You might check the mailbox today and find a Christmas card or two from friends or family.
The history of Christmas cards has taken some strange turns over the years, but maybe none more strange than when one of the most famous Surrealists of all, Salvador Dalí, made Christmas cards for Hallmark!
It was 1960, and as the Washington Post reports, Hallmark’s founder, Joyce Clyde Hall, believed that great art should be out in the world for everyone to enjoy, including on greeting cards.
So Hallmark’s Gallery Artists Christmas card series included works by Grandma Moses, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pablo Picasso and more.
Dalí was better known for paintings of dripping clocks and some artistic statements/publicity stunts that might not have made him the most obvious choice for a generally mainstream card maker.
But then, Dalí liked people to expect the unexpected from him.
Plus, he did commercial work from time to time.
So he agreed to create some art for the series.
The cards are very Dalí.
One shows two angels with large flowing wings playing lutes; one of the angels doesn’t have a head.
Another has a Christmas tree made out of butterflies, in some kind of mostly empty space.
And in his version of the Nativity, nobody has any facial features.
The Dalí cards didn’t sell well and Hallmark reportedly pulled them from shelves pretty quickly, but in recent years they’ve become collectors items.
So if you need a last minute gift for an art lover in your life, well, here you go.
To paraphrase Dalí, I don’t do Christmas cards. I am Christmas cards.
If you’re traveling this week, remember to take breaks when you need them so you don’t get sleepy behind the wheel.
In Western Australia, they have long stretches of road known as the Fatigue Zone.
There isn’t a lot to look at, so they put up signs with trivia questions (and down the road, the answers) to keep drivers engaged and alert.
These Salvador Dali Christmas cards outraged Hallmark shoppers in 1960 (Washington Post)
Australian road signs among world’s weirdest (Perth Now)
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Photo by Allan warren, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
