I’d Know That Face Anywhere: Cliff and Shelley Keepers

I spent the last 11 years of my professional life as CEO of The Onion, America’s Finest News Source. Comedy—satire, specifically—was our stock in trade, but it was no laughing matter. The dozen or so comedy writers worked intensely and collaboratively. Every week each writer would come to their big headline meeting with dozens of candidates. There were about 1,200 jokes at the start of the week and, after ruthlessly dissecting one another’s work, maybe 50 made it to publication. I would sit in the writers’ room a half-dozen times a year—the CEO was never really welcome behind this particular curtain—and marvel at the kind of work and analysis that went into making something that seemed so effortlessly smart and hilarious.

But in my thousands of one-on-one interactions with comedy writers through the years, I can’t say that I found many of them to be personally entertaining or particularly funny. They never struck me as especially fun people to be around in everyday conversation or even over beers at the bar. They were, for the most part, uniformly subtle and introverted. It became clear to me what a huge chasm there is between the type of person who’s funny professionally and the one who’s spontaneously or even unintentionally funny: One might get at deeper truths, and the other might just make you spit out your beer. Occasionally they’re the same people, but not often.

Though it certainly wasn’t their job, I met a lot of farmers who were naturally funny—not showy or jokey, but able to wring a smile or a laugh out of just about anything. It makes sense: Humor was one of the things that got them through long, solitary days. They

weren’t consciously trying to be entertaining; they were just funny in a way that was understated, matter-of-fact, quietly witty, and frequently blunt. And, like The Onion, there was nothing that farmers liked better than stringing along the coat-and-tie guy from the city.
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In his massively influential and widely read History of Art, H.W. Janson wrote this of da Vinci’s—and the world’s, really—most famous painting: “Clearly, the Mona Lisaembodies a quality of maternal tenderness which was to Leonardo the essence of womanhood.”

Clifford and Shelly Keepers are standing in their barnyard outside Gilman, Wisconsin. Three pair of eyes are trained on the side of their old red barn. We are examining the essence of womanhood.

"I think in all the time she's been up there we've had just that one complaint," says Cliff.. "Ain't that right, Shel?"

Shelly pauses to think for a moment.

"Just that one," she says.

"A lady from over near Fond du Lac thought we were defacing the Mona Lisa," says dairy farmer Cliff, looking a little pained. "Ain't that right, Shel?"

"That's what the letter said," Shelly answers.

"But most everybody's real nice about it," says Cliff. "They come part way up the driveway, get out and take a picture, and go on their way."

"There's no hassle," says Shelly.

“No hassle at all,” says her husband.

Nobody speaks. We just stand and stare at Miss Mona Lisa sitting above the entrance to the barn where dozens of disinterested Holstein cows are marching toward a row of metal stanchions.

"I guess we're pretty much known for it now," says Cliff.

On this sunny afternoon in March , the object of our attention is a two-story, technicolor rendition of Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. The most famous example of Renaissance art portrays, in my expert opinion, a rather plain, plus-sized, matronly lady sitting sideways in a chair. Her left arm is resting on the arm of the chair and her right arm stretches across her front and clasps her left. But it’s the face of this woman that draws your attention: looking to the right of the viewer—incidentally, she looks like somebody shaved her eyebrows—she has a perplexing air of mystery about her. She looks like the

last person you’d expect to have lifted your wallet in a tavern but, if you look closer, her expression indicates that she might have. You’ll never know. That’s what makes this portrait famous.

The giant canvas covers the south side of the Keepers' dairy barn, just above the doorway where the herd of black-and-white cows come and go, in full view of traffic on Highway 64.

It's not every day that a person gets to gaze upon the Mona Lisa, particularly this gigantic, rural Wisconsin interpretation of the masterpiece. (The other version, insured for $800 million, is hanging on a wall at the Louvre in Paris, exactly 4104 miles to the east.) This one is different in several ways, most notably because just beneath the most celebrated smile in the history of art, Mona Lisa Gherardini is wearing a Wisconsin Rose Bowl T-shirt.

The portrait, as it happens, was painted several years ago by Cliff Keepers' brother-in- law, Dennis Wiemer, an art teacher up in Ladysmith. The first take had the image of Bucky Badger flexing his muscles on the front of the famous lady’s blouse. But after Wisconsin went to the Rose Bowl for the first time in 32 years, Wiemer was inspired to give her a new look.

"We just leave it up to Dennis to decide what to do with her," says Cliff. "I think the most he'll ever do is change her shirt. I suppose she'll get a new shirt when the Packers win the Super Bowl.”

We stare some more in silence.

"It was all Dennis's idea," says Cliff. "He's a little goofy."

"Yes, he is," says Shelly. “He’s goofy.”

A lot of folks from a lot of different places come to see this rendition of the Mona Lisa. "Everybody's nice," says Shelly. "Last week we had a visit from a man who lives down near Stanley. Nice man. Brought us a jar of homemade mustard."

And there's another good reason why Mona Lisa is here to stay. She’s not just pretty and mysterious, she’s useful.

"She's pretty much the way people give directions around here,” says Cliff. “You know, like, 'Take Highway 64 west of Gilman until you see Mona Lisa. Then make the second right after the painting.'"

I took a course in art history in college and, then, before I drove up here, I boned up on the history of the Mona Lisa. I learned that da Vinci began painting the portrait in 1503—

nobody knows for sure—and the model was the wife of a Florentine silk merchant named Francesco del Giocondo. The painting is actually the property of the French Republic and it has been hanging in the most famous museum in Paris since 1797.

And, oh, yes, the “Mona” in Mona Lisa is a polite way of addressing a lady, sort of like “madam” in English.

Seeing how the Keepers have a copy of the world’s most famous portrait hanging on their barn, I figure they know a lot more about it than I am able to recall from one art course and a trip to the encyclopedia. They must know that there was a pretty lively dispute for years about who the portrait depicted. Some people said it was Isabella of Aragon, others claimed it was a picture of Costanza d’Avalos, and some of the other suspects included household names such as Isabella d’Este, Caterina Sforza, and even the image of Leonardo himself.

Since I have done all this reading, I share it with the Keepers.

“That so?” says Cliff.

“Interesting,” says Shelley.

Funny, they don’t seem that interested.

There is a certain incongruity to the belching and backfiring of dairy cattle set against the sweet, smiling face of the barn-sized Mona Lisa. It is one of those wonderful Wisconsin moments where the practical and the purely artistic intersect.

"Has having the Mona Lisa on your barn inspired an interest in art?" I inquire of the farmer and his wife.

"Nope," says Cliff.

"Nope," says Shelly.

Cliff smiles at Shelly. Shelly smiles back, knowingly. Apparently my last question was a good joke. I’m the only one here who doesn’t get it.

"We like having her on the barn and all, but there's not a lot of time around here for studying art," Cliff tells me. It suddenly occurs to me—I am naturally slow, not naturally comical—that I have overstayed my welcome. "We've got just about enough to do to keep the cows milked."
***
Like Harry Houdini when he got sucker-punched in the gut, I was unprepared for the shot to my sentimental side when I learned that—yes, boys and girls—the Mona Lisa mural had vanished from the Keepers’ dairy barn. It’s true. As near as Dennis Wiemer can remember, it was whitewashed over about 10 years ago. Maybe 15.

“At one point I suggested that I could redo the mural on the barn with that famousAmerican Gothic painting, only the faces would have been Cliff and Shelly’s,” said Wiemer, who is now retired from teaching art at Ladysmith Elementary School. “The problem was that the Mona Lisa was south-facing and the sun really took a toll on it. Then, too, I had to do the touch-ups pretty high up in the air. It got so I’d look down and wonder what in the world I was doing way up there. It never bothered me when I was younger .”

Wiemer misses the mysterious face of womanhood incarnate. He admires da Vinci, of course, but he also got a kick out of how famous Madonna-on-the-barn became worldwide. “The picture was reprinted in newspapers—not just all over the United States,” he said, “but all over the world. London, Paris, so many places I can’t remember.” But it’s a good miss, and he was pleased to report that eventually he swapped out the Badger T-shirt for one with the iconic G of the Green Bay Packers. Plus he accumulated all kinds of good stories thanks to that barn art.

“My favorite is when I was first painting it in the summer of 1988. I was up on the scaffolding and a car pulled up to the barn. A guy got out and said, ‘I’ve been watching you working on this for weeks. I know that painting. That’s the....’” The guy stopped to scratch his head. “‘It’s right on the tip of my tongue. That’s that famous one called....’” The guy scratched again. Dennis couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. “It’s the Mona Lisa,” said the artist in the air. “No,” the guy replied, “that’s not it. Just give me a minute and I’ll have it.”