Le Plan Hallmark

When Greeting Card King Joyce Clyde Hall of Kansas City decided to let French painters in on his $30,000 Christmas card contest last fall, he little knew what he was stirring up. The French, he announced, would get half the prizes; their pictures would be judged by an all-French jury and they would have a crack at the $3,500 prix international on an even-Stephen basis with U.S. artists. Hall Brothers, Inc. (Hallmark cards) would become sole proprietor of the winning entries (with royalties to the artists). What Hall failed to take into account was the French Communists.

Within a few days of the announcement the bistros and ateliers of Paris were seething with gossip. Hallmark's top prizes were such as only a Picasso or Matisse could expect for a canvas. Almost instantly, the French had a name for the whole thing: le plan Marshall de la peinture. That meant that Frenchmen would take sides on the Hallmark Plan just as on ECA. Screamed the Communists: "Nothing but an effort to destroy our national independence."

Nonetheless, the popularity of the Hallmark contest had spread like wildfire. Last week Philippe Huisman, director of exhibitions for Paris' Wildenstein galleries and Hallmark's French representative, announced with pride that over 5,000 entries had been received.

Most of the big brushes of French painting--Matisse, Braque, Rouault and Dufy--were not competing. Partly to avoid discouraging lesser-knowns, they had not been invited. The situation with regard to the biggest brush of all, Pablo Picasso, was tantalizingly obscure. Somebody (possibly Picasso himself) had signed his name to a list of French artists, most of them Communists, attacking the Marshallizing of French art. At the same time, Picasso had sold reproduction rights for at least one of his paintings, Mother and Child (see cut), to Hall Brothers, Inc. in a private deal last year. On the Riviera, old (67) Pablo Picasso labored in peace, saying nothing.

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