What has alcohol contributed to the history of art and literature?

Continuing the series of publications on the artistic and literary significance of the world of wine, Vibop Edicions provides us with a pamphlet by Enric Satué on the presence of wine and other spirits in the history of art.

Satué, a living legend of Catalan design, has conducted a selective investigation. Not only has he compiled testimonies on the subject at hand—especially from contemporary art—but he has also unearthed, here and there, references to the presence of wine among writers and artists everywhere. Thus, before getting into the subject, he reminds us of the importance of alcohol in the poetry—and life—of Joan Vinyoli, for example. The author ofThe silent one He said that "drinking wine is half a life." But it's that Josep Carner, in the poem "The Immortal Grapes", byThe tasty fruits, He spoke of "sublime wine," or more recently, Vicent Andrés Estellés defended the classic position of the tenacious drunk: "Drinking alone/in a corner of the dining room." All this, not to mention, for the sake of a transatlantic excursion, the lyrics for the tangos written by Santos Discépolo, such as: "Tonight I'm going to get really drunk/I'm going to get really drunk/so I don't think". It all began, perhaps, with Genesis. Noah, after all, already resorted to the sublime alcoholic resource: "And he drank wine and became drunk and undressed in the middle of the tent." And it is the word of God.

All these witnesses help Satué to situate the pictorial subject matter. His journey begins with the great Velázquez and the painting "The Drunkards." This composition was actually originally titled "A Story of Bacchus Crowning His Brothers," but the public, as we know, quickly adapted the mythology to the most common customary scenes. According to Ortega y Gasset, this is "the only wine scene among important Spanish paintings". And it is strange, because in the literature called picaresque (16th-17th centuries), drunkenness was a leitmotiv constant and celebrated.

Be that as it may, Satué immediately grafts Velázquez's painting onto the French revivalists of the late 19th century. This is how he refers to "The Absinthe Drinker" by Édouard Manet, "In a Café" by Edgar Degas, and "The Drinker" by Paul Cézanne. In his volume, Satué does not include the original paintings, but rather recreations produced by his own pen. In carrying out these variations, he seems to be following Cézanne's own advice: "Everything in nature is molded according to spheres, cones, or cylinders. One must paint on the basis of these simple figures."

Everything changed radically with the emergence of Cubism. Picasso's "The Pernod Bottle" and Juan Gris's "The Anise Bottle" distort the real image into a projection we would now call pixelated. Gris's anise, by the way, is the famous Anís del Mono, the brand founded by the Bosch i Grau brothers in 1968 in Badalona, ​​​​illustrated and named after an ambiguous interpretation of Darwin's theories.

Joan Miró's "Bottle of Wine" deserves special mention, a truly unusual piece in the painter's career. On the far left of the composition, and floating among elements characteristic of Miró's aesthetic, a formidable bottle with the word "wine" as its label strikes the viewer's eye and makes them think of how the violence of the grape produces the most delicious nectars.

In one way or another, wine—alcohol—has seduced artists. Wine, or rather, the vessel from which it's usually supplied. Perhaps because, as Umberto Eco said, there are certain inventions that have never been surpassed. The Italian semiologist cited the book, the spoon, the hammer, the wheel, and the scissors. And Satué adds the glass bottle. May it have glory.