Campaign · 1993 · 1 edition

Absolut Statehood

Absolut Statehood was the American artist programme of the early 1990s in which Carillon Importers, led by Michel Roux, asked one painter living in each of the fifty states, and one in the District of Columbia, to picture their home around the Absolut bottle. Commissioned in 1991, the 51 portraits ran as full pages in USA Today every other week through 1992 and 1993, a road trip through local art scenes rather than a parade of famous names. Each work was also printed as a signed and numbered lithograph sold for the benefit of DIFFA, the design industries' foundation against AIDS, for which the campaign is said to have raised some four million dollars; the paintings were shown together for the first time at the Spritmuseum in Stockholm in 2024.