That surreal sweetie Dali
QUESTION
Andy Warhol commercialised art with his Campbell’s soup tins. What other famous artists have loaned their talents to branded products? IN his early career, Andy Warhol, the godfather of the Pop Art movement, was a commercial illustrator, drawing shoes for adverts in Vogue, Harper’s Bazar and Glamour magazine.
Salvador Dali was nicknamed ‘Avida dollars’ (‘eager for dollars’) by the French writer and poet Andre Breton. Advertisers courted the great Spanish artist to bring his surrealist vision to the commercial marketplace.
The most enduring example of his ad work is perhaps the most surprising. In 1969, he designed the packaging for Chupa Chups lollipops. In the late Sixties, Enric Bernat was struggling to promote his idea of sweets on a stick to prevent sticky fingers. He approached Dali to design a new Chupa Chups logo and the result became as famous as the artist’s melting clocks.
Dali incorporated the Chupa Chups name into a brightly coloured daisy shape. It was hugely successful: Chupa Chups sells 100 flavours of lollipops in more than 150 countries.
Dali also did print 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 many popular American publications, including Harper’s Monthly, Life, Literary Digest and The Saturday Evening Post.
He also illustrated many adverts including 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 to cook with Jell-o, in his realistic style.
In 1954, Rockwell was commissioned by Kellogg’s to produce an image of a breakfast cereal-chomping boy for the Corn Flakes box. Christine Montgomery, York. CZECH artist Alphonse Mucha was the first 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 the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt. He was commissioned to create posters for a range of products, from French biscuits, chocolates, cigarettes, perfume and bicycles to Moet & Chandon champagne.
His most famous advertising poster was for Job Cigarette Papers in 1896, depicting a beautiful woman tantalisingly holding her cigarette, in a time when a women smoking in public was taboo. P. T. Allen, Banbury, Oxon.
QUESTION
Does the Vatican Bank transact business in Latin? THE Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), popularly known as the Vatican Bank, was established in 1942 by Pope Pius XII. It started out as 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 other financial products. It has no shareholders and is not allowed to make a profit – surplus monies are devoted to religious and charitable purposes.
However, it operates many services normally associated with banking, most famously Vatican City’s cash machines, which offer instructions in Latin such as ‘Inserito scidulam quaeso ut faciundam cognoscas rationem’, which means ‘insert your card to begin’, and ‘deductio ex pecunia’, which means ‘cash withdrawal’.
QUESTION
When did street lighting first appear in Ireland? THE first street lighting in Ireland was used in Dublin in 1305. They were in the form of lit rushes.
Then, in 1616, the Candelight Law came into force, ensuring that every fifth house in the city displayed candlelit lanterns on the outside during the hours of darkness. By the end of the 17th century, public lighting was set up in certain streets in the city. It was around this time, candlelight gave way to oil-fired lamps.
The first gas-fuelled street lights in Co. Dublin came into operation in 1825 and gas lighting was used in the city up to 1957.
The first electric arc lights were installed outside the offices of the old Freeman’s Journal newspaper, and beside the GPO, in Princes Street, Co. Dublin, in 1860.
In the early years of electricity in the capital, much of the power came from a generating station opened in 1892 in Fleet Street. But when the much bigger Pigeon House generating station was opened in 1903, the Fleet Street station was closed down.
With the opening of the Pigeon House station, electric street lighting became much more prolific not just in Dublin city, but in adjoining townships, such as Clontarf, Kilmainham, Pembroke and Rathmines. The technology changed, too, with arc lamps replaced by much more efficient tungsten filament gas-filled lamps.
Today, Dublin city has something like 32,000 street lights and while many are modern, some of the lamp standards go back decades.
It wasn’t until much later, in the 19th century and earlier 20th century, that other towns and cities around the country followed suit. Carlow was the first provincial town to get electric street lighting, in 1891.
Before the ESB was set up in 1927, every part of the country had its own power supply company, which hindered the advance of electric street lighting.
County Cork, for instance, had no fewer than 20 separate electric power supply companies, while throughout the State there were more than 300 of these companies. They were absorbed into the ESB during the 1930s.
These days, Cork city has about 14,500 street lights and these are being upgraded to LED lighting, which ensures energy savings of about 50% for each light. Dermot McIlroy, Co. Dublin
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