ABOUT AMICITIA

“I spent the next fifteen months travelling the world to drink Mouton-Rothschild wine with friends and family. Over 300,000 miles were travelled by plane alone and the fifty bottles eventually transformed into an incredible 266, including four bottles known as the ‘wine of the century’: the 1945 Mouton-Rothschild. I used nineteen different cameras to take more than 8,000 photos. The end result is what you see before you: 512 pages celebrating friendship through wine.”

“This book predominantly contains photos of the Mouton-Rothschild project, categorized into drinking moments and the connected artworks (as well as their development). Each drinking moment is presented in chronological order per occasion, noting the year, the month and the location. Each drinking moment has its own story to tell; rich stories that are worth telling. Since the detailed documentation of each of these moments would be a book in its own right, I decided to be restrictive with my text. Luckily, a picture is worth a thousand words and this book is full of them. In addition to my own words, I also asked a few friends to write about our friendship or a personal experience. I consider these to complement the intention and manifestation of the book.

This is first and foremost a book about friendship; drinking beautiful wines is secondary. Hence, the name AMICITIA, which means ‘friendship’ in Latin. This is my statement as an artist about what I value most in life: experiences with friends that define friendship. And of course, this book is also about art and traveling, because life is art and we are all travelers within it.”