11 minute read
ERRÓ: REMEMBRANCES OF A TITAN
Urinary associations Suspended on a wall in the Reykjavík Art Museum, there’s a cardboard plaque displaying, among other things, the exposed penis of one of Iceland’s best-known visual artists.
A major figure of the narrative-figuration movement in the 1960s, Erró hosted a “happening” at the American Centre in Paris in 1963, in which he satirised US conservative senator Barry Goldwater by taking a whizz through a network of tubes.
There’s an affinity between “Gold Water” and Donald Trump’s “pee tape,” which allegedly shows the former President (and possible urophiliac) looking on as two prostitutes at Moscow’s Ritz-Carlton “make water” on a bed formerly slept in by the Obamas.
The very zenith of spite.
As I contemplate the work and its urinary web of associations, at an exhibition providing “a comprehensive overview of the artist’s colourful career” (as noted in a museum pamphlet), Nathalía Druzin Halldórsdóttir walks over and announces that “Erró is ready,” before escorting me up the stairs toward the museum’s café. As Communication and Marketing Manager, she has advice:
“Reporters from local media networks were here last week,” she reveals, “and both of them asked Erró the same question: whether he had a ‘favourite piece’ at the exhibition; you could sort of see his eyes glaze over.”
“I’ll try to be more original,” I say.
“Also,” she adds, “he doesn’t hear very well.”
“Does he have a preferred ear, right or left?”
She shakes her head.
At the café, Erró is seated on a chair flanked by two men: on his right, art historian Gunnar Kvaran – whose wife Danielle is the world’s foremost expert on all things Erró – and who is sitting with his back half-turned to our setup, as if trying to afford some measure of privacy; and on his left, a man who would later hold up an Erró-inspired skateboard deck and declare that his son would be “thrilled.”
These are not the ideal conditions under which to conduct an interview.
Taking my seat across from Erró, I find myself leaning towards him and raising my voice as if yelling across an abyss: “I was told not to ask about your favourite piece,” I say, enunciating. “Aren’t you tired of these interviews?”
“Tired!?” he yells back, as if I had made a very general inquiry into his overall levels of energy. As if my journalistic chops consisted mainly of commenting on a person’s degree of wakefulness.
“Of these endless interviews and questions,” I clarify, raising my voice even further. Like I’m at a rock concert.
“No, no,” he answers doggedly. He’s got long ears with lobes reminiscent of melting Dalí clocks and slicked-back grey hair that evokes a former video store owner in Iceland, once accused of egregious doings.
“It comes with the territory,” he explains.
I ask him if there’s some question that annoys him more than others, but Erró, still processing my first query, ignores the second: “If you want to know more, then you can speak to Gunnar; and his wife, Danielle – she knows twice as much as him!”
Everyone laughs.
Everything is subject “As people age,” I philosophise, “they tend to become more pessimistic about the world. More negative. Do you feel that society has taken a turn for the worse?”
He thinks for a while.
“I thought everything was okay,” he says, trying to arrange his thoughts. “Until the Russians lost their minds!”
“Yes,” I reply.
“Yes,” he repeats.
There’s a pause.
On the subject of Russian madness, Erró recalls exhibiting in Kyiv many years ago, alongside two other painters based in France, and finding that the Ukrainians were “so smart.” So fun and lively.
“What are your thoughts on Ukraine, generally?” I ask. “Does art have a role in any of this?”
“I’ve just about stopped with the political paintings,” he observes. “Maybe because not much has happened over the past years. But if you go back fifty years, I think you’ll find that my paintings provide a rather comprehensive account of world events. From NASA to Sarajevo, to Mao Zedong to Gaddafi. Uhh!?”
That “Uhh!?” is Erró’s way of at once affirming his statement and gauging agreement. Like the way Americans say “you know!?”
That sweater “My grandfather was born in 1931," I begin to say. “He was a great fan of yours,” I add, trying to contrive a logical connection. (It occurs to me, later on, that I have no idea if my grandfather liked Erró or not.)
“He died last year, during the pandemic,” I continue, “and he had this exact same sweater you’re wearing. It makes me think of him. This sweater … not that there’s any question that goes along with this observation, just that it inspires fond memories.”
Erró appears to be listening but doesn't say anything. Perhaps because he hasn’t heard me or perhaps because I have succeeded, rather tactlessly, in evoking the idea of an “expiration date,” which, in his case, and by way of natural law, must loom somewhere just beyond the horizon.
“What was COVID like for you?” I ask, attempting to regurgitate my foot.
“Uuh!?”
This “Uuh!?” has a more interrogative tone, indicating that he does not understand.
“What was COVID like for you?” I say, again raising my voice.
“Tónlist?” (Music in Icelandic.)
“COVID,” Gunnar Kvaran interjects. “The pandemic.”
“Uhh!?” Erró repeats.
“Covid. La pandémie." “Uhh!?”
“Cóvíd!” Kvaran says again, slower this time, and with a heavy French accent.
“Comics?” Erró offers, which seems inevitable, given his oeuvre.
“Nei, Cóvíd. La maladie.”
“Ahhh!” Erró says, finally comprehending.
“They injected me four times,” he says. “Twice outside Paris, and one time in Paris – but I was given a double dose. I had a rendezvous in the Centre Pompidou directly afterwards, and when I arrived, all I saw was … uhhh …” He tries to find the words.
“Fog,” Gunnar Kvaran explains, which feels like an apt description for the state of our conversation.
Baudelaire’s tree Erró has resided in France since the latter half of the 20th century. Despite turning 90 this year, he still spends long days at the studio, attributing his vigour (someone once claimed that he slept with a pencil between his toes during his school years) to the fact that he begins every morning by walking down 120 steps, roughly the length of the tree that Baudelaire planted outside his building, in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, in the 19th century.
When asked what it’s like visiting Reykjavík these days, if there’s “a noticeable change,” Erró, quite contrary to
one's theory of old age breeding pessimism, observes that everything “seems to be improving.”
“The people seem happier than before," he says. "Maybe it’s just me; I read somewhere that Icelanders are the thirdhappiest nation in the world.”
I start to say something pertinent about the Finns when Erró interrupts to offer a rather peculiar explanation for the general uplift in the national mood:
“There were fewer tourists – fewer Romanian gleeeðikonur (an Icelandic word for prostitutes, literally “happy women”). Uhh!?”
Everyone laughs.
“Yes… I guess there’s been a real increase in that department,” I offer, not knowing why I am saying what I am saying or where he’s going with all of this.
“I heard that a jet landed at Keflavík Airport carrying 30 prostitutes from Romania,” he remarks. “The oldest was 19 years old, and the youngest was 14 and a half.”
“Really?” I say, bemused.
“Yes.”
“And this happened recently?”
“Yes, recently.”
Gunnar Kvaran laughs loudly, as if privy to some inside joke.
“Did this have something to do with the recent sale of Íslandsbanki?” I say, trying fruitlessly to insinuate myself into their humour.
That thing we do … There’s a thing that people do around old folks who are hard of hearing: weary from all the yelling, they turn to some adjacent party and begin talking about the person as if they weren’t there. As if they were a kind of chatbot that they could momentarily ignore without any emotional repercussions. I’ve always found this a rather ignoble tendency, but, in the current circumstances, one which I am unable to resist.
I turn to Gunnar Kvaran and ask him about Erró and the current exhibition while the man himself assumes an ambiguous Mona Lisa face and listens.
“The exhibition occupies the entire building,” Gunnar begins. “It’s predicated largely on the works Erró has gifted to the Reykjavík Art Museum beginning 30 years ago. Today, the
museum has a great collection of his works – like the Munch Museum in Oslo. There are very few museums like this in the world, which offer such an in-depth, wide-ranging collection of the works of a single artist. In this current exhibition, you can follow Erró’s career from beginning to end.
“And the title: The Explosiveness of Art, where does that come from?”
“It refers to Erró’s inclination to work with strong images. He’s not only good at finding powerful images but also at putting them together and making new explosions. It emphasises that he’s one of the pioneers of the figurative-art movement that emerged in the ’60s and ’70s, which became a part of pop art, but which is also a form of narrative art, which is where politics enters into it.”
“It’s good what Erró said earlier,” Kvaran continues, “his narrative art relates stories from recent world history. Whether it was Vietnam or Baghdad or Asian prostitutes, there are all kinds of stories into which he has delved. Sci-fi, popular culture, politics, literature. It’s quite a comprehensive, historical fresco that he has created. When we walk through the exhibition, we can do so on aesthetic grounds, but we can also walk through the history of the 20th century.”
The imaginary easel In an interview in the ’70s, Erró maintained that much of his art was the result of “an immediate emotional reaction to a particular event.” To anyone who has not dedicated their life to visual art, this idea must seem peculiar: responding emotionally to events with imagery. This habit may also be why he dislikes giving linear, banal answers to interview questions and, as Gunnar Kvaran would go on to reveal, why he tries to be creative, paradoxical even, in his responses.
“What’s the best way to get him talking?” I ask Gunnar, still doing that thing we do around old folks.
“Well,” Gunnar replies. “It’s difficult to say. But what you’ve touched upon, the politics: this is a person who’s been fascinated by politics and world events for the past 60 or 70 years. And then this new catastrophe occurs, Ukraine.”
“Erró,” Kvaran says suddenly, turning to face the artist. “You haven’t considered doing some collages in relation to
Ukraine?”
Erró pauses a bit, and then it’s as if some part of him rises from the chair, snatches an easel out of thin air, and begins to paint.
“There was snow. Everything was white. In Kirkjubæjarklaustur [the town where he grew up in South Iceland]. I saw an unkindness of ravens. It was extraordinary. They were standing in a ring – a perfect circle. And then one of the birds jumped into the middle and began to spin.”
He takes his stained white handkerchief and begins turning it slowly on the table.
“And then the raven stopped. And as he stopped, the birds turned on one of the other ravens, utterly mutilating him. I visited the same spot the following morning, and all that was left were a few bones. I don’t know what went on in this conference of ravens, but it was incredible.”
“So you’ve spotted some connection between the ravens and Ukraine?” I ask, wondering whether the mutilated raven symbolised Vladimir Putin, being ganged up on by the west following a criminal invasion; or Ukraine, being torn asunder by the ghost of the former Soviet Union.
But Erró hasn’t concluded his painting. The contrast between the white of the snow and the black of the ravens inspires another peculiar connection.
“My stepdad,” he says. “I was with him and my cousin. We were on, isn’t it called, a fyllerí?” (Icelandic for a bout of heavy drinking.)
“Yes.”
“And I asked him what he needed most. And the first thing he said was that he had never slept with a Black woman – and that he had never seen the Alps.”
“This is turning into an Erró painting,” Kvaran says.
