Russian-born artist is latest commission for Mouton
January 31, 2005 By Howard G Goldberg in New York
The latest artwork for the label of Bordeaux first growth Chateau Mouton-Rothschild is by a Russian-born artist who emigrated to the US and lives in the heart of Long Island wine country.
Ilya Kabakov was chosen by Mouton owner Baroness Philippine de Rothschild, the owner to illustrate the label of the 2002 vintage.
Kabakov joins celebrated artists whose works have appeared on Mouton labels since 1945. They include Braque, Picasso, Miró, Chagall, Warhol, Bacon and Balthus.
Kabakov titled his drawing 'Okho,' the Russian word for window. The Médoc estate said, 'Behind the “pane” of the bottle, the artist shows us another world: whirling to infinity, a myriad wings trace its outlines, at the same time bearing us off joyfully towards the realm of dreams and bliss, in a transparent allegory of the magic of a great wine.'
Born in 1933, the artist – who had his first major exhibition in Russia at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg last summer - became of one of the founders of the underground conceptual art movement in Moscow in the 1960's and 70's.
His works hang in the Tate Modern in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, among other institutions.
Mrs. Kabakov said Baroness Rothschild had mounted a campaign through a Pompidou executive and the Russian ambassador in Paris to obtain a Kabakov drawing.
The 2002 Mouton will be released in America in the spring.
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