La Bougie (Kertið)
Erró
- Year : 1985
- Height : 100 cm
- Width : 75 cm
- Category : Málverk
- Sub-category : Olíumálverk
Erró made many series – collages and paintings – in the early 1980s, in which he depicted beautiful and seductive young girls from northern Africa, sometimes naked, sometimes draped. The pieces spring from a large collection of postcards from the French colonial period which Erró came across at a Paris flea market. The models, usually prostitutes, were photographed in a clichéd fashion which combined the erotic with the exotic, primarily reflecting the sexual fantasies of westerners. In the series Erró directly counters the myths and clichés of these “native” women, and stages another narrative intended to honour these silent and unknown heroines. In The Candle he uses a photograph of a beautiful Moorish girl along with parts of a painting of an owl (1860) by Jean-Jacques Aubusson and a work by Pieter Claesz, Still-Life with Burning Candle (1627). Erró places the girl in beautiful and mysterious surroundings, loaded with references to wealth, and not less to knowledge (books, eye-glasses) and wisdom (the owl) in the style of Renaissance painters such as Hans Holbein the younger.
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