艾豪曲折的人生经历，悲喜交织的“家族史”，非但没有使他性情孤僻，反而练就了他豪爽、善解人意、富有正义感和同情心的性格。这一切都为他以后所从事的政治波普艺术，及作为一名具有社会责任感的真正艺术家奠定了坚实基础。
艾豪独特的生活方式，铸造了独特的人性情感，奠定了艾豪个性化的乌托邦，也促使了他个人信仰为“跳跃”式：年少的他每赴天主教堂，目的并非是去听神父讲道，而是去欣赏教堂里的宗教壁画和装饰艺术；中青年的他偏爱共产主义，试图在政治思想理念中寻觅一种新的信仰，是浪漫并带有冒险性的。晚年的他在西班牙不幸遭遇车祸、幸免于难，此后又结下了佛缘。至今艾豪双手打着佛礼愉快地生活着，每年必到泰国来上庙进香。
艾豪随意、浪漫的个性，完全反映在他的政治波普艺术当中。共产主义远大美好的理想，宗教超凡脱俗的理念，行善为乐的精神境界，从根本上已成为艾豪个人乌托邦的一个组成部分。艾豪一生艳情漫漫，“女人”已成为他艺术人生中不能剥离的情愫。我们不难在2007年12月在北京今日美术馆所举办的《“玩偶”•人间游戏-艾豪艺术》展览中看到。
今天，当我们去解读艾豪的政治波普绘画艺术，会发现他笔下的女人形象，基本呈现着艳美、性感的容姿，蕴含着种种欲念与诱惑的喻指意义。艾豪的身世也使他从小养成独立自主，四海为家的刚毅性情，故而伴随他最重要的生活方式即是旅游，他不停地周游世界。不同的国度、不同的意识形态、不同的民族文化风俗，时刻都在的一个过程。与此同时，艾豪政治波普艺术的表现符号的资源也相继扩展增多。二十世纪六十年代至九十年代，是艾豪往返于苏联、古巴、越南等社会主义国家最频繁的时期，苏联社会主义的革命美术让艾豪痴迷，特别是苏联的政治漫画和讽刺性政治插图激发了他的艺术灵感，直到现在仍对他的政治波普绘画艺术产生着重要的作用。
艾豪是一位不折不扣的理想主义者，他长期建造属一自己艺术的乌托邦，曾在不同阶段里试图借助社会主义崭新的政治理念去诠释他的“理想世界”，他很喜欢毛泽东、胡志明、卡斯特罗这样新型的政治领袖人物，因为他们的统治思想与实施行为充满创意。
中国如火如荼的革命文化形态，深深地吸引着具有革命浪漫主义理想情怀的艾豪，而这种充满着红色激情的印记，也潜存在他的意识里。艾豪的这种“潜意识”，终于在1972年的泰国土地上爆放。他一时兴起，要把自己孕育已久的艺术腹稿 — 系列性的观念绘画“中国人周游世界”，请一些画电影海报的画师们具体地实施出来，这一庞大的系列性绘画工程，最为精彩的篇章便是脍炙人口的《毛泽东和他的环球长征》 （这套组画于1975年在Lucene艺术博物馆首次展示）。
自1974年之后，艾豪这组主题鲜明立意不凡的《中国人周游世界》的系列性作品陆续在泰国完成，艾豪对“助手”们的工作持肯定态度，认为他们已基本将他的创作思想及艺术效果体现到位。仔细翻阅艾豪的系列绘画《中国人周游世界》的创作年表，自1974年到1979年是一个高潮，这组主题明朗，严肃中又不失诙谐调侃的系列作品（共140幅）一出现，便获得西方世界的青睐。
当下，世界已进入到了一个崭新的时代，古老的中国也发生了翻天覆地的变化，从政治、经济、文化等方面中国正加快步伐与世界接轨。在与日俱进的今天，我们用历史唯物主义的观点再重新审视艾豪的《毛泽东和他的环球长征》系列绘画作品时，自然会感到艾豪的出发点是积极美好，富有善意的。
另外，艾豪早期拍摄的电影业如同他的绘画一样精彩，他曾用五年的时间，拍摄并完成了他的影片“Grimace”(《鬼脸》，)。这部片子以50分钟的时间向人们展示了近200位“红极一时”的前卫艺术家，如：马赛尔•杜桑（Marcel Duchamp）、安迪•沃霍尔（Andy Warhol）、罗伯特•劳森伯格(Robert Rauschenberg)、詹姆斯•罗森奎斯特（James Rosenquist）、克里斯多（Christo）、勒贝尔父子（Robert Lebel, J.J. Lebel）、欧登博格（Claes Oldenburg）等，其他的艺术家在今日也都成了国际大师级的人物。仅从这点来看艾豪的艺术谋略是具有前瞻性的，为此我们不得不佩服他棋高一筹的艺术智能。
进入二十世纪八十年代，艾豪政治波普绘画艺术的表现符号的容量显著增大，艺术家敏感的政治视野由“地域性”转向“国际性”；艺术表现的策略与手段也从“运用两个互为抵触的事物图像进行置换”演变到具整合各种艺术表达符号的高难度性技巧，并以多元化的图像符号去铺设与完善作品的“故事性”架构。绘画整体艺术造型部分不再为“写实化”，而是夸张的漫画形象图式，呆板庄重严肃的画面变得复杂丰富。当然，艾豪的政治波普绘画艺术的个人图式也开始确立起来。冷战结束后，世界两大对立的意识形态已明显变弱，随之而来的是经济、文化、全球化的一个时局，与日俱进的艾豪其艺术指向也开始转化，他的政治波普艺术的“政治”概念似已正渐弱化甚至消隐，艾豪开始对人类商品化社会的物化现象进行批判，他反对过度消费与时尚的文化。尤其，对全球化下的“美国可口可乐”文化、好莱坞文化予以反击，艾豪试图在人类传统文化逐渐丧失，暴力、色情、拜金所裹携的商业流行文化中，寻找一个能便于表达自己思想得艺术图像符号，即“玩偶”，确实我们人类像玩偶一样被无比物化的社会所戏弄与把玩，我们像玩偶样在捧笑、迎合、欢愉中忘掉一切，直至失去自己…… 当人们走进今日美术馆《“玩偶”•人间游戏-艾豪艺术》的展览现场时，在一片将开心进行到底的愉快声中，或许还能思考。
2007年11月5日，北京
Utopia’s “Dolls and Molls”
Curator:Margaret Zhang
The ups and downs of Erró’s life, together with his “family saga” full of both sadness and happiness have neither made him uncommunicative, eccentric nor depressed. On the contrary, his personal characteristics are frankness, consideration, righteousness and sympathy. All of these have laid a solid foundation for him to engage in political pop art and to be a socially responsible artist.
Erró’s life style and feelings have developed over the years and so have his views on Utopia and his religious beliefs. In his youth, attending religious service, he tended to enjoy the religious art works in the churches instead of listening to the preacher; when he was a middle-aged man, he was in favor of communism and tried to structure his beliefs around a new political concept - filled with romance and excitement. In his later years, he had a serious traffic accident but fortunately recovered. After that, he converted to Buddhism. Erró’s now leads a joyful life with his hands joined together. On his annual visits to Thailand, he always goes to the temples there.
Erró’s easy going and romantic personal beliefs have been totally reflected by his political pop art. The elevated ideals of Communism and the lofty ideological level above all worldly considerations have developed as a part of Erró’s Utopia. Erró’s life is full of erotic stories and “Molls” have become the feelings which cannot be separated from his artistic life. It’s not difficult for us to see all of these in the exhibition titled “Dolls and Moll, A Selection of Erró’s Paintings”, at Beijing Today Art Museum in December, 2007.
Today, when we read carefully Erró’s political pop arts, we can find that almost all women under his brush have gorgeous and sexy faces and figures. Of course, they also symbolize lust and temptation. Erró’s life experience has made him independent, cosmopolitan and strong. For him traveling is a way of life. He is constantly on the road. Different countries, ideologies and national cultures and customs always influence his artistic thoughts, inspire him. In fact, this kind of tour is just a process in which Erró goes to look for his ideal “Utopia”. At the same time, the symbols of Erró’s political pop art keep on increasing and expanding. From 1960s to 1990s, Erró went back and forth to the communist countries such as Soviet Union, Cuba and Vietnam. Erró was obsessed with the Soviet Union’s communist revolution art. He was inspired by its political caricatures and ironic political plates which had an important impact on his political pop pictures. Erró is totally an idealist. He devotes himself to building his own “Utopia” for a long time and in different periods; he tries to illustrate his “Utopia” by using new political concepts in communist society. He likes new kind of political leaders such as Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, because they had creative thoughts for ruling a country and they took original measures.
The fiery revolution culture in China deeply attracted Erró who always had a revolutionary, romantic and idealistic bent. This red passion potentially existed in his consciousness. In 1970s, the “sub-conscious” of Erró exploded finally in Thailand. He suddenly felt the need to mobilize some painters who painted film posters to carry out his huge project for a series of pictures which had been worked out in his mind. A series of concept pictures is entitled “Chinese Travel Around the World”. The most wonderful chapter of it is Mao and His Worldwide Long March which enjoyed great popularity. (These pictures were exhibited at Lucerne Art Museum in 1975).
Erró’s series of pictures Chinese Travel Around the World with their distinctive subject and extraordinary approach were accomplished one by one in Thailand. From 1974 onwards, Erró took a positive attitude towards the work of his “assistants”, thinking that they had faithfully conveyed his vision. . If you read carefully the creation timetable of the series of pictures Chinese Travel Around the World, you will find an upsurge in the period from 1974 to 1979. Once this series of paintings (140 paintings in total) with their distinctive and serious subject matter tinged with a little humour came into being, it was well-received in the western world.
Nowadays, the world has entered into a new era. Ancient China has undergone tremendous changes. China speeds up to adjust itself to keep in line with the world, politically, economically and culturally. Today, if we look closely at Erró’s series of paintings Mao and His Worldwide Long March for a second time, we can naturally feel that Erró’s creation motivation is positive, glorious and good.
What’s more, just like his pictures, the movies shot by him in early times are also very wonderful. He once spent 5 years in shooting his movie “Grimace”. This movie which lasted 50 minutes showed almost 200 “very popular” avant-garde artists, such as Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Christo, Robert Lebel, J.J. Lebel and Claes Oldenburg and so on. Other artists have become influential people who are ranked as international great masters. Looking from this, we can see that Erró’s art strategies are far-sighted. Therefore, we can’t help admiring his outstanding artistic aptitude.
After we entered 1980s, the symbols of Erró’s political pop art increased dramatically. Artists changed their sensitive local visions to international ones; the strategies and means of artistic expression changed from “changing the positions of two contradictory images” to the very difficult techniques which could synthesize all kinds of expressive symbols and could improve the “story” framework of pictures by using image symbols. The image of the whole picture did no longer focus on the realistic things. On the contrary, they were images like caricatures. Rigid and serious pictures were becoming more and more complex. Of course, Erró began to establish his personal style of political pop art. After the Cold War ended, the struggle between the two opposite ideologies in the world was becoming weak, which was followed by an era of globalization in economic and cultural fields. Erró’s art direction which was keeping pace with the times also began to change. His “political” concepts of political pop art seemed to be disappearing. Erró started to criticize the materialistic phenomena in commercialized society and he opposed over-consumption and fashion culture. Especially, he rebuked the “American Coca Cola” culture and Hollywood culture which emerged during the process of globalization. Erró tried to look for an artistic image symbol “Dolls and Molls” which could express his thoughts conveniently in the commercial popular culture. In this kind of culture, human traditional culture was disappearing gradually, while violent and erotic things and money worship mentality were rampant. Like dolls we are indeed toys manipulated by materialistic society and forget all things when we laugh and purposely tailor our own words or behaviors to others’ intentions. When people come to the exhibition “Dolls and Molls, A Selection of Erró’s Paintings” at Today Art Museum, appreciating the pictures may also make them think.
5 November, 2007
Beijing