France’s leading Cognac company has teamed up with the world’s richest Indian artist. Over the past 40 years, Anish Kapoor has dreamt up Chicago’s iconic bean sculpture, installed a paint-blasting cannon in Vienna, and gained rights to the blackest paint ever. Now, the spiritually inclined artist is taking on the religious medium of glass, designing a limited edition Rémy Martin XO decanter with accents that reference an accompanying artwork—the latest in his series of concave discs, one of which reflects the sky over the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium.
“I began to think about a work that would sit alongside the Rémy Martin bottle,” Kapoor said of this new, amber-hued sculpture in a release. “It has this radiant presence, it shows through. The color is the most direct way of getting into it. I wanted to translate these reflections.” Alcohol and artists go together like paint and canvas. Never mind the fraught relationship between intoxication and creativity—the New York Times noted recently that booze brands are using art to attract new audiences. But Kapoor differs from talents like Jean-Michel Basquiat, KAWS, and Daniel Arsham. He’s less street, more genteel, even amidst the Young British Artists movement that rose to fame alongside him in the 1980s. He does, however, adore spectacle.
Rémy Martin has done a select few creative collaborations. In 2018, vector artist Matt W. Moore designed a Rémy Martin VSOP label. Metalwork artist Steaven Richard spiced up their logo in 2019. Chinese painter Huang Yuxing decorated the eaux-de-vie to honor the Year of the Snake. Kapoor is Rémy Martin’s biggest get so far. It makes sense, then, that he’s overseen one of the largest makeovers Rémy Martin XO has gotten since debuting in 1981. Kapoor doesn’t do that many partnerships either—aside from letting LG show his work at Frieze Seoul in 2023, and redesigning the Bulgari B.zero1 ring to mark its 10th anniversary, in 2010. Two years prior, he told author and curator Nicholas Baume, “Artists don’t make objects, artists make mythologies.”
Perhaps the most famous instance of artists arguing over selling out centers on Salvador Dali. Andre Breton ejected him from the surrealists for his many sponsorships, even renaming Dali “Avida Dollars”—a pejorative anagram. We’re not giving Kapoor any nasty nicknames for taking one admittedly tasteful corporate partnership, but one does have to wonder, is the art market that bad? In the release, Kapoor said he took the gig because his father loved Rémy Martin.
He has, in fact, transformed this object into somewhat of a mythology. His own. Rémy Martin’s golden label, featuring their centaur logo, has been replaced with a simple “XO”—and Kapoor’s name. The bottle’s grooves are now an optical illusion. Kapoor “revisited the original glass mold to form a smooth front surface that fuses with the classic scooped design on the back to amplify its luminous effect, enhance its solar shape and reflect infinite possibilities,” the release states. The bottle’s alluring amber hue, recessed central circle, and capacity for mesmerizing distortion all directly reference the subtly mirrored companion sculpture Kapoor made the maison for this partnership. You can’t visit any major art fair around the world without passing one of this artwork’s cousins. But, such sculptures cost almost $1,000,000. The 16,000 similarly sublime XO bottles—out now at esteemed international retailers—will only set art collectors back $300.
