Dal. The Wines of Gala

The perfect companion to our best-selling title Les dners de Gala, TASCHEN presents the artists equally surreal and sensual viticulture follow-up: The Wines of Gala. A Dalnian take on pleasures of the grape and a coveted collectible, the book sets out to organize wines according to the sensations they create in our very depths. Through eclectic metrics like production method, weight, and color, the book presents wines of the world in such innovative, Dalesque groupings as Wines of Frivolity, Wines of the Impossible, and Wines of Light. Bursting with imagery, the book features more than 140 illustrations by Dal. Many of these are appropriated artworks, including various classical nudes, all of them reconstructed with suitably Surrealist, provocative touches, like Jean-Franois Millets The Angelus, one of Dals favorite points of reference over the decades. Dal also included what is now considered one of the greatest works from his late Nuclear Mystic phase, The Sacrament of the Last Supper (1955), which sets the iconic biblical scene in a translucent dodecahedron-shaped space before a Catalonian coastal landscape. Dal was by this stage a devout Catholic, simultaneously captivated by science, optical illusion, and the atomic age. The first section is dedicated to Ten Divine Dal Wines, an overview of 10 important wine-growing regions, while the second develops Dals revolutionary ordering of wine by emotional experience, instead of by geography or variety. Rather than any prescriptive classification, its a flamboyant, free-flowing manifesto in favor of taste and feeling, as much a multisensory treat as a full-bodied document of Dals late-stage oeuvre, in which the artist both reflected on formative influences and refined his own cultural legacy. Winner of the 2018 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards