Urban Beauty Show. 2008

This busy, large-scale painting entitled ‘Urban Beauty Show’ was created by the Icelandic artist Erró, who was born in 1932. Erró’s Pop Art images often include comic-book style figures taken from a wide range of sources, from advertising to political propaganda. Here, the artist collages mass-media imagery to comment on contemporary culture. He appropriates and subverts these existing images, and thus challenges the very nature of originality and authorship. It suggests a world saturated with images and perhaps lacking in authenticity. The imagery he employs is influenced by the legacy of Surrealism and the Situationist movement, in their critique of consumer culture and the spectacle. To understand Erró's artistic intentions more fully, we might delve into art journals and critical essays that explore the themes of appropriation, consumerism, and the role of the artist in contemporary society. We might even examine the curatorial choices made in exhibitions featuring his work.