By golly, Dali loved lolly!
QUESTION Andy Warhol commercialised art with his Campbell’s soup tins. Have any other famous artists loaned their talents to branded products?
In HIS early career, Andy Warhol, the father of the Pop Art movement, was a commercial illustrator, drawing shoes for adverts in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Glamour magazine.
Advertisers courted Salvador Dali to bring his surrealist vision to the commercial marketplace. The great Spanish artist was nicknamed ‘Avida Dollars’ (an anagram of his name and a phonetic rendering of avide a dollars, meaning ‘eager for dollars’) by the French writer and poet Andre Breton.
The most enduring example of his advert work is perhaps also the most surprising: in 1969, he designed a new logo for Chupa Chups lollipops.
Enric Bernat had been struggling to promote his idea of sweets on a stick to prevent sticky fingers. He approached Dali to design a logo and the result — the Chupa Chups name incorporated into a brightly coloured daisy shape — became as famous as the artist’s melting clocks.
It was hugely successful: Chupa Chups now sells 100 flavours of lollipops in more than 150 countries.
Dali also designed advertisements for Datsun cars, Bryans hosiery, Chen Yu nail polish and, inevitably, Omega watches.
Joanne Mason, Cowes, Isle of Wight.
NORMAN ROCKWELL was a 20thcentury U. S. artist famous for his illustrations of everyday life.
He was commissioned to design covers for popular U.S. publications, including Harper’s, Life, Literary Digest and The Saturday Evening Post. He also illustrated many adverts, including ones for Jell-O, Lemon Crush, Orange Crush, Coca-Cola, Crest toothpaste, Elgin watches, Listerine, Post’s Bran Flakes and Grape nuts.
Each featured a wholesome family image, for example, a grandmother teaching her granddaughter how to cook with Jell-O.
In 1954, rockwell was commissioned by A real treat: Salvador Dali designed the Chupa Chups lollipop logo (inset) Kellogg’s to produce an image of a boy eating cereal for the Corn Flakes box.
Christine Montgomery, York.
ALPHONSE MUCHA was probably the first major artist to cross over into commercial advertising.
His distinctive art nouveau style became wildly popular after he created the poster art for the play Gismonda, starring Sarah Bernhardt. He was commissioned to create posters for a range of products, from biscuits, chocolate, cigarettes, perfume and bikes to moet & Chandon champagne.
His most famous advertising poster was for JOB Cigarette Papers in 1896, depicting a beautiful woman tantalisingly holding her cigarette at a time when a woman smoking in public was taboo.
P. T. Allen, Banbury, Oxon.
QUESTION Does the Vatican bank transact business in Latin?
THE Institute for the Works of religion (IOr), popularly known as the Vatican bank, was established in 1942 by Pope Pius XII.
It was originally a foundation to preserve the assets of religious congregations during World War II. Business is conducted in Italian and English.
It claims it’s not a bank: deposits are not used to lend money and it does not issue securities or sell financial products, there are no shareholders and it’s not allowed to make a profit, with any surplus monies going to religious and charitable purposes.
But it operates many services associated with banking — most famously the Vatican City’s cash machines, which offer instructions in Latin such as: ‘ Inserito scidulam quaeso ut faciundum cognoscas rationem’ (‘insert your card to begin’), and, ‘ Deductio
ex pecunia’ (‘cash withdrawal’). Ironically, the Vatican bank has been mired in scandal over allegations of laundering dirty money. In 1982, roberto Calvi, who was dubbed ‘ God’s Banker’ for his close association with the Vatican bank in his role as head of the collapsed Banco Ambrosiano, was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge in London.
In 2013, nunzio Scarano, a Vatican prelate nicknamed ‘ monsignor 500’ for his love of large bills, was arrested over an alleged plot to smuggle ¤20 million into Italy. Although cleared in 2016, earlier this year an appeal court in rome convicted him of corruption and sentenced him to three years in jail.
In 2017, the Vatican bank’s ex- chief, Paolo Cipriani, and ex-deputy, massimo Tulli, were sentenced to four months and ten days in jail for ‘violating moneylaundering norms’.
richard murphy, director of Tax research UK, has said: ‘ The IOr seems to have believed that being an agent for God has exempted it from the rules of man, but the evidence is it has been as fallible as any other human organisation.’
Tom Holden, Eyam, Derbys.
QUESTION Why weren’t smoke bombs used on D-Day?
FURTHER to the earlier answer, which referred to rubber doll decoys ( gummi puppen) used in The Longest Day, these were specially made for the film to improve the drama it was trying to portray. The actual figures dropped on D-Day were crudely made, stuffed with straw and definitely did not have fireworks attached to them.
They were designed to fool the Germans from a distance, to cause confusion and misinformation, resulting in troops being sent to the wrong location.
Richard Brookes, Shaftesbury, Dorset.