L.H.O.O.Q (1919) is Marcel Duchamp's altered readymade, a cheap postcard of Leonardo's Mona Lisa with a mustache and goatee drawn on it, used in AP Art & Design (Topic 5.1) as the textbook example of appropriation: borrowing an existing image and transforming it to create new meaning.
L.H.O.O.Q is a 1919 work by Marcel Duchamp. He took a mass-produced postcard reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, drew a mustache and goatee on her face in pencil, and added the letters L.H.O.O.Q underneath. Read aloud in French, the letters sound like "Elle a chaud au cul," a crude joke that roughly translates to "She has a hot ass." The whole piece took minutes to make, and that's the point. Duchamp wasn't showing off technical skill; he was asking what actually makes something art.
For AP Art & Design, L.H.O.O.Q lives in Topic 5.1, Plagiarism vs Appropriation, because it's the cleanest possible example of the difference. Duchamp didn't try to pass off the Mona Lisa as his own painting (that would be plagiarism). He openly borrowed one of the most famous images on earth and transformed it, using the original's fame as raw material for a new idea about authorship, originality, and what art institutions decide to worship. The source is obvious on purpose. That transparency plus transformation is what makes it appropriation.
Topic 5.1 asks you to understand the line between plagiarism (copying work and claiming it as yours) and appropriation (intentionally borrowing existing imagery to make new meaning). L.H.O.O.Q is the go-to case study because the borrowed source couldn't be more famous and the transformation couldn't be more minimal, yet the meaning changes completely. A mustache and five letters turn a Renaissance icon into a critique of art-world reverence.
This matters directly for your AP portfolio. If you incorporate someone else's image, photo, character, or composition into your Sustained Investigation or Selected Works, you need to do what Duchamp did: transform it and let the borrowing carry conceptual weight. Work that copies a source without meaningful transformation can be flagged as plagiarism, and that's a real scoring and integrity problem. L.H.O.O.Q gives you the mental test: am I using this source to say something new, or am I just redrawing it?
Keep studying AP Art & Design Unit 5
Visual cheatsheet
view galleryAppropriation (Unit 5)
L.H.O.O.Q is appropriation's founding example. Duchamp openly took an existing image and recontextualized it, which is the core move every later appropriation artist (think Warhol's soup cans or Sherrie Levine's rephotographs) builds on. If you can explain why L.H.O.O.Q is appropriation, you understand the concept.
Plagiarism (Unit 5)
L.H.O.O.Q is the contrast case that makes plagiarism easier to define. Plagiarism hides the source and steals credit; Duchamp did the opposite, picking the most recognizable painting alive so the borrowing itself became the message. Visibility plus transformation is the dividing line.
Dadaism (Unit 5)
L.H.O.O.Q is a Dada work through and through. Dada artists after World War I attacked the idea that art had to be skillful, serious, and sacred, and defacing the Mona Lisa with a crude pun is that attack in one object. Knowing the Dada context explains why the joke is also a serious argument about what art is.
AP Art & Design has no multiple-choice or essay exam; you're assessed through your portfolio. But L.H.O.O.Q shows up constantly in practice questions and class discussions for Topic 5.1, usually asking three things: what Duchamp added to the Mona Lisa (a mustache and goatee), what the title translates to (the French pun "Elle a chaud au cul," roughly "she has a hot ass"), and what the conceptual impact was (challenging traditional ideas of originality, authorship, and what counts as art). The real payoff is in your portfolio writing. When you use appropriated imagery in your Sustained Investigation, your written evidence needs to explain how you transformed the source and why, which is exactly the reasoning L.H.O.O.Q models.
Plagiarism is presenting someone else's work as your own original creation, hiding the source. L.H.O.O.Q does the reverse. Duchamp chose the most famous painting in the world precisely so everyone would recognize it, then altered it to generate new meaning. That's appropriation: the borrowing is open, intentional, and transformative. The quick test is whether recognizing the source adds to the meaning (appropriation) or exposes a theft (plagiarism).
L.H.O.O.Q is Marcel Duchamp's 1919 work where he drew a mustache and goatee on a postcard reproduction of the Mona Lisa.
The title is a French pun; read aloud, the letters sound like "Elle a chaud au cul," a crude joke meaning roughly "she has a hot ass."
It's the classic AP example of appropriation, not plagiarism, because the source is openly recognizable and the alteration creates new meaning.
The work is Dadaist, mocking the idea that art must be skillful, original, and treated as sacred.
For your AP portfolio, L.H.O.O.Q models the rule for using existing imagery: transform the source and make the borrowing part of your idea, and document it in your written evidence.
L.H.O.O.Q is Marcel Duchamp's 1919 altered readymade, a postcard of Leonardo's Mona Lisa with a drawn-on mustache and goatee. In AP Art & Design it's the standard example of appropriation in Topic 5.1, Plagiarism vs Appropriation.
No. Duchamp never hid or claimed authorship of the original painting; he deliberately used its fame and transformed it to make a new statement about art and originality. That open, transformative borrowing is appropriation, the opposite of plagiarism.
Pronounced letter by letter in French, L.H.O.O.Q sounds like "Elle a chaud au cul," which translates roughly to "She has a hot ass." The crude pun is part of the work's Dadaist attack on art-world seriousness.
Plagiarism is copying someone's work and presenting it as your own, which violates AP's artistic integrity rules. Appropriation, like L.H.O.O.Q, openly uses a recognizable source and transforms it so the borrowing carries new meaning, and your written evidence should explain that transformation.
Its impact is conceptual, not technical. By defacing the most revered painting in Western art, Duchamp argued that the idea behind a work can matter more than craftsmanship, a Dadaist move that opened the door to conceptual art and decades of appropriation-based work.