埃罗 Erró | “流行巴洛克” The “Baroque Pop”
Photo credit Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy of Galerie Perrotin and © Erró / ADAGP, Paris & ARS, New York, 2016
Take a wild guess, who do you think this gentleman might be? You may have noticed the comic-style background and even discovered certain well-known characters from the painting, for example, “Captain America”. So, you may wonder, is he a famous comic or cartoon creator? Or is he the president or vice president or director of some large animation-making company such as “DreamWorks” or “Pixar”? Well, you are not wrong about the comic part.
大胆地猜测一下，照片中的这位老人是谁？你或许已注意到背景绘画的美式漫画风格，甚至发现了其中的一些著名漫画角色，例如“美国队长”。因此，你也许会想，他会不会是著名的漫画或卡通创作者？亦或是某些大型动画制作公司——例如“梦工厂”或“皮克斯”的总裁、副总裁、或者主任？不管怎么说，至少关于“漫画”这部分的猜测是正确的。
The background painting is indeed titled “Captain America”, painted in 1988 by the gentleman standing in front of it, Erró, one of the best-known contemporary artists of Iceland who devoted his entire artistic career to painted collage – in which he collects images from comics, advertisements, propaganda, etc. then rearranges them as paper collages, and finally projects and paints the compositions onto canvas. He’s hardly changed this method since he first began experimenting with it in the mid-’60s, it has been his sole approach to painting.
背景中的画确实被命名为“美国队长”，该画是由站在他面前的那位艺术家于1988年创作的。那个艺术家便是是埃罗（Erró），冰岛最著名的当代艺术家之一。他将自己整个艺术生涯都投向了拼贴画创作，从漫画，广告，宣传等中收集图像，然后将它们重新排版为纸质拼贴画，最后以投影和组合的方法将这些绘画在画布上。自他从二十世纪六十年代中期开始尝试这种方法以来，他几乎没有再改变过。
Thor’s Story (1999) by Erró. Alkyd paint on canvas. 220 * 340 cm. Copyright from UNESCO.
《雷神索尔的故事》
Erró, who adopted this alias, was born Gudmundur Gudmundsson in Olafsvik, Iceland, in 1932. After studying in Iceland, at the age of 20, he was admitted to the Oslo Academy of Fine Art, Norway. In 1954 he studied at the Florence Academy of Art and later in Ravenna, Italy. In 1958, he settled in Paris, a city where he has lived for more than five decades for now.
埃罗于1932年在冰岛的奥拉夫斯维克（Olafsvik）出生，原名古德蒙·古德蒙森（Gudmundur Gudmundsson）。埃罗于20岁便被挪威奥斯陆美术学院录取。1954年，他就读于佛罗伦萨艺术学院，后来又在意大利的拉文纳（Ravenna）进修。1958年，他在巴黎定居，至今他在这里居住了超过五十年。
Canon Underwear (1958) by Erró. Works on paper, Collage. 32 * 25 cm. Copyright from Artnet.
《佳能相机的内衣》
In the 1960s, Erró has traveled to New York several times and encountered Pop Art, where he developed his own painting style: colorful, jam-packed, post-modern historical paintings that mix and juxtapose styles. Not simply to blur the boundaries between high and low, Erró deploys a kaleidoscope of cartoon characters, art historical icons, and government leaders to comment on urgent social and political issues.
在二十世纪六十年代，埃罗多次前往纽约，在那里他了解了流行艺术（Pop Art），并发展了自己的绘画风格：色彩鲜艳、画布上布满了后现代历史风格绘画、融合了多种风格。埃罗不仅仅模糊了高下界限，还在作品中囊括了卡通人物、艺术史上的偶像和政府领导人物，以此来评论社会和政治问题。
Erró did receive immediate fame when he first arrived in Paris to pursue his artistic career. In an interview with Artspace, Erró recalls, “Somebody sent me to see Kahnweiler, Picasso’s dealer at the time. I brought five or six paintings by hand with me on the metro and was put in a room to wait for him. He came in and flipped completely, saying ‘This is horrible, Nordic painting, like Edvard Munch. Horrible painter! Horrible painter!’ And he rushed out of the room.”
埃罗并非刚来到巴黎便立即收获名气。他在接受Artspace采访时回忆说：“有人派我去见了毕加索的经销商Kahnweiler。我带着五、六幅画，坐着地铁去见他，结果被安置在一个房间里等他。他走进来后，态度很激动，对我说‘这真是可怕的北欧绘画，就像爱德华·蒙克（Edvard Munch）一样。可怕的画家！可怕的画家！’说完立即冲出了房间。”
Untitled (1963) by Erró. Mixed technique on paper. 44 * 32.5 cm. Copyright from Artnet.
《无题》
In response, Erró and his friends began attempting a new kind of painting, one that preserved the best of the classical traditions he loved while still engaging with the aesthetic and political revolutions of the day.
作为回应，埃罗和他的朋友开始试图创作一种新作画方式，既保留了他所爱的古典传统的精华，又与当时的美学和政治保持着关联。
Finally, they gained some attention and the opportunity to mount an exhibition in the shop of an importer of Persian rugs. “The walls were all covered with carpets,” Erró says, “so we just hung the paintings on top. Then we had a big stroke of luck. Daniel Cordier’s ‘Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme’ of 1959 was right next door... Hundreds of people came, and many people mistook the doors to the exhibitions. They went into my show by mistake – all the luck! That was really the beginning.”
最终，他们获得了一些关注，并有机会单独举办一场展览——只不过地点是在进口波斯地毯商店里。“墙上全挂着地毯。”埃罗如此说道，“所以我们只好将画挂在地毯上。结果，我们那次展览运气很好。因为丹尼尔·科尔迪耶（Daniel Cordier）在1959年举办的《国际博览会》就在隔壁……观众们数以百计，有许多人误入了展览的大门，就进到了我们的展览里面，我们真是太幸运了！那次的确是个很好的开端。”
Then, in 1964, Erró first tripped to New York. “I have very warm memories about New York, about the old times, mostly the ’60s. there was a party every two days, all the doors were open, and people were friendly. Nobody had money. We lived on a few hundred dollars a month – it was unbelievable.”
1964年，埃罗首次前往纽约。“我对纽约有很多美好的回忆，大都是旧时代——二十世纪六十年代的记忆。当时人们每两天就会举办派对，夜不闭户路不拾遗，人们很友善，大家都没什么钱。我们每个月靠几百美元生活，这简直令人难以置信。”
Going to Play Tennis (1974) by Erró. Alkyd paint on canvas. 167 * 100 cm. Copyright from Artnet.
《去打网球》
But his time in the Big Apple was not only full of games and parties: Erró explored new ways of painting and started gathering the materials that would soon become the basis for his practice we see today. He fell in love with American Pop Art quickly, mostly because of the aesthetic beauty of working with only a few images – “one hand, one foot, one face. Like in a supermarket, everything became very bright and visible from far away.” He says so because at the time, there were no supermarkets in Europe – what he experienced in New York were all new to him.
他在纽约的生活并不仅仅充斥着游戏和聚会。埃罗探索了创作的新方法，并开始收集材料，这些材料很快就成为了我们今天所见到的埃罗的画作的基础。他很快就爱上了美国流行艺术，这主要是因为他很喜欢那些作品只用少部分的图像来完成——“一只手，一只脚，一张脸。就像在超市一样，一切都变得很明亮，而且远处也可见。”他之所以这样说是因为当时欧洲还没有超市（supermarket）。他在纽约经历的一切对他来说都是崭新的。
Homage to Van Gogh (2008) by Erró. Color silkscreen on paper. 71.5 * 105 cm. Copyright from UNESCO.
《梵·高》
The idea of selling collages did not even come across Erró’s mind at first. He thought those collages were very private, so he kept them hidden. But one day, the director of Centre Pompidou came by and asked Erró if he had bigger collages as the director had seen one in the Pinault Collection in Venice. Then this director suggested holding an exhibition in Centre Pompidou full of his collages.
最初，埃罗完全没有想过销售拼贴画。他认为这些拼贴画是比较隐私的东西。直到有一天，蓬皮杜艺术中心的负责人问埃罗是否有更多的大型拼贴画，因为该负责人曾在威尼斯的皮诺特（Pinault）收藏集中看到过埃罗展出的拼贴画。然后，这位负责人便建议他们在蓬皮杜中心举办一个展览，展出他的所有拼贴画。
“We put up an exhibition of 50 collages and we don’t know what happened, but we got in 300,000 people every day. We didn’t make any special publicity. Nothing.”
“我们举办了一个展览，展出50张拼贴画，我们也不知道发生了什么，但是每天都有30万人来参观。我们没有做任何特别的宣传，什么都没有。”
He also had an interesting story about “copyright”. Pop artists usually seek materials from magazines. So, Erró once found a picture in a newspaper with a child on the breast of the mother. He curated the picture, added a gun behind, and named the painting Pistol Lait (Pistol Milk). He painted the painting in a hotel, but later got a letter from a small town in America: “My daughter went to Madagascar, she came back, on the way she stopped and saw an exhibition. She saw a photo of her on the breast of her mother, a few months old, with a gun behind.”
他还有一个关于“版权”的有趣故事。流行艺术家通常会从杂志中寻找素材。因此，埃罗有一次在报纸上看到了一张照片，照片中有一个孩子在母亲怀里吃奶。他便用到了这幅画，并在后面加上一把枪，将之命名为《手枪牛奶》（Pistol Milk）。他在一家酒店完成了这幅画作，但后来却收到了美国一个小镇的来信：“我的女儿去了马达加斯加，她回来时路过一处展览。在展览上她看见了几个月大的她自己趴在她母亲怀里吃奶的照片，背后还有一把枪。”
Vermeer (2005) by Erró. Prints and multiples, Lithograph. 23 * 31.5 cm. Copyright from Artnet.
《弗美尔》
“I got a few letters, worse and worse. Then the director wrote a letter to him, ‘It’s been taken out of the exhibition, it should’ve never been exhibited without your permission.’ You can have a lot of problems with copyright.”
“我后来还收到了几封这样的信，情况越来越糟糕。然后，负责人给他写了一封信，‘我们已经从展览中将这幅画撤下，未经您的允许的情况下这幅画本就不该展出。’所以说，人们可能会遇到很多版权问题。”
As Arthur Danto, a late philosopher of art wrote in a 1999 essay: “[Erró] has succeeded, all by himself, in bringing Pop Art into its flamboyant baroque.”
正如已故的艺术哲学家亚瑟·丹托（Arthur Danto）在1999年的一篇文章中写道的那样：“ 埃罗独自一人成功地将流行艺术带入了华丽的巴洛克式风格。”
Pink Lola (2005) by Erró. Acrylic on canvas. 174 * 70 cm. Copyright from Artnet.
《粉色萝拉》
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