Oswaldo Costa
Oswaldo Costa
Internet attention spans make us so intolerant; forgive the length of this (ultimately) wine related musing.
When Barthes wrote his famous essay Death of the Author (1967), he meant to dissociate the interpretation of works of art from their authors but, for a long time, I misunderstood that to mean something quite different. I thought it referred to a tendency, found in much 20th century art, to get away from the idea of the genius artist and rely on systems. In some of its 1970s and 1980s manifestations, this dovetails with feminist critiques of the traditional white male artist, but it also ties into other elements of the zeitgeist, like widespread access to information, flattening of hierarchies, multiculturalism, anti-colonialism, etc.
There have always been systems in art. Vanishing point perspective is a system, as is the Golden Rule, or Vermeer’s supposed use of the camera obscura. What I find interesting in 20th century systems is the impulse to reduce authorial subjectivity, the (partial) erasure of the importance of the personal touch, of the handiwork. The ego under siege.
In the visual arts, examples of such techniques include collage (starting, somewhat paradoxically, with Picasso, the paradigm of white male genius artist), appropriation (starting with Duchamp’s ready-mades), and rule-based art making, like De Stijl (Mondrian; reduction to primary colors and straight lines), much of the Bauhaus, the Surrealists’ exquisite corpses drawings, Concrete art, Op and Kinetic art, Italian Arte Povera (Mario Merz’s rather decorative use of the Fibonacci series), Land art, Minimalism, feminist appropriation of the work of male artists (e.g., Sherrie Levine). In contemporary classical music, about which I am poorly informed to provide examples, there is serial/twelve-tone music (e.g., Schoenberg), collage/appropriation (Berio, Ives, Milhaud), and chance/randomness (Cage). David Bowie uses chance to write song lyrics, and sampling is, of course, all about collage and quotes. In Architecture, systems have always been the norm, but not so much as a way to reduce authorial subjectivity. In literature I see fewer examples, perhaps because of the nature of the beast: maybe the Surrealists’ automatic writing would qualify, and concrete poetry driven by graphic schema. A famous example is Walter Benjamin, who said he’d like to write a book composed entirely of quotes.
But this drive toward lower subjectivity through more process-oriented art-making only seeks to downplay the author’s status as genius creator, not kill him. It is a partial death, and only of a certain kind of all-controlling, protean author.
OK, how does this tie into wine? The starter yeast for this meditation was a sentence in the recent Wine-Searcher article on decanting: "I love (screw caps) and wish every wine meant to be drunk within five years of bottling had them." One often sees references to wine meant to be drunk young and wine meant to be aged, and I’ve always wondered what the winemaker had to actually DO to the wine for it to be one or the other. I suppose wine "meant to be drunk young" is imbued with less "phenolic structure", less tannins (be they from skins, seeds, stems or new oak), perhaps less dry extract (assuming that’s not the same as phenolic structure). In short, less of just about everything except acidity, this can be high in both cases. Conversely, wines "meant to age" will have more of all this "stuffing", plus enough SO2 added for the long ride.
Well, if you are an interventionist winemaker, you can add whatever a wine needs to become a long distance runner, but what if you’re a natural winemaker, can you also make wines meant to be drunk young and wines meant to age? Doesn’t the choice itself already imply intervention? Not always, as I understand it. Longer ferments (as long as they are not made possible by sugar additions) and longer ageing on lees can make wines that last longer. While these are winemaker decisions, they are not interventions per se, and do not violate any natural credo.
So, given that wine, like art, does not make itself (as those who crusade against natural wine are fond of saying, with a self-satisfaction that borders on the retarded) and that there will always be the need for winemakers and artists if wine and art are to be made, perhaps there is some parallel between the two kinds of art making and winemaking discussed here (if you will allow me to be Manichean for the sake of exposition; I know there are infinite shades of grey along the continuum).
Art made according to the traditional genius model would be more analogous to wine made by brilliant winemakers, who take the grapes, do this and that to them, and fashion brilliant wine. Picasso = Rolland. The other kind of art, the kind reflecting a (partial) death of the author that avoids the genius model, would be more analogous to non-interventionist winemaking, more interested in process. Systems can also be a more dependable way for the winemaker to be in closer contact with nature, since whose ego has never got in the way of intuition?
But, given that there are many decisions that even the most radically non-interventionist winemakers must make, what criteria should they follow if, say, they wanted to be driven by the lowest possible degree of subjectivity? In other words, what is the maximum that you can take man out of the process, what is the most system driven that you can be?
A hypothetical stab at an answer: the soil should be as alive as it can be, the ungrafted vine as treatment-free as it can be, the pruning guided by nature-dependent (e.g., lunar) criteria, the picking done when sugar stops accumulating as a result of photosynthesis and starts accumulating as a result of evaporation (if the tannins are still green at that point, that’s just tough), the ambient yeast fermentation should last only as long as it takes to fully ferment the sugar, the ageing should be in neutral containers using nature-dependent criteria (no idea what this would mean here), the bottling should be without fining, filtering or SO2. You would have to keep your fingers amazingly crossed, hoping that it would taste good, and last a few years. If it's stable, perhaps it will speak of its place and grape more clearly than wines made any other way. Assuming that's the grail. If it tastes shitty, you can at least be proud of your principles, and your banter would make you a hit at contemporary art openings.
ps: I love this bored; can’t think of anywhere else on the planet where I could write this and hope to be even remotely understood.
When Barthes wrote his famous essay Death of the Author (1967), he meant to dissociate the interpretation of works of art from their authors but, for a long time, I misunderstood that to mean something quite different. I thought it referred to a tendency, found in much 20th century art, to get away from the idea of the genius artist and rely on systems. In some of its 1970s and 1980s manifestations, this dovetails with feminist critiques of the traditional white male artist, but it also ties into other elements of the zeitgeist, like widespread access to information, flattening of hierarchies, multiculturalism, anti-colonialism, etc.
There have always been systems in art. Vanishing point perspective is a system, as is the Golden Rule, or Vermeer’s supposed use of the camera obscura. What I find interesting in 20th century systems is the impulse to reduce authorial subjectivity, the (partial) erasure of the importance of the personal touch, of the handiwork. The ego under siege.
In the visual arts, examples of such techniques include collage (starting, somewhat paradoxically, with Picasso, the paradigm of white male genius artist), appropriation (starting with Duchamp’s ready-mades), and rule-based art making, like De Stijl (Mondrian; reduction to primary colors and straight lines), much of the Bauhaus, the Surrealists’ exquisite corpses drawings, Concrete art, Op and Kinetic art, Italian Arte Povera (Mario Merz’s rather decorative use of the Fibonacci series), Land art, Minimalism, feminist appropriation of the work of male artists (e.g., Sherrie Levine). In contemporary classical music, about which I am poorly informed to provide examples, there is serial/twelve-tone music (e.g., Schoenberg), collage/appropriation (Berio, Ives, Milhaud), and chance/randomness (Cage). David Bowie uses chance to write song lyrics, and sampling is, of course, all about collage and quotes. In Architecture, systems have always been the norm, but not so much as a way to reduce authorial subjectivity. In literature I see fewer examples, perhaps because of the nature of the beast: maybe the Surrealists’ automatic writing would qualify, and concrete poetry driven by graphic schema. A famous example is Walter Benjamin, who said he’d like to write a book composed entirely of quotes.
But this drive toward lower subjectivity through more process-oriented art-making only seeks to downplay the author’s status as genius creator, not kill him. It is a partial death, and only of a certain kind of all-controlling, protean author.
OK, how does this tie into wine? The starter yeast for this meditation was a sentence in the recent Wine-Searcher article on decanting: "I love (screw caps) and wish every wine meant to be drunk within five years of bottling had them." One often sees references to wine meant to be drunk young and wine meant to be aged, and I’ve always wondered what the winemaker had to actually DO to the wine for it to be one or the other. I suppose wine "meant to be drunk young" is imbued with less "phenolic structure", less tannins (be they from skins, seeds, stems or new oak), perhaps less dry extract (assuming that’s not the same as phenolic structure). In short, less of just about everything except acidity, this can be high in both cases. Conversely, wines "meant to age" will have more of all this "stuffing", plus enough SO2 added for the long ride.
Well, if you are an interventionist winemaker, you can add whatever a wine needs to become a long distance runner, but what if you’re a natural winemaker, can you also make wines meant to be drunk young and wines meant to age? Doesn’t the choice itself already imply intervention? Not always, as I understand it. Longer ferments (as long as they are not made possible by sugar additions) and longer ageing on lees can make wines that last longer. While these are winemaker decisions, they are not interventions per se, and do not violate any natural credo.
So, given that wine, like art, does not make itself (as those who crusade against natural wine are fond of saying, with a self-satisfaction that borders on the retarded) and that there will always be the need for winemakers and artists if wine and art are to be made, perhaps there is some parallel between the two kinds of art making and winemaking discussed here (if you will allow me to be Manichean for the sake of exposition; I know there are infinite shades of grey along the continuum).
Art made according to the traditional genius model would be more analogous to wine made by brilliant winemakers, who take the grapes, do this and that to them, and fashion brilliant wine. Picasso = Rolland. The other kind of art, the kind reflecting a (partial) death of the author that avoids the genius model, would be more analogous to non-interventionist winemaking, more interested in process. Systems can also be a more dependable way for the winemaker to be in closer contact with nature, since whose ego has never got in the way of intuition?
But, given that there are many decisions that even the most radically non-interventionist winemakers must make, what criteria should they follow if, say, they wanted to be driven by the lowest possible degree of subjectivity? In other words, what is the maximum that you can take man out of the process, what is the most system driven that you can be?
A hypothetical stab at an answer: the soil should be as alive as it can be, the ungrafted vine as treatment-free as it can be, the pruning guided by nature-dependent (e.g., lunar) criteria, the picking done when sugar stops accumulating as a result of photosynthesis and starts accumulating as a result of evaporation (if the tannins are still green at that point, that’s just tough), the ambient yeast fermentation should last only as long as it takes to fully ferment the sugar, the ageing should be in neutral containers using nature-dependent criteria (no idea what this would mean here), the bottling should be without fining, filtering or SO2. You would have to keep your fingers amazingly crossed, hoping that it would taste good, and last a few years. If it's stable, perhaps it will speak of its place and grape more clearly than wines made any other way. Assuming that's the grail. If it tastes shitty, you can at least be proud of your principles, and your banter would make you a hit at contemporary art openings.
ps: I love this bored; can’t think of anywhere else on the planet where I could write this and hope to be even remotely understood.
