NYT:

In order to “imagine a new art, one must break the ancient art,” the French author Marcel Schwob wrote more than 100 years ago. Today, that call to action has been boldly made in the form of a Change.org petition demanding that Jeff Bezos buy and eat the Mona Lisa.

The petition, which at press time had over 9,200 signatures, was started by Kane Powell, a resident of Stevensville, Md. “Nobody has eaten the mona lisa and we feel jeff bezos needs to take a stand and make this happen,” his petition reads.

Mr. Powell isn’t wrong, in a matter of fact: Since it was painted by Leonardo da Vinci in the early 1500s, people have stolen the Mona Lisa, copied the Mona Lisa and thrown a teacup at the Mona Lisa — but no one has ever eaten it.

Mr. Powell came up with the idea for the petition — which, to be clear, is a joke — while at an Applebee’s with his fiancée and two friends before the pandemic. The group of four had dinner and started ordering from the $1 drink menu, and that’s when the ingenuity started to flow. “Jeff Bezos was in the news at the time,” Mr. Powell said. “We were like, ‘what if he bought it and ate it?’ It would be stupid and outlandish.”

Only in the past week or so has the petition gained any sort of traction. Mr. Powell said that he’d long forgotten that he had even made it.

RTWT

HT: Althouse.