Dom Pérignon unveils Basquiat-inspired bottles

Dom Pérignon has launched a limited edition series of bottles of its 2015 vintage Brut Champagne sporting labels inspired by famed artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Basquiat, who died in 1988, was known for his neo-expressionist style, and now, with the co-operation of his estate, Dom Pérignon has released bottles which draw inspiration from the artist’s 1983 work In Italian.

Now housed in the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the work shows Basquiat’s background as a graffiti artist, with scrawled slogans across the canvas.

Dom Pérignon has represented the work through a series of three coffrets, or gift boxes, which, when brought together, display In Italian in its entirety. This is, according to the LVMH-owned Champagne house, a nod to how the fine French fizz is made: “For the painting In Italian, the assemblage of materials and the successive pictorial interventions that hide each other until what was originally painted becomes indecipherable, opens the way to potentially infinite layers of meaning and multiple emotional configurations for the observer.”

“As for Dom Pérignon,” it continued, “the tension between the different characteristics of the original wines creates an extraordinarily rich alliance of meanings, without ever erasing the trace of the original matter.”

As for the actual bottles, each label features Basquiat’s signature three-pointed crown, in yellow, blue or green, atop the Dom Pérignon shield. According to Dom Pérignon, the shield represents the house’s protection of its ideals, and Basquiat’s crown signifies power. The SRP of the cofrets is US$350.

It has also been revealed that Dom Pérignon has released an exclusive ‘uberpiece’, available in just eight pieces worldwide, that features a “completely bespoke design and a unique, one-of-a-kind presentation” created in partnership with Artestar, which handles the licensing of Basquiat’s work.

“At their core, both Basquiat’s work and Dom Pérignon’s wines embody a shared desire to challenge the status quo and inspire through their unique visions,” the brand claimed.

Basquiat is not the first modern artist that Dom Pérignon has used for design inspiration, collections that pay homage to Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons also previously released.

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