Vini Artigianali Italiani: A Book Bridging Art and Wine

The book 'Vini Artigianali Italiani' (Buongiornovino, Rome 2018) presents an aesthetic and inner experience linking art and wine through the concept of craftsmanship. Authored by art historian Armando Castagno, aesthetics professor Giampaolo Gravina, and musicologist Fabio Rizzari, the volume features unsigned texts paired with full-page images that create a reading environment based on semantic, chromatic, material, compositional, metaphorical, historical, or conceptual analogies. The book aims to offer a new perspective on both wine and art, moving beyond conventional paths to intrigue readers through a story that leads to a 'sinking' as recommended by Achille Bonito Oliva in 'Manuale di Volo'. The physical object itself is crafted with care: hardcover, high-grammage paper, and attention to detail over eight months of full-time work. Limited to 2,500 copies, it is sold exclusively via Buongiornovino's website. Castagno notes that wine needs new words and a cultural system embracing tradition, composition, and style, looking both forward and backward to create short circuits. The selected artworks are evenly split between famous and lesser-known pieces, including works by Paul Cézanne, Deiva De Angelis, Michele Dixit, Gianni Monnet, and Arnaldo Badodi, alongside a 14th-century incunabulum cover and 2018 paintings. The selection criteria include love for manual craftsmanship, irregularity, lack of automatisms, wonder, and doubt.