Howard Hodgkin | Blue Skies, Nothing but Blue Skies

Howard Hodgkin

Blue Skies, Nothing but Blue Skies

London, UK: Momart, 2002

13 x 16 cm. (boxed)

Edition size unknown

Perhaps channeling Geoffrey Hendricks and James Lee Byars, this Xmas edition consists of a lithograph printed in blue on thin paper, crumpled, and housed in a blue paper-covered box.

The work is published by Momart, the British company specialising in the storage, transportation, and installation of works of art, as part of their annual limited edition Christmas card series. The project began in 1984 and has featured artists such as Eduardo Paolozzi, Helen Chadwick, Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Gary Hume, Mark Wallinger and Sarah Lucas.

Christian Marclay | Music Box

Christian Marclay

Untitled (Music Box)

Santa Monica, USA: Peter Norton Family Foundation, 2005

13 x 9.5 x 7 cm.

Edition size unknown

You can imagine the excitement when Christian Marclay realized that Silent was an anagram of Listen, and then Tinsel, too, making it perfect for a Christmas music box. 

The work consists of a hinged-lid pine wooden music box accompanied by a card that reads: "Each year, Peter Norton commissions a work of art to celebrate the holiday season. This year's edition is by Christian Marclay... For this project, Marclay has composed 'Tinsel' - a seamless melodic loop without beginning or end that incorporates the gradual slowing of the unwinding mechanism - To play with our expectations of the music box..."

The word SILENT is engraved on the exterior and LISTEN on the interior, a possible nod to Ken Friedman's Fluxus box Open and Shut Case which Marclay would have known well. 

The work was manfucatred by Reuge, a renowned Swiss “Maison” specializing in luxury music boxes and singing bird automata that was founded by Charles Reuge in 1865. In 2005, they were the last remaining music box manufacturers in Switzerland. 

Other multiples and artists’ books in the Peter Norton Christmas series include a porcelain ashtray, a lapel pin, a printed fan, a music box, a CD, a woven blanket, a lifesaver, a dollhouse, trophies, cards, a cup & saucer, a slide viewer, salt & pepper shakers as snow globes,  pop up books by Peter Coffin and Kara Walker, etc., etc.  Participating artists include Robert Lazzarini, Do Ho Suh, Ry Rocklen, Takashi Murakami, Anna Gaskell, Yinka Shonibare, Sanford Biggers, Yasumasa Morimura, Christian Marclay, Vik Muniz, Sanford Biggers, Nina Katchadourian, Marc Swanson, Jim Hodges, Kevin Sommers, Brian Eno & Peter Schmidt, Benjamin Lord, Richard Kostelanetz, Lorna Simpson, Lawrence Weiner, and many others.

 

Sanford Biggers | Cheshire Smile

Sanford Biggers

Cheshire Smile

Santa Monica, USA: Peter Norton Family Christmas Project, 2008

4.4 x 10.2 cm.

Edition size unknown

https://artistsbooksandmultiples.blogspot.com/2023/12/norton-family-christmas-greetings.html

Sanford Biggers told Time Out in 2010 that he places "no hierarchy on chronology, references or media” and that his themes are "meant to broaden and complicate our read on American history.” His work often references African-American ethnography, hip hop, jazz, Afrofuturism, urban culture and icons from Americana.

He employs history as a "malleable material” to repurpose and reinterpret, connecting past and future temporalities to create what he calls ‘future ethnographies’. A 2016 work called Laocoön features the corpse of cartoon character Fat Albert (Fatal Bert) as an oversized inflatable. 

His 2008 project for the Peter Norton Family Christmas card consists of a plastic light up sculpture, and a lenticular card that reads: 

Every year since eighty eight

A Norton Christmas project was made.

All mimsy were the borogroves

Who got what Peter gave.

For this year's gift, the twenty-fourth,

What artist for the edition?

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Sanford Biggers accepts the mission!

He put his thinking cap on straight, What does the season call for?

A light, a fright, a toothy grin,

Something one can't go to the mall for.

One two! One two! The job complete, Sanford chortled with delight.

So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And bid you all Good Night.

The light and card both feature an exaggerated toothy smile reminiscent of the titular Cheshire cat, from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. The work conflates the infamous ear-to-ear grin with the history of minstrel blackface and the “darky" icon that appeared in cartoons, comics and advertisements and adorned consumer goods such as sheet music, postcards, jewelry, food, even children’s toys and literature. 

Biggers later produced  Cheshire (Janus), an illuminated sculpture using similar iconography (see below). The sculpture improves on the multiple, using the backlighting to make the toothy grin appear and disappear as it did in Caroll’s book and Disney’s animated adaptation.1

Cheshire Smile has an estimated value of between two and four hundred dollars. 

1. When Disney classics such as The Aristocats, Dumbo, Jungle Book and Peter Pan stream on Disney+ they all feature the prior warning "This programme includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now. We want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together”. The worst of them all, Song of the South, is not available to stream or purchase. Alice in Wonderland does not feature a warning. 

Do-Ho Suh | Bowl with Hands

Do-Ho Suh

Bowl with Hands

Santa Monica, USA: Peter Norton Family Christmas Project, 2004

17 x 24 cm.

Edition size unknown

A clear glass bowl - hand blown by Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania - with two cupped, outstretched hands embossed in the bottom, sent as the 2004 Peter Norton Family Xmas card. 

"In this project, Suh continues exploring the cultural meaning of space by creating a vessel with an impression of his own outstretched hands in its base. The hand blown glass offers Suh's creative energy as a gift. With this gesture of generosity, something ephemeral solidifies and something deeply personal becomes social.” 

- publisher's statement

Kara Walker | Freedom, a Fable

Kara Walker

Freedom, a Fable

Santa Monica, USA: Peter Norton Family Christmas Project, 1997

23 x 21 x 3 cm.

Edition of 4000

Subtitled A curious interpretation of the wit of a Negress in troubled times, with illustrations, this bookwork combines Walker's delicate silhouettes with the medium of the children's pop-up book. The book follows the story of a young black woman named N— who was emancipated after the Civil War. She dreams of going “back to Africa” but instead finds herself on a ship with other "contraband of war", and passengers who weigh throwing her overboard or keeping her in case of starvation.

"Each year since 1988, rather than sending out a holiday card, Mr. Norton has commissioned an artist to create an edition -- usually the sculptural objects or books known as "multiples." These are produced in quantities from 2,500 to 5,000 unnumbered copies, according to Kris Kuramitsu, the curator of the Peter Norton and Eileen Harris Norton Collections, who oversees the project. Once finished, the pieces are packed by a fulfillment house near the Norton-family office in Santa Monica, Calif., and shipped out around the world a few weeks before Christmas.

Though such large runs might imply that the gifts are only glorified trinkets, they are anything but; most are made by a celebrated artist who is already represented in Mr. Norton's own collection.

The general idea, Ms. Kuramitsu said, is "to make contemporary art accessible and understandable, through an actual object that people can live with."

As the best multiples tend to do, each Norton project typically provides a smart twist on the artist's previous work. One example is the 1997 Christmas gift by Kara Walker, known for her flat wall installations of cut-paper silhouettes in black that pinpoint the nuances of the antebellum South. Her Norton project was a pop-up book called Freedom: A Fable which illuminates the dreams of "a soon-to-be-emancipated 19th-century Negress" using 3-D cut-paper constructions."

- Carol Kino, New York Times, 2005