This page lists, by year, the artists that have designed the label of the Château Mouton Rothschild. This wine introduced the concept of artist labels in the wine industry.
Background Baron Philippe de Rothschild came up with the idea of having each year's Château Mouton Rothschild label designed by a famous artist of the day. He started with Jean Carlu in 1924, but eventually dropped the idea when he faced a wave of critics regarding his novel idea. In 1946, this became a permanent and significant aspect of the Mouton image, but the illustrations were often informal, quickly drafted by the artists, sometimes on a table napkin. In 1955, Georges Braque asked to design the next wine's label, and the wine's label went on to be designed by famous international artists since then.
In the words of Julien de Beaumarchais de Rothschild, “The artist must be like Mouton: an extremely well-known artist who does not need Mouton to promote his or her art”.
Once, on a trip to the USA, Philippine de Rothschild saw that wealthy collectors of Château Mouton Rothschild had enlarged the bottles' labels and were displaying them in their houses' hallway. This gave the idea to the Baroness to organize, starting in 1981, fully-fledged exhibitions of the wine labels. A permanent exhibition was created in 2013 at the château.
The popularity of the label images results in auction prices for older and more collectible years being far out of sync with the other first growths, whose labels do not change year to year.
List
1924: Jean Carlu (the first time a commercial artist designed a wine label) 1945: Philippe Jullian ("The Year of Victory") 1946: Jean Hugo 1947: Jean Cocteau 1948: Marie Laurencin 1949: André Dignimont 1950: Arnulf 1951: Marcel Vertès 1952: Léonor Fini 1953: Centenary year commemoration 1954: Jean Carzou 1955: Georges Braque (first famous international artist to design the label) 1956: Pavel Tchelitchew 1957: André Masson 1958: Salvador Dalí 1959: Richard Lippold 1960: Jacques Villon 1961: Georges Mathieu 1962: Matta 1963: Bernard Dufour 1964: Henry Moore 1965: Dorothea Tanning 1966: Pierre Alechinsky 1967: César 1968: Bona 1969: Joan Miró 1970: Marc Chagall 1971: Wassily Kandinsky 1972: Serge Poliakoff 1973: Pablo Picasso (posthumous recognition – in memoriam, as he had died in Mougins in April of that year. Also the year Château Mouton Rothschild became first-growth) 1974: Robert Motherwell 1975: Andy Warhol 1976: Pierre Soulages 1977: Tribute to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, who stayed at the chateau in April 1977 1978: Jean-Paul Riopelle (2 labels) 1979: Hisao Domoto 1980: Hans Hartung 1981: Arman 1982: John Huston 1983: Saul Steinberg 1984: Agam 1985: Paul Delvaux 1986: Bernard Séjourné 1987: Hans Erni 1988: Keith Haring 1989: Georg Baselitz 1990: Francis Bacon 1991: Setsuko 1992: Per Kirkeby 1993: Balthus (2 labels. The first label had been banned in the US because it depicted a naked young woman and the press kit explained "The fragile and mysterious girl . . . seems to hint at some secret promise of undiscovered pleasure, a pleasure to be shared") 1994: Karel Appel 1995: Antoni Tàpies 1996: Gu Gan 1997: Niki de Saint Phalle 1998: Rufino Tamayo 1999: Raymond Savignac 2000: Special gold enamel relief of the "Augsburg Ram" in the Mouton museum 2001: Robert Wilson 2002: Ilya Kabakov 2003: 150th Birthday Tribute 2004: Charles, Prince of Wales 2005: Giuseppe Penone 2006: Lucian Freud 2007: Bernar Venet 2008: Xu Lei 2009: Anish Kapoor 2010: Jeff Koons 2011: Guy de Rougemont 2012: Miquel Barcelo 2013: Lee Ufan 2014: David Hockney 2015: Gerhard Richter 2016: William Kentridge 2017: Annette Messager 2018: Xu Bing 2019: Olafur Eliasson 2020: Peter Doig 2021: Chiharu Shiota 2022: Gérard Garouste 2023: Joana Vasconcelos
References
External links Images of Mouton labels from 1945–2013 the company's site about the paintings