Champagne Supernova: The story behind the cover of our 200th issue

Artist alexander Hall’s mews house is easy to find – a trail of pastel-coloured paint spatters along a cobblestoned street leads to his door in a quiet corner of West London.

Artist Alex Hall

Half English and half Swedish with wild blond hair and boyish good looks, the mixed-media artist seems to treat everything as a potential canvas, down to his white jeans, which are artfully flecked with paint. While he tends to stick to canvases, Hall has put his designs on everything from cars, clothing and furniture to Champagne bottles.

Having worked as a professional artist since 2011, his big break came in 2015 when he was asked by avid collector Peter Jones – of Dragon’s Den fame – to create an original artwork for a charity auction Jones was organising. Sitting in his former studio in an old fire station in Battersea, Hall had a flash of inspiration when he began reminiscing about a memorable trip to the South of France when he was a teenager, which involved driving around in a soft top with a group of older friends, then making memories as the stars came out over bottles of Dom Pérignon.

“I wanted to recreate the feeling of the rush of endorphins I got while I was driving, then the shared experience of drinking Champagne together, which helped us open up to one another and tell our stories,” says Hall. The resulting painting featured a trio of Champagne bottles with ‘Breakfast’, ‘Lunch’ and ‘Supper’ on their labels.

Hall wasn’t expecting much of a reaction to it, but it ended up selling for “a considerable amount” at the auction. The buyer was so taken with the work that he asked Hall to paint four more versions to give to his friends, one of whom happened to be restaurant mogul Richard Caring. “I’ve been very lucky in my career as everything I’ve done has led to something else,” Hall reflects.

Celebrate life

Other high fliers soon became fans of his work and asked Hall to create original paintings for private clubs in London, shooting lodges in Wales and holiday homes in Courchevel. Having initially focused on animals, Hall has made a name for himself by painting the trappings of success – from sports cars and Champagne bottles to polo ponies. The aim of the works is to celebrate life rather than flaunt wealth – having lost people close to him, Hall is only too aware of the brevity of life and the importance of making the most of every moment.

Before he discovered painting Hall had a passion for putting things together. “I loved Lego as a kid, and was building dining room tables at eight. My uncle was a carpenter, so encouraged that creative streak.” His artistic endeavours at school began with landscapes, houses and cars painted with oils. “In my mind they were really boring conventional subjects. I always enjoyed doing them but never enjoyed looking at them,” says Hall, who doesn’t see the point in creating art that aims to replicate reality. “If a camera can do a better job then that’s not art to me. Art is all about ideas and the artist’s ability to interpret their subject matter. The shape of the bottle is the only reference I make to Champagne, because it’s universally recognised and understood. The spirit of what I do comes from a desire not to dwell on the past but look forward to the future and give people the feeling of excitement you get from anticipation.”

Hall realised that he might be able to make a career out of his hobby when he sold his first painting aged 16 to a Swedish collector for £950. Spurred on by his mother’s exemplary work ethic, since then Hall has relished the freedom that comes with a creative career. “There are no rules when it comes to art. If you’re told that something you’ve done isn’t right, then you end up approaching a canvas anxiously and trying to control the work. You can sense the anxiety in it – the paint looks stagnant and the movement isn’t fluid,” says Hall, who has no such inhibitions when he paints. “I love the thrill of a blank canvas.”

db’s 200th cover: Hall’s Hip, Hip, Hooray painting has gone on sale for £10,500

The rise of Instagram has been instrumental in helping Hall to raise his profile and widen his audience. As have his connections with well known collectors. His paintings are proving so popular, that Hall now finds himself in the fortunate position of being able to pick and choose his commissions. He’s come a long way in a short space of time. “In the past few years I’ve had to say no more than yes to work, as I don’t want to look back on my career and think ‘I didn’t enjoy doing that painting’,” Hall says. “I’m fortunate to be in this position. I feel very lucky that it’s all working out.”

While he paints everything from perfume bottles to classic cars in his signature drip style, like Damien Hirst and his dot paintings, and Andy Warhol and his soup cans, Hall has made a name for himself with his Champagne bottles, and is keen to keep developing the theme. “I feel I’ve found my niche with the Champagne bottles and I’m so grateful my work has been accepted, because I like the idea of doing one thing really well,” he says. Hall creates around 30 original paintings a year, which he sells through his artistic platform, Haut de Gamme, meaning ‘high-end’ in French. Hall is keen to highlight that Haut de Gamme is the name for his work, rather than an alias like Banksy. “It would be very arrogant to refer to myself as being ‘top of the range’. It’s more about wanting to do my best. When I was growing up my parents taught me to put the same effort into the things people wouldn’t see, like painting the back of a cabinet even if only the wall gets to appreciate it.”

A painting inspired by Chanel N°5

This year Hall has branched out from bottle paintings to painted bottles, and has just been commissioned by Australian Formula One driver Daniel Ricciardo to paint the Jeroboam of G.H. Mumm Champagne he received after winning the Monaco Grand Prix last year. The project is particularly special to Hall as one of his biggest passions is motor racing, having grown up around the sport – both his father and godfather were well known drivers. “I want the bigger bottles I paint to be treated like sculptures and living pieces of art that can be used as things like door stoppers.” The move into bottle painting came after Hall was commissioned by the InterContinental Hotel Group last summer to hand paint 200 bottles representing each of the operating hotels in its portfolio.

When he first got the call, he thought it was a prank. After a representative from the hotel convinced him otherwise, Hall found a large studio in Ealing in which to create the piece. His vision for the work was clear. “I wanted it to look like a random mass of bottles when viewed from the hotel’s entrance, then when viewed from another angle it reveals the number 200,” he says.

Working to a tight deadline, after three months of planning, it took Hall a few weeks to paint all 200 bottles. “I was living on adrenaline and working through the night in the artificially lit studio. The whole thing was being filmed and I had all the bottles lined up in rows like toy soldiers so as not to mix them up.”

Hard work paid off

An artist at work. Credit Adrian Weinbrecht

One of the toughest parts of the project was having to open, empty then re-cork all 200 bottles, as the installation was due to go on display around the world, so the bottles had to be empty to avoid shipping delays. It took him a day to re-cork them, but his hard work paid off, and the installation made its debut at the InterContinental Carlton in Cannes last autumn, then moved to London over Christmas and Shanghai for Chinese New Year. It has since been on show in New York and Singapore, and will soon make an appearance in Sydney and Oman.

While his mind is constantly whirring with ideas, Hall has to be in the mood to paint, and uses exercise to get him in the right frame of mind. He’s so well versed at painting his signature Champagne bottles that he doesn’t need to sketch the outline first. To create the Hip Hip Hooray cover image for our celebratory 200th issue, Hall had the colours of the shields in his head before he started. “As it was a cover image I wanted it to be punchy so readers do a double take when they first see the image.”

Hall’s ‘Veni Vidi Vici’

Before painting the outline of the bottles, Hall developed the rough outline of the painting by flicking the main colours in it onto the canvas with a stick. He then created the outline of the bottles with black acrylic paint. Once the bottles were on the canvas, he covered their tops with 24-karat gold leaf, left them to dry, then stenciled the shape of the three shields and filled them in with spray paint. Once dry, the labels were written in Chinese black ink with a fountain-pen nib. The three vintages on the labels: 2002, 2006 and 2019, mark the year db was founded, the year our website launched, and the year we published our 200th issue. “I often work on more than one painting at once, as I have to wait for the paint to dry at each stage of the process,” says Hall, who reveals that the moment after the shields have been painted and before he begins his drip technique is the most critical part of the creative process.

“That’s when I need to gather my energy and be in the right frame of mind as it’s the moment when I really go for it and push myself to see what kind of energy I can get out of a flick of paint,” he says. “I don’t want my paintings to look like representation of bottles – I want them to look like someone having fun with the idea of a bottle.” A few times the dripping stage has gotten so intense that he’s had to put his foot through the canvas and start again. “It doesn’t always work out but I’m never afraid of flinging paint onto a canvas – I’m a huge fan of abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock, and I think if you try to control paint then you’re taking the fun out of what you do. I want my paintings to look ignited.”

And they certainly do – Hall’s signature drip technique lends his works a compelling immediacy and kinetic energy. He cites Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns as his greatest artistic influences, though Picasso was the artist that made him want to become a painter. “Picasso said it took him a lifetime to learn how to paint like a child, and I think we should spend our lives learning how to think like children to a certain extent, because when you do you’re able to have a lot more fun and make the most of the short time that we have here. I’ve experienced both the good and bad in life, but if you’re going to create, then why not create something that makes people feel good?”

The original painting used on our 200th issue cover is available to buy via: www.hautdegamme.com – framed limited edition prints and mini edition prints of the painting are also available. For more information on Alexander Hall, visit his website: www.hautdegamme.com and Instagram account: @hautdegamme_