Cards Against Humanity Might Destroy A Picasso For Holiday Gift Subscribers
By Rachel Cromidas in Arts & Entertainment on Dec 22, 2015 3:45PM
Local card-game makers Cards Against Humanity keep outdoing themselves with this year's edition of their annual mystery holiday gift subscription. For 8 Sensible Gifts of Hanukkah, they've purchased a week's vacation for all of the Chinese factory workers who make their game, and donated $150,000 to WBEZ.
They appear to be upping the stakes again as the promotion continues. A promotional website for the gift subscription (which it's too late to buy into, by the way) says CAH has spent some of their revenue from the promo to purchase a 1962 Picasso: Tête de Faune, pictured above.
What are they going to do with the Picasso, since there's only one of it and there are 150,000-some gift subscribers? They're taking a vote, they say, to determine whether they should donate the Picasso to the Art Institute of Chicago's permanent collection, or "laser-cut it into 150,000 tiny squares and send everyone their own scrap of a real Picasso?"
It's an interesting dilemma; while donating it to the Art Institute where all can enjoy it on display seems like the obvious choice, it's also likely the late-modernist artwork, which is far from Picasso's most well-known pieces, will languish in the Art Institute's vast archives where few will see it. On the other hand, the idea of ripping it up into 1.5 mm squares is totally absurd.
Subscribers can vote on what to do from Dec. 26 through 31.
A heated debate is already brewing on Reddit.
On the No side: “This is defacing a beautiful object that will never exist again for shits and giggles. It is far worse than burning books,” one Redditor wrote.
“Donating it would be far cooler because the donor gets to decide the credit line for the work of art. They could have a credit line that read something like ‘Gift of 150,000 Cards Against Humanity fans,’ or whatever,” another wrote.
And for the Yeses: "Cut em up cut em up," and, "Cut it up Fuck Picasso."
[H/T Vice]