The Art of Advent: Day 12
Today we’re back with another Festive Favourite. Gabriella Sotiriou writes about an artist who is not usually associated with Christmas scenes - Salvador Dali. Keeping reading to find out how the artist became involved with a scandalous Christmas card deal - maybe we’ll stick to just making our own this year!
Christmas cards are normally decorated with Father Christmas delivering gifts from his sleigh, snowmen and red breasted robins, maybe a nativity scene or more commonly these days, a sparkly Christmas cocktail or even a photograph of you and your family. We don’t normally think of a crazy surrealist painting when browsing the shelves at Paperchase - well I certainly don’t! However, in 1960 the two combined when Salvador Dali agreed to join the array of artists whose masterpieces could feature on the cover of seasonal cards thanks to Hallmark. The company began printing the designs of contemporary artists on cards in the late 1940’s, seeing the work of Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh and Georgia O’Keeffe all take a turn at featuring on the cards at Christmas.
Dali agreed to join these artists in 1959 after asking for $15,000 in cash to be given in advance in exchange for ten card designs. Part of the deal was that Hallmark could not suggest designs, subject nor medium. What could go wrong?
At the time Dali was renowned for his bizarre behaviour and his love for publicity stunts. His demands for payments got larger and larger also. A version of the sci-fi novel Dune (soon to be released featuring Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya) that was planned in the 1970s but never materialised saw Dali demand $100,000 an hour to play the emperor of the universe. This would have made him the highest-paid actor in Hollywood at the time. I wonder why the film never came to fruition.
In case you were wondering - the filmmakers did actually agree to employ Dali! But only for an hour, deciding to use a robot to film the rest of his scenes. I imagine that this is one of many reasons why the film was a flop before it even hit the big screen.
But back to the Christmas cards - Dali submitted his ten images to Hallmark having chosen to mostly create renditions of Christmas trees and the Holy Family. Though this doesn’t sound too strange, the cards themselves show that Surrealism and Christmas cards are not natural companions. Though the images Dali created are incredibly striking to say the least. Particularly the one where a headless angel plays the lute.
However, some of the cards are really quite lovely and not creepy like the others! The Christmas tree made up of coloured butterflies is a personal favourite and honestly something that I would send to family happily. The Madonna and Child is also quite lovely and in keeping with Christmas traditional imagery with a fun twist through its abstracted style and the addition of another butterfly. I particularly like the tenderness of the embracing figures and also the crown of stars on the head of the baby Jesus.
Despite this, the images Dali created proved to be a bit too ‘out there’ for the Hallmark customers and so there was a decent amount of public outcry. Hallmark eventually pulled Dali’s designs from the shelves, making them rare collectors items today. So if you ever see a bit of strange looking card at the back of the shelf in a charity shop, check to see if there’s a signature - you never know, you might have just stumbled across a Christmas miracle!