If your nearest and dearest know their Monets from their Manets, you've come to the right place. We snooped around galleries, websites and museums shops for presents that won't leave you red-faced in front of your discerning pals. From ancient jewels to post-war puzzles, we bring you ten arty gifts that will keep on giving when the turkey's only a distant memory.
Take a nap with Louise Bourgeois
Is your sleep disrupted by nightmares of monstrous spiders? Are you tossing and turning night after night with fevered anxieties about the incomprehensibility of contemporary art? Well, help is at hand! MoMA’s shop has devised the Louise Bourgeois eye mask($30). A master insomniac herself, Bourgeois’s elderly eyes on the mask’s exterior will transform your bloodshot and grainy peepers into her own “warm, wise” eyeballs. The genius of the mask is that it does not promise sleep, but a bed-time masquerade. One’s bed-mate(s) will surely be impressed.
Bust out some Babylonian biscuits
Scholars have struggled for centuries to decode and interpret two million ancient near eastern clay tablets incised with little wedge-shaped marks, known as cuneiform script (31st century BC to first century AD). But why sweat the effort? Gingerbread is the way, not Babylonian brain-busters with this recipe. It’s munch, not crunch with a quick’n’easy, seven-minute taste-treat from the museum’s keeper of Near-Eastern Collections. Never mind the meaning, get a Hittite hit on the tastebuds and smack your Sumerian lips.
Look street with Mr Brainwash sunglasses
Thierry Guetta, a.k.a Mr Brainwash, has teamed up with Sunglass Hut to make some beautifully bespeckled spectacles. The French graffiti artist, famous for his playful Pop-inspired street art, has hand-painted 250 pairs of glasses with flecks of riotous colour. They come in a range of eye-catching styles including Aviator, Wayfarer, Clubmaster and Round. Each pair, retailing at $399.95, comes with a certificate of authenticity and an individually painted case placed in a mock spray can.
Have a blue agave Christmas
Get squiggly in style with a Keith Haring bottle of 1800 Tequila ($35). There are six original designs by the legendary artist to choose from, including his 1986 drawing of the Statue of Liberty. Haring found fame in the 1980s by using the New York subway as his canvas, but his dashing designs with activist undertones soon became renowned the world over. These bottles are sold on a first come, first served basis so you'd better be snappy.
Get steamy with the Old Masters
Christmas just isn’t Christmas without a touch of debauchery. This year, avoid the inevitable end-of-Christmas-day nudity from a distant drunken relative and instead enjoy your very own arty peep-show. This mug, on sale for $13.95 on the Philosophers' Guild website, seems innocent straight out of the box, but when filled with a hot drink it slowly reveals 13 nude masterpieces from the 15th to 20th centuries. Including Michelangelo’s Adam and Manet’s Olympia, this feast of the flesh is for all to enjoy—just add eggnog.
Sample some saucy Surrealist recipes
Surrealist fans and kooky cooks will enjoy Taschen’s re-issue of Salvador Dalí’s 1973 cookbook, Les Dîners de Gala (Gala’s dinners, named for his wife, $59.99). Illustrated with Dalí’s bizarre, erotic work and dinner spreads shot in garish 1970s tones, this is a legitimate cookbook, though not suited to vegetarians or picky eaters: there are plenty of offal dishes and an entire chapter on snail and frog recipes. Another chapter might have wider appeal: “aphrodisiacs” in the English text, printed alongside the more risqué original French title, “Les ‘je mange GALA’” (the “I am eating GALA”).
Get high on Shrigley
Shake up your Christmas dinner table with this pair of porcelain salt and pepper shakers—a classic piece of mischief by the UK artist and illustrator David Shrigley (£130, drugs not included.) If your homewares budget doesn’t stretch to class A seasoning, consider a trip to one of the 650+ branches of Flying Tiger Copenhagen, aka Tiger. The quirky Danish high street chain has commissioned Shrigley to produce a series of 30 affordable designs, from iPad covers and tote bags to guitar plectrums and a shower curtain.
Puzzle your family with Pollock
The “world’s most difficult puzzle” just got harder. Portland-based publisher Pomegranate has tripled the challenge of the 340-piece jigsaw of Jackson Pollock’s Convergence, which was first issued with the tagline by Springbok Editions in 1964. Spread the $18.95 puzzle on the floor and prowl around it to channel your inner drip painter—and why not share the love with any Modern art haters in your family this Christmas? Reassembling the immense canvas in Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery from a thousand fragments might even silence the “I/my child could have done that” sneers once and for all.
Be a rebel rebel with this rocking tote
Thin White Dukes and Duchesses waking up on Christmas morning will be dancing in the street if they find this limited-edition tote bag by Jeremy Deller under the tree (£30, Studio Voltaire). The God Bless David Bowie Shopper was made in 2014, a year after Deller’s British Pavilion show at the 2013 Venice Biennale, where the musician’s influence loomed. Bowie photos, lyrics and even a tour map were key elements in Deller’s English Magic show. The artist even quoted Bowie’s The Man Who Sold the World: “I searched for form and land/for years and years I roamed”. Search no longer, Ziggy Stardust fans.
Sparkle in ancient charms
While there are plenty of art-based novelty items around, why not buy the real thing? The antiquities specialists Charles Ede, has jewellery that looks contemporary, but has the added charm of being thousands of years old. An Egyptian necklace, around 1300 B.C., includes amulets shaped as rosettes, a lotus flower and poppy seed heads (£2,200), while a bronze and carnelian Roman ring, made for a child in the first to third century AD, can be bought for £120. A pair of Roman gold earrings is also available (£1,800).
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