LEGO Mona Lisa underlines how LEGO Art has evolved as a theme

The LEGO Art theme has evolved over the years and comparing the accuracy of 31213 Mona Lisa to its real-life counterpart is evidence of that.

Back in 2022, then-LEGO Design Manager Fiorella Groves noted in a public statement that one of the major obstacles involved in creating the now-retired 31206 The Rolling Stones was getting it as close to the original as possible.

“Since the tongue logo is one of the most recognized logos, our biggest challenge was to figure out how we could get the LEGO Art design as close to the original as possible,” she said.

However, this hasn’t remained the case for every LEGO Art set. Over time and with every new work of art tackled by the ever-growing theme, the LEGO Art team has pushed the boundaries of what can be achieved with bricks. While this stays close to the inspiration where it needs to, there also appears to be a growing freedom to do the best LEGO version of an artwork, rather than render it as closely as possible.

Just over a year after her comments on 31206 The Rolling Stones, Fiorella was back chatting with Brick Fanatics to discuss 31208 Hokusai – The Great Wave: “What the British Museum did was [to recreate] a version of their own where they reimagined what the actual colours would have looked like in one of the early editions. That is where we had our big ‘aha’s. Why don’t we create what it looked like fresh, rather than as it looks now?”

This more interpretative approach resulted in a truly stunning set and one that, while still clearly based on Hokusai’s original work, also takes its own creative liberties. The use of stacked LEGO elements means that it appears to splash out from the brick-built frame and the colours are far more vibrant than what we can see today.

As Fiorella notes, the LEGO Art set is based on a combination of the modern version of the artwork and The British Museum’s reimagined look at what it might have looked like in the early 1800s. It doesn’t attempt to exactly recreate every detail of the modern piece of art but instead creates an impressive and engaging LEGO set in its own right.

This approach is echoed in other sets, such as LEGO Ideas 21333 Vincent van Gogh – The Starry Night and more recently 31212 The Milky Way Galaxy. Although the latter is not strictly speaking based on a single piece of art, it has clearly used images of the Milky Way as inspiration – but without restricting itself to trying to meticulously recreate every pixellated inch of our galaxy.

We at Brick Fanatics have already mused about whether accuracy to the source material affects how effective of a LEGO Art set something is, and that debate comes to the fore in another recent release, 31213 Mona Lisa. Some LEGO fans over on reddit have criticised the set for looking slightly goofy in its recreation of the subject’s face, comparing it to British comedian Jimmy Carr or arguing that the LEGO Art team should have gone full LEGO mode and depicted her looking like a minifigure.

However, looking over the theme as a whole, staying close to the original source material isn’t a must to make for a strong set. Just as 21333 Vincent van Gogh – The Starry Night took some liberties in presenting the village in the foreground as physically jutting out from the frame, 31213 Mona Lisa does the same in capturing the spirit of the original Mona Lisa, with printed elements for the eyes and adding depth to the forehead and eyebrows to recreate the intense stare from the original piece.

While it’s easy to critique LEGO Art sets by just placing one next to the other, it’s important to also look at the growth of a theme as a whole. As evidenced in Fiorella’s comments in 2022 and 2023, the theme is finding its place in creating LEGO sets that don’t just replicate important artworks, but interpret them into whole new pieces of art all of their own.

31213 Mona Lisa is available to pre-order right now, with the LEGO Art set launching on October 1, 2024, for £89.99 / $99.99 / €99.99. 

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