhaps the most recognizable and famous painting in the world. “I was Googling and You Tubing and found such obsession with Mona Lisa,” he said.
So, he challenged himself to paint 10 renderings of the iconic lady before he died. That inner challenge stayed dormant for several years: the difficulty of the task was not something the artist relished. “For da Vinci, it took him a couple of years,” he said. “It is hard to do non-stop.”
But eventually the time seemed right, and Victori began the preparations. One early stipulation was that the artist wanted to paint in a public space. “I didn’t want to do it in my house,” he said, “because no one would have believed it.”
Instead, the stage was set for Victori’s public gallery at the Menlo Park Mall in Edison. Over the span of three days (the total painting time was 24 hours, with breaks), Victori toiled away, breathing life into 10 women. In fact, near the end of the challenge, he realized he had enough time to paint more, but 10 was too auspicious of a round number.
“A lot of spectators were watching,” said the artist who was born in South Korea and studied in Europe (he moved to Rutherford 30 years ago). In his lifetime, he has seen the actual Mona Lisa several times and credits da Vinci as a major influence.
That inspiration has certainly spawned quite the career: Victori is internationally renowned for his multiplism technique that displays several faces and personalities on solitary figures. In his own 67 years behind the brush, Victori has painted some 30,000 paintings, everything from portraits of Donald Trump to murals of fleshy circles of life. “Now I’m slowing down,” he said somberly. “After this, I’m absolutely exhausted. It’ll knock you out. … I would have a heart attack if I did it again.”
The re-creation was a deviation from Victori’s usual creation. “Creation you do research, you call up some models, you do brainstorming, you find some influence,” he said. “(On the Mona Lisas), many keep saying, ‘Why do you do that? You’re cheapening yourself.’ But I don’t think anyone can do it. And I want to prove it to myself.”
Victori’s wife, Maria, kept vigil and recorded the entire ordeal, keeping track of all the restroom breaks and progress. “They are perfect,” Maria said. “I don’t think it has ever been done.”
The project was completed right before Victori’s 67th birthday and what would have been da Vinci’s 558th birthday.
The result, which is still on display in Edison, is like viewing the original in the Louvre in Paris — just with exponential double vision, because Victori has 10 sets of eyes staring coyly at spectators.
“They are the same size as the original,” he said. “They are 21 inches by 30 inches.”
When Victori paints, it’s normally with a determined specificity. For this project, he had a printout of the original painting nearby, serving as a visual reminder for his strokes. He brandished his palette, messy with the colors of the spectrum, in his left hand as he raised his skinny brush like a blunt sword in his right.
And from that discordant pool of vibrancy in his left hand came artistic restraint and precise shading with his right, as if the chaos of the palette worked through Victori’s body until it emptied through his brush onto waiting blankness.
After the paintings were completed, and with time to spare, Victori waxed, varnished and let the oil-on-panels dry. Each Mona Lisa was done individually (taking about two hours each); when one was completed, he moved to the next lady in waiting.
“There are a lot of people who try to do one Mona Lisa,” Victori said. “Even doing two in one day is probably pretty tough. I have done 10.”
The artist, almost always in a stylized hat and dark shades, said the project was not about him or even the famous painting itself. It was about the challenge of overcoming the odds — he has re-created perfection, 10 times over. As he put it, “It’s a new world record, because I broke my own record.”
The future plans for the paintings are undecided. Initially, Victori was thinking they could be placed in his house on Ridge Road, which he said would soon become a museum displaying artwork.
But it does seem that if the price were right, Victori would part with his 10 Mona Lisas. “For $10,000 each, I’d probably let it go,” he said with a laugh. “I’d just take a picture and let it go.”
Well, Guinness World Records, consider yourself invited to Victori’s gallery.
(Photo of Victori provided by artist.)
