Erró - Iceland's #1 artist

Several days ago I promised you Erró, then I got distracted by WOW Film Fest, but now here he his!

Erró was born Guðmundur Guðmundsson in 1932. In 1958 he moved to France and wanted to be Ferro, but for legal reasons became Erró instead. He didn't mind the change though; in an interview with Liberation, he explained that 'fer ro' in Icelandic is 'the peace that leaves' while 'er ro' is 'now it is calm', which was suitably poetic for him.

He soon became the most famous artist ever to come out of Iceland, reputed today above all for his comic book style parodies...

Erró, Ding Dong, 1979

....or his vast 'scapes', bringing together countless faces, birds, fish, buildings, whatever. He says it takes him a year to collect all the ingredients for one of these.

Erró, For Dialogue Among Civilisations, for UNESCO, 2003

 However, one part of his work that remains completely unknown (I've been scouring the internet for about half an hour and can't find a reference to it) is his Subatomic collection. Featuring distinctive skeleton-like creatures, this collection is the result of an obsession lasting about a year or two in the mid 50s and formed a large part of the Erró-Drawings exhibition at the Reykjavik Art Museum. The shop had no postcards or posters of them and I loved them so much I had to resort to surreptitious photo-taking.

Later on in the exhibition, we see when Erró had moved to Paris and brought politics fully into his art. This was my favourite.

You can see more of the exhibition and find out about its history in this video:

PS: If you're curious about Iceland's number two artist, it's sculpture Ásmundur Sveinsson. Here's me with one of his works.

Cultural agency - an Icelandic example

Today I was asked if I noticed the effect of the banking crisis in Iceland. I replied "Yes, one of the top songs in Iceland at the moment is about needing to rebuild the nation after the crisis, and there was some art about it too". I think my interlocutor was more concerned about prices of commodities, but naturally I'm fascinated by how the people of Iceland are using culture to make a political point.

It's obviously not a new idea, but I'd never heard the term 'cultural agency' until at a conference late last year. From what I can find out, it's still a fairly new term, without consensus on exactly what it means (though reading Cultural Agency in the Americas edited by Doris Sommer would be a good start to understanding the term). The central idea is that cultural practices are used to promote change or action from within a certain situation. In the case of Iceland, both music and artwork are being used to call for a response to the financial crisis.

The song I mentioned earlier is Stondum Saman (Stick Together) by Helgi J Oskarsson and is incredibly catchy. At the time of writing, it's number 4 in the Icelandic chart and played so frequently that we heard it on the radio a good 5 or 6 times in the space of a few days. More than just a jaunty tune, it's a call to arms. The song denounces those who grew rich on Iceland's economic failure and urges the people to join together to create a stronger nation for the future generations. It's inspiring to hear songs like this on mainstream radio - I'd love to know whether people are following its message or just enjoy singing along.

The artwork I referred to was Adalsteinn Stefansson's Grabbing the Void, housed in the Reykjavik Art Museum as part Iceland's contribution to the EU funded European Public Art Centre. The whirlpool at its centre is supposed to represent how all the money was suddenly, shockingly sucked away, while the cherrypickers recall the continued grasping for commodities. While the piece is clearly a response to the crisis, it has much less impact than the song. It doesn't suggest future action, only criticises the current situation. Nonetheless, both pieces are interesting examples of cultural agency; creatives using their work to respond to and hopefully change a specific socio-political situation.