A Surrealist’s Misfortune

Although the Daily Telegraph’s well-observed obituary (February 4, 2012) of Dorothea Tanning, the surrealist, pointed up her sense of ill-luck at having been consigned to exist as an artist only in the shadow of her husband, Max Ernst, her obituarist did not identity another misfortune, which was to be the appointed artist for the label of the 1965 Château Mouton Rothschild, variously described as possibly the worst vintage of the last two centuries, and giving off an odour of rotten garbage and stale mushrooms. It is considered by many connoisseurs to be undrinkable.