For the first time ever, a Portuguese artist has created an artwork for the Château Mouton Rothschild label. Joana Vasconcelos’s “Paraíso” illustrates the 2023 vintage, adding her name to the remarkable list of contemporary artists who have preceded her.
Famous for her monumental, joyful installations, Joana Vasconcelos chose the challenge of creating a label-sized artwork. Her drawing centres on a cluster of grapes and illustrates all the elements that come together to create a great wine: earth and water, the sun’s rays and the cool of the night, combined with the work of human hands, represented by the apex of a triangle as a beneficial incursion into the cycle of nature.
Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, each element has its own shape and colour and plays a complementary and decisive role. The vine is the centre of human attention and thrives in the paradise – “Paraíso” in Portuguese – that is the Château Mouton Rothschild terroir, whose soil, sun and water have nourished grapes from time immemorial.
True to her bright, colourful universe, the artist has used her talent for graphic arts, honed over several years, to create the drawing that illustrates the label for the 2023 vintage.
Ambition
Making Château Mouton Rothschild a place of art and beauty was Baron Philippe de Rothschild’s ambition. Since 1945, the labels for each vintage of Château Mouton Rothschild have been illustrated by an original artwork, adding year after year to the unique collection of contemporary art which brings together very different artists from many different backgrounds, including names such as Salvador Dalí, César, Juan Miró, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Pierre Soulages, Francis Bacon, Balthus, Jeff Koons, David Hockney, Annette Messager, Olafur Eliasson, Peter Doig, Chiharu Shiota and Gérard Garouste.
All these works make up the Paintings for the Labels exhibition, which was created by Baroness Philippine de Rothschild in 1981 and moved into its permanent home at Château Mouton Rothschild in 2013.
Born in 1971, Joana Vasconcelos is a Portuguese visual artist with a career spanning over 30 years and a huge variety of media. Recognised for her monumental sculptures and immersive installations, she decontextualises everyday objects and updates the arts and crafts concept for the 21st century, establishing a dialogue between the private sphere and public space, popular heritage and refined culture. She questions the status of women, consumer society and collective identity with humour and irony.
Inspiration
Joana Vasconcelos explains the inspiration behind her original artwork: “I felt very privileged and honoured to be a part not only of a great name, but also of the ensemble of great artists that have participated in previous editions of this project.
“My inspiration for the label were the grapes and vines and the naturalistic aspect of the Château Mouton, meaning nature. “Paraíso” (Paradise) is a work inspired by the idea of perfection, of luxury, and the coherence between nature and man.”
Julien de Beaumarchais de Rothschild, co-owner of Château Mouton Rothschild, has been familiar with her work for many years. He was impressed by her large-scale exhibition at Versailles Palace in 2012. More recently, he visited the one at the Liria Palace in Madrid, where the artist contrasted her contemporary creations with very old works in a fascinating dialogue between two periods of time.
The owners of Château Mouton Rothschild, beguiled by the spectacular creations that have made her famous, also see common ground between the way Joana Vasconcelos uses, assembles and works with different raw materials and the making of a fine wine. They appreciate the vision and joy that emanate from her universe, found here in her original artwork for the label.
“Joana Vasconcelos uses everyday, traditional materials like embroidery or crochet to create artworks that explore contemporary issues such as feminism in a monumental, baroque, occasionally provocative, humorous and engaged way. She grounds Portugal’s craft heritage in modernity. I really like that link between art and craft because it’s what we have here at Château Mouton Rothschild, the result of high-level craftsmanship and at the same time a work of art, because each vintage is unique, rare and hence precious.”
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See also: Art House: Scotland’s House of Bruar
