The name Erró is often followed by the phrase “Iceland’s most famous artist”, a custom that can make the uninitiated feel a little uninformed, or even a philistine. After all, Erró’s work is not an essential civic highlight, as we say Miró or Gaudí from Catalonia.
Fortunately, the Reykjavík Art Museum is fully equipped to bring the unenlightened to Erró’s warm glow, given that it has over four thousand of his works. The newly opened “Raw Power” exhibition shows a selection of these parallel works by 15 other Icelandic artists and encourages the viewer to draw comparisons, discover connections and witness Erro’s influence on the common creativity of their mother tongue.
Pop art transferred to the glorious baroque
Erró left Iceland as a young man to study art and eventually moved to New York in 1964 where he befriended the pop artists Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol and began to develop his own use of painting. He later crossed the Atlantic again to find himself immersed in European creative culture and eventually succumbed to French art while living in Paris.
Birgir Snæbjörn Birgisson – an artist in Reykjavík and a former technician at the Reykjavík Art Museum – managed ‘Raw Power’ at the request of his former employer. He recalls having given a lecture at Erró when he was an art student in France.
“I was studying in Strasbourg at the time,” he recalls. “They were talking about the French art scene and Erró was mentioned. Coincidentally, the professor remembered that I was in the class and pointed out to the class that Erró was in fact Icelandic. And it told me how built-in he was in the French art scene. “
The art philosopher Arthur Danto once described Erró as “bringing pop art into the glorious baroque”, a description that further strengthened his position in mainland Europe (and delighted Erró). This disposition of other cultures – and Erró’s absence from Iceland for most of his life – may have tended to reinforce the perception of distance between the artist and the homeland.
“I never felt that the separation was at his request,” says Birgir. “I mean, he gives the City of Reykjavík his work regularly. When the decision was made to host his archive here and have a permanent exhibition, perhaps the separation comes from that. Maybe because it was never possible to mix it with other artists, until now. “
The opportunity for “Raw Power” was created when the museum announced similar exhibitions aimed at Icelandic painter Jóhannes S. Kjarval and Icelandic sculptor Ásmundur Sveinsson. The Erró show completes this trilogy.
“I had several times pointed out to the museum the idea of ’Raw Power’ and I am not the only one,” Birgir points out. “Hopefully, this show opens up the possibility of more Erró shows that deal with narrower themes, such as politics.”
Iggy pop list
The exhibition is based on a small collage by pop art that Erró produced in 2009 and contains a suitable cartoon description of Iggy Pop musician Detroit. Suitable for the title of the exhibition is the budget itself. ‘Raw Power’ is the title of the third album released by Iggy and his band, The Stooges, an album that had a huge impact on punk and which Iggy made the famous title “the world forgot boy”. ‘Raw Power’ was Kurt Cobain’s favorite album – a love that Birgir shared.
“Of course it did not start with the title, but the title came soon and broke through,” he reflects. “Power is something I would say we all connect with when we think of Erró’s work, and rawness is perhaps the added spice to it.”
Along with Erró
The works of fifteen selected artists in Raw Power are intertwined with works by Erró himself, arranged in such a way as to encourage the viewer to connect and draw threads between works.
Errós’ presence “Tómatsúpan” in the exhibition clearly connects to the world’s most famous pop art work – “Súpudósir” from Warhol – and is a reminder of Erró’s role in that scene. Erró produced his own soup-less shout the year after Warhol, his financially-funded partner, put his cans on display. In doing so, Erró not only re-creates funding, but also draws our attention to a piece that has its roots on the other side of the Atlantic – serving to remind us of its lack of concern for ideas of artistic nationality.
Þórdís Aðalsteinsdóttir ‘shrimp cocktail’ is hung next to Erómó ‘Tómatsúpan’. The works are connected in an awkwardly introverted way through the naked, pink shellfish from Þórdís’ works that echoes the exposed intestines of the man that Erró carries.
Seafood is one of Iceland’s cultural challenges and in addition to Þórdís’ shrimp, fish motifs are repeated throughout the room. Works by Helga Þorgils Friðjónsson and Arngrím Sigurðsson – which show blue lobster and cephalophilia, respectively – echo both the cycle of human death and fish death described in Erró’s painting ‘Green Mother’.
Icelandic creative diaspora
Reflects the idea of Icelandic creative distribution, a few decades ago the Icelandic artist Sara Riel went to Germany. ‘Mausfrau’ – one of her contributions to ‘Raw Power’ – symbolizes her time avoiding polizei as a label in Berlin. She now divides her time between Reykjavík and Athens, but even during the Berlin period, Sara’s ties with her homeland were strong.
“I never want to be an Icelandic artist,” Sara explains as she sits in the Greek sunshine. “That’s why I moved back to Iceland from Berlin. I wanted to write this into my own cultural history. “
Asked about Erró’s influence, Sara says that the generation gap between the master and the younger artists creates more distance than any geographical location.
“I think Erró has influenced us all,” she says, “even though we do not want to admit it. He is like a grandfather to us, which makes him a distant character. “
“I think Erró has affected us all, although we do not want to admit it.”
Lukas Bury, another ‘Raw Power’ artist, is a new Icelander with Polish-German roots. His self-portrait ‘Lithuania, my homeland!’ sees him dressed in a traditional Icelandic sweater, exploring the Icelandic landscape.
The title, engraved in the painting in Polish, is from a 19th century poem by Adam Mickiewicz. The poem touches on the idea of borders – and identity – that change due to politics and conflict. Mickiewicz considered himself a Lithuanian, but from a modern point of view he was Belarus.
“But then Mickiewicz wrote in Polish,” Lukas expands, “and he is the national poet of all these countries. So his artistic identity is already quite complex. “
To link Luke’s work to an obvious political aspect of Erró’s, Birgis places it next to the “United Army”, one of Erró’s budgets for Maoist propaganda.
“It’s about creating, or rewriting, a story with a painting,” says Lukas about the connection between the works. “Mao is visiting Venice; something that never happened. But it is something that could have happened if world history had gone the other way. “
Erró – a world-renowned artist
Iggy Pop may claim to be “the forgotten boy in the world”, but with “Raw Power” Erró strengthens his legacy as Iceland’s best-known artist. That said, his flashy path to Icelandic creative dissemination makes such definitions unnecessary. Erró’s energy, power and influence extend beyond national descriptions to exist everywhere.
The Raw Power exhibition will be at the Reykjavík Art Museum, Hafnarhús, until 30 May.
Source: The Nordic Page