Cards Against Humanity Is Destroying Picasso For Christmas

A board game is holding a Picasso hostage and threatening to destroy it.

Specifically, it’s a party card game, targeted primarily at the most ironic and/or cynical of partygoers: Cards Against Humanity, a Kickstarter-born, pitch-black variation of sorts on the Apples to Apples model, wherein the words/phrases being matched up to incomplete statements often paint as grim a picture as possible.

As The Verge reports, the makers of Cards Against Humanity have, for the past several years, released a special holiday version of the game. This year, the edition is “Eight Sensible Gifts For Hanukkah,” and the 150,000 paying subscribers of it received one gift from Cards Against Humanity for each of the eight nights of the Jewish Festival of Lights.

The first three gifts were socks; a membership to Chicago’s NPR station and a one-week paid vacation followed. Where things really started to represent Cards Against Humanity’s general outlook was on the seventh day, when the team behind the game, The Verge explains, used some of the $2.25 million in revenue it made from the holiday edition to buy “Tête de Faune” (Head of a Faun), an original 1962 Picasso.

Now, Cards Against Humanity is putting that work of art’s fate into the hands of its customers, asking them to vote on whether it will be (A) donated to the Art Institute of Chicago or (B) “laser-cut … into 150,000 tiny squares,” which will be disbursed among the 150,000 subscribers so that they can all “own [a] scrap of a real Picasso.”

The Verge has sussed out that the Picasso being threatened is a signed print worth about $14,100.

The outlet reports that voting on the fate of the Picasso begins the day after Christmas and ends on the last day of the year (Dec. 31), though you must have purchased the “Eight Sensible Gifts For Hanukkah” pack to participate.

Cards Against Humanity Founder Max Temkin refused to share with The Verge any additional information about the Picasso until “after the votes are in.” That sounds about right for Cards Against Humanity.