![\"Alexandra](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ea2c82eec4f737bd546f4cc525d264da79-alexandra-grant-taste-test.rsquare.w400.jpg\")
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Taste Test<\/a><\/p>\n \n What is \u201cgood taste\u201d anyway? Allow your favorite actor, musician, celebrity, or comedian to let you in on what they\u2019re watching, reading, and consuming.\n <\/p>\n \n Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images, Shutterstock, J Vineyards & Winery, Retailers\n <\/p>\n A few weeks ago, the artist Alexandra Grant posed this question to a roomful of writers, wine connoisseurs, and assorted art types at the studio she has been renting in Chelsea: \u201cWhat happens when the mantra works?\u201d<\/p>\n Among the many paintings behind her was one with a phrase she has long used in her work: \u201cI was born to love, not to hate.\u201d Ahead of her was a table with bottles of LOVE Wine, a sparkling collaboration she recently struck with the California-based J Vineyards. And tucked away in a side room were shelves of thoughtfully designed art books published by X Artists\u2019 Books, the small press she founded with Keanu Reeves, her romantic and business partner<\/a>. Each of these facets of Grant\u2019s work are currently facing that existential question in all its dizzying thrills.<\/p>\n First, the paintings. As Grant told The Cut, she had started leaning on that defiant mantra, taken from Sophocles\u2019s Antigone, in the wake of Michael Brown\u2019s 2014 killing in Ferguson, Missouri, which internationally mobilized the Black Lives Matter movement. Grant, who has always dealt with heady, academic topics through often text-heavy work, now feels she has come to exemplify its message through other expressions. \u201cThe paintings are effervescent,\u201d she said of her brightly dotted artwork. \u201cYou almost can\u2019t read the text anymore. It stopped being the mantra you repeat; it\u2019s already embodied.\u201d<\/p>\n One of those expressions is grantLOVE, a project she began in 2008 to raise money for art nonprofits. It\u2019s through this branch of her work that she launched LOVE Wine, which will feature a label created by a female-identifying artist with each new bottling, beginning with Genevieve Gaignard. (Grant announced that night that they\u2019d just sold out of this initial edition, though another will follow in 2026 with a different artist\u2019s label.)<\/p>\n Grant wasn\u2019t able to properly toast that achievement that night, just having beaten a slight cold. Later that evening, she got a call from Reeves: He\u2019d come down with food poisoning and had to call out of his performance in Waiting for Godot during intermission. (His understudy, Franklin Bongjio, was excellent.) The two met in 2009, bonding over their love of books and establishing a literary friendship and, in 2017, X Artists\u2019 Press. Grant is proud of their esoteric printings, but another mantra question remains: How do you celebrate, and move forward, once your dreams come true?<\/p>\n For Grant, who grew up all around the world thanks to her parents\u2019 globe-trotting careers, this means a gentle \u201csunsetting\u201d from overseeing the press, though she\u2019s far from calling it quits. Here, she tells The Cut about her taste in the finer things: wine, literature, and Miyazaki.<\/p>\n I know you spend a lot of time in France; what\u2019s your sparkling habit like over there? Do you stick with a sparkling wine throughout a meal, or is there a time to switch? How do you keep your creativity alive when not painting or working on the press? What are you reading right now?\u00a0 Do you like to have multiple books going on at once? What\u2019s one book you could point to for someone who wants to get into, let\u2019s say, art theory? What\u2019s the last meal you cooked for dinner?\u00a0 In cases like that, do you pair wine with your meal? What music do you listen to when you\u2019re alone?\u00a0 Is there any pop release that\u2019s really stuck out to you this year? Do you have a favorite piece of art that you own?\u00a0 Speaking of chains of friendship, is there anyone or anywhere that you turn to for culture recommendations? We haven\u2019t talked about movies. Is there something that you\u2019ll never, ever watch, no matter how hard people around you may try? Do you have a comfort rewatch? This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.<\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n
There are so many local options, so I love a Cr\u00e9mant; I love a sparkling Vouvray. But I think what I like about J Vineyards is that it\u2019s local. You ask J\u2019s head winemaker, Nicole Hitchcock, where the grapes come from, and she\u2019s like, Oh, the field over there, facing the ocean. I think that idea of terroir<\/a> kind of has gotten lost, but it\u2019s being refound in American wines. Growing up in France and then learning about wines in the States, people say they like Cabernet, and I\u2019m like, But that\u2019s a grape, that\u2019s not a location. It took me a minute to understand that, in the United States, people choose based on grape rather than terroir.<\/p>\n
Not that I want to bring menopause into every conversation I have, but I think it\u2019s important. I grew up with the idea that you would have a glass of wine or a kir as an aperitif, and then you\u2019d pair the meal with a different wine. As I\u2019ve gotten older, I realize that I just enjoy sparkling the whole meal, but it has to do with body chemistry. It turns out that when your hormones shift, you have different needs in terms of food, so a lot of women find that their diets shift spectacularly in their 50s. And it\u2019s not just hangovers! But I will say I do enjoy sparkling more than I used to. I think sparkling and Champagne are actually the lightest energy; the least hungover and you\u2019re not mixing all these different things.<\/p>\n
When you\u2019re living in a city for a long time, sometimes I think, What would a tourist do? I have Chelsea Piers near the studio, and I saw that there\u2019s an ice-skating rink, so I\u2019m learning how to ice-skate. Ice-skating is really bilateral; it\u2019s hard. I\u2019m a huge fan of dance music and power ballads, so being out there skating to Sia at least once a week, and being not good at something, is really important. I like learning something where one is not an expert. I have the most amazing teacher, her name is Zoe on Ice<\/a>; that\u2019s her Instagram handle. She\u2019s from Alaska, and she just graduated with a master\u2019s degree from the ITP program at NYU. We talk about ideas, and then she\u2019s like, Okay, now we\u2019re gonna learn bunny hops, and I\u2019m 52 years old with sparkling leg warmers. You know what I mean? It\u2019s that idea of cultivating a space of childlike curiosity.<\/p>\n
I just finished and am in love with The Bridge of the Golden Horn, by Emine Ozdama, a Turkish writer living in Germany. It\u2019s really extraordinary. At 18, she went to Germany from Turkey to work at a factory and started entering the world of theater and literature and writing about the experiences of being a guest laborer. I\u2019m doing a show at the Neues Museum in Nuremberg in July, and I\u2019m building an octagon-shaped chapel where I\u2019ll feature eight different women who are either German writers or writing in German to talk about how women have used literature to constitute their sense of self since.<\/p>\n
I am one of those people who really thinks of books as furniture. I have manuscripts open on my computer and piles of books started everywhere. There\u2019s a lot of reading going on at the same time. I\u2019m also reading Tehrangeles<\/a>, by Porochista Khakpour, who is an amazing Iranian American writer from L.A. who lives in New York. Her book is this complete froth about a Persian family in L.A. who\u2019s going to have a reality-TV show, and then the pandemic hits. She\u2019s a very serious person, but she\u2019s written this utter bit of candy, so anytime I need candy, I just reach for the book. You can only read so much theory, for example, right? You need something else.<\/p>\n
There are so many primers to art theory, but my personal passion is the writer H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Cixous \u2014 this lioness of French literature. The art world is a world that teaches you through the ear: This is important and this is why. Then you have to memorize; you don\u2019t learn to trust your eyes, you learn to trust your ears. Why is this important? Because I\u2019ve been told it\u2019s important. So I divide the art world between eye people and ear people, and, for me, the most important theorists are the ones who teach you to use your eyes. H\u00e9l\u00e8ne\u2019s Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing is such an exciting book because it teaches you to think for yourself.<\/p>\n
Last night, I cooked pasta with fra diavolo sauce. I wish I could say I made it from scratch, but I bought an excellent jar.<\/p>\n
When you\u2019re planning a meal where you\u2019re choosing to drink alcohol, of course you\u2019re going to think about pairing. The great thing about sparkling wine is that it goes well with everything.<\/p>\n
I do a lot of work in classical music. Right now, I\u2019m doing album covers for Deutsche Grammophon\u2019s Peter and the Wolf\u00a0and Romeo and Juliet, so I\u2019m listening to the music that I need to know for these albums. You know how in the wine world they\u2019re like, The University of Bordeaux has said that drinking a glass of red wine every day is good for your health? I read somewhere that EDM is good for your health, which \u2026 But I do believe it\u2019s true, that music with a good beat is good for you. I had an intern a few years ago who summed it up for her mother, saying, I love working for Alexandra, we just listen to house music and make dots.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m such a huge fan of Rosal\u00eda, which, like, is that pop? I love Billie Eilish. I\u2019m a huge Sia fan. I will say one of the highlights of this year was when I went to the last concert of Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s Cowboy Carter Tour with my friend Roxane Gay. That was \u2026 I mean, are you kidding me? Destiny\u2019s Child came out, Jay-Z popped out of the floor, Shaboozey was there. It was awesome, that idea of community and safety, seeing everyone decked out. I just could not get enough of the joy and the time and care people had taken.<\/p>\n
One of my favorite artists is R.B. Kitaj. I have this print that I brought from L.A. that was given by Kitaj to a friend who\u2019s very dear to me, so it has her name on it, and then she gave me the piece. The idea of chains of friendship, I think, is so important in art. I\u2019d say that all of my favorite pieces are connected to real people. When I was 18, I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and saw Kitaj\u2019s work, and it was the first time that I understood that an artist, a painter, wasn\u2019t just someone who was moving material around, but they were painting about ideas that were literary and personal. That was such a moment of clarity for me. And then I wrote him a fan letter, and he wrote me back. So there\u2019s also that connection to the kindness that I was shown by him as a teenager.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s always fascinated me, as the digital distribution of ideas has increased, how do you keep your integrity? I think The Cut is one of the publications that\u2019s really grappled with who we are as humans. We are inclusive, we don\u2019t want to be bossed around, and we wanna be kind of messy and nonhierarchical in our interests. I feel like the writers who\u2019ve written there are also looking outside. I love astrology, so I look at Chani Nicholas. I love my dear Roxane Gay; I\u2019m very interested in what she\u2019s doing. The phrase that keeps coming back to me is: I\u2019m less interested in the world and I\u2019m more interested by the earth. The world of people, because people are being manipulated and hypnotized and distracted, can be very exhausting. I like the idea of returning to the earth \u2014 looking at a plant, looking at the sky, this light right here and how amazing it is \u2014 and thinking about the writers and artists who are doing that.<\/p>\n
I am not a huge fan of horror. Also, I find that the fascination with serial killers is very problematic to me. Someone in my family was murdered by a serial killer, and being on the family side of it has made it really questionable; the moral or the ethical responsibility of the media in telling these stories with adulation toward the criminal. I think we should investigate society\u2019s desire for that.<\/p>\n
When I had super-COVID, the only thing I could watch was Miyazaki. I will throw down for this; I have two favorite Miyazakis: Nausica\u00e4 of the Valley of the Wind and Howl\u2019s Moving Castle. I grew up watching Heidi<\/a> in Spanish; it\u2019s a Japanese version of a Swiss story dubbed into Spanish that was huge in Mexico when I was a kid. So it\u2019s an aesthetic I grew up with. I also think of the idea of a strong female protagonist, and just the complexity of the stories. Miyazaki\u2019s work looks at the rise of industrial civilization and the minimization of human experience, and then uses the symbolism of magic and nature in order to rebalance things out and help us understand our experience. That\u2019s why I find it so comforting.<\/p>\n