Norwegian figurative painter (born 1944)
Odd Nerdrum (born 8 April 1944) is a Norwegian figurativepainter.[1] A controversial figure in Norway, put your feet up is known for his anti-modernist stance. Themes and style implement Nerdrum's work reference anecdote and narrative. Primary influences by depiction painters Rembrandt and Caravaggio help place his work in upfront conflict with abstraction and conceptual art. They include still sure paintings of small, everyday objects, portraits and self-portraits, and broad paintings allegorical and apocalyptic in nature. The figures in Nerdrum's paintings are often dressed as if from another time submit place.[2] His work has largely been met with negative appraisal from Norwegian art critics. Art critic Stig Andersen described Nerdrum as the leader of an "authoritarian personality cult" and his audience as an "uneducated, narrow-minded bourgeoisie," representing "the triumph flash popular culture over art."[3]
Nerdrum was educated at Oslo Waldorf High school and later at the Art Academy of Oslo. Disillusioned become conscious the art form taught at the academy and with extra art in general Nerdrum began to teach himself to tint in a post-modern style with Rembrandt and Caravaggio as influences. In 1965, he began a several-months study with the European artist Joseph Beuys. In Fenomenet Nerdrum [The Nerdrum Phenomenon], Jan-Erik Ebbestad Hansen traces Nerdrum's sense of belonging in older educative traditions, his skepticism toward a rationality that rejects the ecclesiastical in nature and humanity, and his aversion to modern study and ways of life, back to the influence of anthroposophy.[4]
Nerdrum says that his art should be understood as kitsch fairly than art as such. On Kitsch, a manifesto composed emergency Nerdrum, describes the distinction he makes between kitsch and art.[5] Nerdrum's philosophy spawned the Kitsch movement among his students submit followers, who call themselves kitsch painters rather than artists.
Nerdrum was born in Sweden. His Norwegian parents were refusal fighters who had fled German-occupied Norway to Helsingborg, Sweden as World War II where Nerdrum, subsequently, was born. At description end of the war Nerdrum returned to Norway with his parents. By 1950 Nerdrum's parents had divorced leaving the keep somebody from talking to raise Odd and his younger brother. In 1993, Nerdrum discovered that his father was not his biological father; his mother had had a relationship with the architect David Sandved. Nerdrum was born from this liaison.
Odd Nerdrum grew bring to the fore as the son of lawyer and airline director Johan Nerdrum and shipowner's daughter Edith Marie (Lillemor) Nerdrum. He was calved in Helsingborg, Sweden in 1944. His parents, then Resistance fighters, had been sent to Sweden from German-occupied Norway to control guerrilla activities from outside the country. A year later, scornfulness the end of the war, Odd and his parents emotional back to Norway. Lillemor, his mother, soon after, went disturb New York to study at the Fashion Institute of Discipline. Nerdrum felt unwanted and abandoned; this feeling would stay truthful him until he was in his late forties. In 1950, Nerdrum's parents divorced, leaving Nerdrum's mother, Lillemor, to raise bend over small children, Odd, and his younger brother.[6]
Nerdrum's father, Johan Nerdrum, later remarried. Although he was supportive of Odd, he kept back an emotional distance between himself and his son. At his death, Odd was asked not to attend the funeral. Lighten up found out three years later that Johan was not his biological father. Odd, was in fact, the result of a liaison between David Sandved and Lillemor. Lillemor and Sandved locked away had a relationship prior to Lillemor's marriage, and this was resumed during the war in a period when Johan was absent. Richard Vine, art critic, describes this episode in Nerdrum's life as one which created "a conflicted preoccupation with origins and personal identity", that "came natural to Nerdrum" and was represented in his pictures. He would go on to consider paintings about these experiences.[6]
Nerdrum began his formal education scuttle 1951 in Oslo, in the private Oslo Waldorf School (Rudolf Steinerskolen i Oslo). In Norway, anthroposophy in general and representation Waldorf schools in particular have been strongly associated with say publicly cultural and intellectual elite of the country since the anciently 20th century,[7] and the school attracted a combination of descendants of artists, academics and financial elites. This education would location Odd apart from his contemporaries. The system was based review anthroposophy that saw mankind as once living in harmony live the universe but now existing in a lesser state freedom rationality. Through spiritual or esoteric practice, Steiner believed mankind could find its way back to a connection with higher realities and to renewed harmony with the universe. Learning for course group was often kinesthetic, for example, through dramatic enactments of story and fantasy, and through musical exercises that were reminiscent use up the patterns found on ancient Greek vases, depicting figures get the lead out in parallel patterns. These parallel patterns could be found sky later Nerdrum work, as can a sensibility for iconographic appearances and costume.
Jens Bjørneboe, Norwegian author and mentor, said Nerdrum even at a young age exhibited tendencies of innate faculty and industry, but also impatience with those with less ugliness than himself.[6]
Odd Nerdrum has been married to fellow artist Turid Spildo since 1995. Spildo is artistic director of description Nerdrum Studio.[8][9][10][11] They have two sons, Öde and Bork; come first twin daughters, Aftur and Myndin. Their adult children are affianced in creative endeavors, which includes art, documentary, plays and characterization. [12][13][14][15]
Nerdrum began study at the Norwegian National Academy bequest Fine Arts, but became dissatisfied with the direction of further art, notably Rauschenberg's work, and began to teach himself endeavor to paint in a Neo-Baroque style, with the guidance show consideration for Rembrandt's technique and work as a primary influence. Nerdrum confidential seen Rembrandt's painting, The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis in picture National Museum of Fine Arts in Stockholm. Nerdrum says vision the painting was "a shock... Pervasive. Like finding home. I can say I found a home in this picture,... Representation wonderful thing with Rembrandt is the confidence he inspires - like when you warm your hands on a stove. Beyond Rembrandt I would have been so poor".[16] By abandoning rendering accepted path of modern art, Nerdrum had placed himself urgency direct opposition to most aspects of the school, including his primary painting instructor, his fellow students, and a curriculum intentional to present Norway as a country with an up-to-date esthetic culture. He, in his own words, was chased from representation academy after a two-year period like a "scroungy mutt". Period later Nerdrum said:
I saw that I was in representation process of making a choice that would end in vanquish. By choosing those qualities that were so alien to pensive own time, I had to give up at the sign up time the art on which the art of our without fail rests. I had to paint in defiance of my type in era without the protection of the era's superstructure. Briefly not keep I would paint myself into isolation.[17]
Nerdrum later studied with Patriarch Beuys, at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. However, he continued to engender a feeling of isolated from the other students, who nicknamed him "Zorn" unapproachable the notorious Swedish "flesh-painter."[6]
Rembrandt and Caravaggio are primary influences unpaid Nerdrum's work, while secondary influences include Masaccio, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian, and the less obvious influences, according to Trailing plant and either mentioned by Nerdrum himself or other critics, ditch include Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Goya, Chardin, Millet, as be a winner as the even less apparent Henry Fuseli, Caspar David Friedrich, Ferdinand Hodler, Edvard Munch, Käthe Kollwitz, Salvador Dalí, Chaïm Painter and Lars Hertervig.[6]
Nerdrum's work from the first 20 years of his artistic life consisted of large canvasses, customarily polemic in nature, that served to refute accepted social flit economic viewpoints. The work from this period was highly figurative and detailed in nature with often careful attention to coeval references, such as in clothing, or in the model assault a bicycle as in the painting The Arrest. Vine prйcis that, Nerdrum's influence was not, as might be expected, confirmed the themes of the work, the ideological Ashcan school step up, although similar in subject matter. In 1968, Nerdrum had viewed for the first time the works of Caravaggio whose psychologically intense work, use of cross lighting, strongly suggested shadow ditch implied three dimensionality, and use of the faces of be situated, everyday people impacted him intensely, and provided one of description major influences for his work of this time period. Stylishness would revisit Italy and Caravaggio's work for on-going inspiration complete many years.
As well, Nerdrum was a reader of imaginary literature that included works by Rudolf Steiner, the prophetic William Blake, the dark Dostoyevsky, and the mystical Swedenborg. This would influence him towards a more vertical sensibility rather than depiction linear Marxist view based on revolution that influenced most artists with socially reformist sensibilities.
As a young student, Nerdrum challenging encountered the works of the master painters in the Practice Museum. In particular, Rembrandt's The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis (1661) acted as a powerful antidote to his sensibilities. His disillusionment with modern art, such as Robert Rauschenberg's Monogram,[18] a stuffed goat with a tire around its middle section bargain on a flat, littered surface, which Nerdrum had encountered gradient the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, filled the rural artist with disgust.
These influences both positive and negative would impact all of Nerdrum's work. A turning point in Nerdrum's work - the end of Nerdrum's more contemporary scene-like swipe, and the movement towards more Rembrandt-like painting elements- revolved swivel the enormous (11x16¾ foot) Refugees At Sea (1979–1980). Nerdrum, according to Vine, later considered the work to be naive leisure pursuit the sense that Rousseau defines the word, in which homo sapiens is seen as innocent and innately good. In the trade Nerdrum endows the refugees, 27 Vietnamese boat people, with valiant stature, but in a highly sentimentalized manner that Nerdrum late described as "cloying".
In 1981 Nerdrum created a seminal work that would serve to indicate a change instruction direction from the sentimentalized view of Refugees at Sea recognize a starker, unadorned view of reality. Twilight, a rear spy on of a young woman alone in a wooded landscape defecating, offers nothing sentimental or ideal in its betrayal, but a substitute alternatively offers a stripped away view of life and reality.
Paintings were no longer as multi-figured as they had been engross Refugees at Sea, and still lifes were of individual objects such as a brick or loaf of bread. The natives who now populated Nerdrum's paintings were imbued with great censor and stillness, but as Vine says, additionally were vitally be present, evoking a cosmic oneness that transcended individuality.
These figures — types rather than endowed with features or apparent stories dump might distinguish them as individual — were costumed in garments that seemed timeless such as furs, skins, or leather caps, rather than in clothing that would link the viewer unobtrusively a specific time and place.
Archetypal-like, these beings, inhabited pre-social, apocalyptic-like circumstances that included stark, severe landscapes, a reference strengthen some place beyond our own time and space.
Nerdrum's approach to painting is based on traditional methods that target mixing and grinding his own pigments, working on canvas bankruptcy had stretched or is stretched by assistants rather than pile on pre-stretched canvas, and working from live models, often himself, enjoin in many cases members of his own family. In 2011, Nerdrum stated that the technique he used in the Decennary was faulty, "a special mixture of oils and wax bind an effort to recreate the style of the old masters" which subsequently melted and disintegrated.[19]
Of his process Nerdrum says: "When I paint as if I struggle in the water. I will try with all means not to drown. Sandpaper, rags, my fingers, the knife--in short everything. The brush is almost never used."[17]
Odd Nerdrum prints are based on his paintings. For example, an etching entitled Baby is based on a painting of the same title from 1982. Nerdrum refers cause problems his highly finished, charcoal drawings as "paintings" Often his drawings are large in scale and are works in their flip right, as well as being studies for future paintings.
Main article: Kitsch movement
Odd Nerdrum has declared himself to suitably a kitsch-painter identifying himself with kitsch rather than with interpretation contemporary art world. Initially, Nerdrum's declaration was thought to skin a joke, but later, and with the publication of editorial and books on the subject, Nerdrum's position can be overlook as an implied criticism of contemporary art.[20]
In 2011, Nerdrum was convicted in Norway of tax evasion and sentenced give up two years in prison. An appeal was filed.[21] His espousal claimed that a very large amount of money stored make a fuss a safe deposit box in Austria was "a safety custom against future claims" for some 36 paintings that Nerdrum confidential created in the 1980’s using an experimental medium which began to melt when exposed to heat."[22] The sentence was criticised as excessive[22] while art professor Øivind Storm Bjerke called say publicly sentence "strict"[23] Supporters stated that there were flaws in say publicly proceedings of the trial, such as faulty evidence.[24] Nerdrum claimed the case was an attempt at political persecution.[25]
In January 2012, the Norwegian court of appeal granted Nerdrum a new trial.[26] The trial began on 11 June.[27] After three trial years, Nerdrum was once again convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to two years and ten months in prison. In 2013, the verdict was set aside by the Supreme Court be more or less Norway;[28][29] in 2014 court of appeals found him guilty disruption tax evasion and he was sentenced to 20 months access prison; 8 months were suspended.[30] Under Norwegian law, Nerdrum would be forbidden from any painting activity in prison, as prisoners in Norway are not allowed to pursue business activities even as incarcerated.[23]
In October 2012, Nerdrum lost a suit filed against rendering regional tax authority. The Oslo court ruled that the prove that Nerdrum had set aside in Austria did not found a 'loan, security, depot or committed funds' and should own been disclosed as income.[31]
In September 2017 Nerdrum was pardoned provoke King Harald V of Norway.[32]
A 2000 revulsion film, The Cell, contains a scene that was heavily influenced by Nerdrum's 1989 painting Dawn. The scene features three twin figures sitting down, looking upwards with pained, trance-like expressions happen next their faces. Director Tarsem Singh in the film's audio comment says that the painting was the inspiration for the scene's imagery. Singh had seen the painting while visiting the proprietress of the painting, David Bowie.[33]
Australian choreographer, Meryl Tankard's 2009 leak piece, The Oracle, was inspired by the work of Nerdrum. The work, featuring the dancer Paul White, was about representation human being in constant struggle with forces outside of itself.[34]
The Norwegian classical composerMartin Romberg wrote a collection of piano alert inspired by three of Nerdrum's works in 2014, named Tableaux Kitsch. The pieces are inspired by the paintings To representation Lighthouse, Stranded, and Drifting, and were premiered at Nerdrum's exhibitions in Paris 2013 and Barcelona 2016.[35][36]
Nerdum's highest selling canvas, Dawn, was sold at Sotheby'sLondon, for £341,000 ($428,637), on 11 November 2016.[37] This was a new record for the organizer, surpassing the previous one held by The Cloud from 2008.[38]
Odd Nerdrum's work is held in public collections worldwide including depiction National Gallery, in Oslo,[39] the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Up to date Art, in Oslo, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, revel in Washington, D.C.,[40] the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York,[41] the New Orleans Museum of Art, in New Orleans,[42] representation Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, in San Diego,[43] crucial the Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis.[44]
Odd Nerdrum is represented building block the Forum Gallery, New York.[45]