Artículo #108
Art and wine
Wine has been present in the collective memory of Chile since the origin, and the viticultural activities, due to their extension, are integral part of the cultural imaginary that in different times has inspired artists of all disciplines. Regardless that situation, the study of the art history in conjunction with the wine history is not a simple work. Apart from the summaries and studies about the Colonial and republican art written during the last century by Eugenio Pereira and Guillermo Feliú, and in the 19th century by authors like Luís Alvarez and Vicente Grez, the truth is that this discipline still raises with a little development in the country. Now, the causes of this exiguous number of documents associated with the wine presence in the Creole art has its origins in the way it has progressed the artistic task in this part of the world, going from a reality very classified under the directions of the church and of the viceroyalty during the colonial period, up to its gradual thematic emancipation at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century.
Texto destacado
“In which reign, in which century, under which silent conjunction of the stars, in which secret day the marble has not saved, it appeared the valuable and singular idea of inventing happiness? Wine, teach me the art of seeing my own history as if it already was ash of memory”.
(J.L. Borges. "Sonnet of wine")
Chilean experts like Guillermo Feliú Cruz and Eugenio Pereira Salas, among others, have stated that as regards cultural studies, in general it is precise to consider that in from the 16th to the 18th centuries, it is observed an important religious influence in art, under the attentive supervision of Lima and mainland Spain, a context in which the works commonly focused on representing the landscape, portraits of patricians and national heroes and, of course, issues related to ecclesiastical break.
During the 19th century, however, the panorama experiences substantial changes. Inspired by the economic increase and the progress ideal, the republican authorities had among their first measures to import European wise men in all the disciplines of knowledge and, of course, likewise in the art field.
The arrival of European painters, sculptors and writers contributed decisively in the development of the “winey art” in the country. True masters of their times, such as Claudio Gay, Maria Graham, Searle, Ohlsen, Mastai Ferreti, Smith, Gil de Castro, Rugendas, Somerscales, Whistler, Raimundo Monvoisin and Alejandro Cicarelli, among many others, propitiated new ways to understand the popular art and the representation of the everyday.
Wine, an inexhaustible inspirational source for poets, painters, singers and any type of artists, has been present mainly in the authorsꞌ intimacy rather than as protagonists of their works. Painters such as the brothers Francisco and Mercedes Gana, Pedro Lira, Onofre Jarpa, Subercaseaux, Juan González, Alfredo Valenzuela and Alberto Valenzuela Llanos showed, in their times, the beauty of the Chilean rural landscape, as well as others before and after have showed the image of a bottle or a glass of wine waiting for company.
Among the more than one hundred painters the historiography has registered and the hundreds of poets born in this country, there is undoubtedly an important presence of the wine in their works. But it is not less certain that the process of incorporating the viticulture to the artistic creation field started in Chile later, at the end of the 19th century, thanks to the interests of vinegrowers and industrials, on the one hand, because the sanitary authorities wanted to show the damage that alcoholism produced in the working class.
Renewed impetu
Topics that would mark the beginning of the 20th century, inheriting not only in literature but also in other arts, the almost atemporal image of “El Roto”, always drunk with wine, quarreler and sagacious.
The social problems would cross practically all the viticultural iconography of the century, incorporating images of the damages that, for many doctors, were caused by the wine in the sinus of the “Social Issue”. From the prohibition of 1938 and until a little after the implementation of the project of Agricultural Reform in the decades of 1950-60, the images of viticulture, pictures mainly, would be related, every time with more naturality, to the world of agricultural cooperatives, on the one hand, and of the great traditional wineries, on the other hand.
Recently, with renewed impetus, an interesting winey current in the contemporary art has started to be visible, where distinguishable artists have exhibited their collections, of significant value, inspired in the wine, from sculptures to photographies, going through paintings, songs, poems, etc.
Day by day, the artistic exhibitions are more plentiful, and today they coincide, in some way or the other, with the wine, not only through the strategic association among companies (wineries and museums, for example), but also among citizens that dare to innovate in the search of new spaces to express.
In this sense, it results particularly interesting the decision of some wineries of incorporating pieces of art in their own labels. An initiative that although it is not new, in fact, Viña Cánepa had a pioneering experience from 1989 with Nemesio Antúnez and then with Concepción Balmes (1990), Gonzalo Ilabaca (1991), Samy Benmayor (1992) and Eduardo García de la Sierra (1993), it has shown it is tremendously successful in welcoming the public in general.
New topics, new talents
In recent years, artists like Benjamín Lira, Bororo, Francisca Sutil, Matías Pinto D'Aguiar, Catalina Abbott, Samy Benmayor, Guillermo Tejeda and Jorge Lankin have created beautiful works that have been incorporated to wines of wineries such as Viu Manent (Abbott), Quebrada de Macul (Lira), Altaïr (Benmayor), Lagar de Bezana (Bororo) and Los Mareados (Lankin), among others. The beautiful labels of Cherub y Folly, of Viña Montes, were entrusted to the British painter Ralph Steadman, a very interesting case where there is a blend of the design modernity, together with the use of classical icons of literature, but worked from an avant-garde and ludic view. As it is seen, it is about initiatives that approximate the art and the publicity until melting them in one expression, an issue that gives an additional value to each bottle and that undoubtedly, exalts the winery as a whole.
The label of line Santa Laura, of Viña Laura Hartwig, rescues the portrait that Claudio Bravo did to Mrs Hartwig at the beginning of the seventies. A portrait which became label, that was born not only from the unique work of Bravo, but also from a friendship that joined them from those times.
In the poetry, it is distinguishable the initiative of Viña Sutil, a winery that has wanted to do homage to the principal poets in Chile, showing their faces in the labels of their wines, associating each one of them with a particular varietal. New topics, new talents. An evolution of creativity that denies to stop and, on the contrary, dares to spread indistinctly in one or in other place, in the art, the music and the letters, demonstrating that the wine is not only inspiration, but also a piece of art in itself.
As an essential part of this cultural heritage, it is undoubtedly that the viticultural activities in their whole and the artistic creativity in any order will continue marking an important presence in the way in which Chileans portray us ourselves, the scenery and the environment.
Note:
Images of John Jennings, Wolfgang Haselmann, Mika Baumeister, Dustin Humes and Jon Tyson.