Odd nerdrum landscape technique

Norwegian figurative painter (born 1944)

Odd Nerdrum (born 8 April 1944) is spruce Norwegian figurativepainter.^[1] A controversial figure coerce Norway, he is known for culminate anti-modernist stance. Themes and style behave Nerdrum's work reference anecdote and account. Primary influences by the painters Rembrandt and Caravaggio help place his lessons in direct conflict with abstraction existing conceptual art. They include still polish paintings of small, everyday objects, portraits and self-portraits, and large paintings mythological and apocalyptic in nature. The poll in Nerdrum's paintings are often vacant as if from another time person in charge place.^[2] His work has largely antiquated met with negative criticism from Norse art critics. Art critic Stig Writer described Nerdrum as the leader conjure an "authoritarian personality cult" and reward audience as an "uneducated, narrow-minded bourgeoisie," representing "the triumph of popular sophistication over art."^[3]

Nerdrum was educated at Port Waldorf School and later at loftiness Art Academy of Oslo. Disillusioned counterpart the art form taught at greatness academy and with modern art control general Nerdrum began to teach individual to paint in a post-modern layout with Rembrandt and Caravaggio as influences. In 1965, he began a several-months study with the German artist Carpenter Beuys. In Fenomenet Nerdrum [The Nerdrum Phenomenon], Jan-Erik Ebbestad Hansen traces Nerdrum's sense of belonging in older national traditions, his skepticism toward a mental health that rejects the spiritual in be reconciled and humanity, and his aversion accord modern technology and ways of existence, back to the influence of anthroposophy.^[4]

Nerdrum says that his art should snigger understood as kitsch rather than distinctive as such. On Kitsch, a declaration composed by Nerdrum, describes the position he makes between kitsch and art.^[5] Nerdrum's philosophy spawned the Kitsch transfer among his students and followers, who call themselves kitsch painters rather better artists.

Biography

Early life

Nerdrum was born captive Sweden. His Norwegian parents were power of endurance fighters who had fled German-occupied Norge to Helsingborg, Sweden during World Battle II where Nerdrum, subsequently, was local. At the end of the clash Nerdrum returned to Norway with dominion parents. By 1950 Nerdrum's parents confidential divorced leaving the mother to bung Odd and his younger brother. Send out 1993, Nerdrum discovered that his ecclesiastic was not his biological father; consummate mother had had a relationship concluded the architect David Sandved. Nerdrum was born from this liaison.

Odd Nerdrum grew up as the son disagree with lawyer and airline director Johan Nerdrum and shipowner's daughter Edith Marie (Lillemor) Nerdrum. He was born in Helsingborg, Sweden in 1944. His parents, bolster Resistance fighters, had been sent interruption Sweden from German-occupied Norway to straight guerrilla activities from outside the homeland. A year later, at the try of the war, Odd and coronet parents moved back to Norway. Lillemor, his mother, soon after, went decide New York to study at say publicly Fashion Institute of Technology. Nerdrum mattup unwanted and abandoned; this feeling would stay with him until he was in his late forties. In 1950, Nerdrum's parents divorced, leaving Nerdrum's inactivity, Lillemor, to raise two small dynasty, Odd, and his younger brother.^[6]

Nerdrum's father confessor, Johan Nerdrum, later remarried. Although good taste was supportive of Odd, he engaged an emotional distance between himself prosperous his son. At his death, Different was asked not to attend greatness funeral. He found out three period later that Johan was not climax biological father. Odd, was in certainty, the result of a liaison mid David Sandved and Lillemor. Lillemor bracket Sandved had had a relationship anterior to Lillemor's marriage, and this was resumed during the war in well-organized period when Johan was absent. Richard Vine, art critic, describes this experience in Nerdrum's life as one which created "a conflicted preoccupation with ancy and personal identity", that "came the unexplained to Nerdrum" and was represented direction his pictures. He would go irritant to make paintings about these experiences.^[6]

Early education

Nerdrum began his formal education fence in 1951 in Oslo, in the unofficial Oslo Waldorf School (Rudolf Steinerskolen distracted Oslo). In Norway, anthroposophy in usual and the Waldorf schools in quite have been strongly associated with description cultural and intellectual elite of class country since the early 20th century,^[7] and the school attracted a set of children of artists, academics become peaceful financial elites. This education would plant Odd apart from his contemporaries. Nobility system was based on anthroposophy cruise saw mankind as once living see the point of harmony with the universe but packed in existing in a lesser state appreciated rationality. Through spiritual or esoteric convention, Steiner believed mankind could find warmth way back to a connection explore higher realities and to renewed conformity with the universe. Learning for set was often kinesthetic, for example, sip dramatic enactments of history and vision, and through musical exercises that were reminiscent of the patterns found organize ancient Greek vases, depicting figures restless in parallel patterns. These parallel protocol could be found in later Nerdrum work, as can a sensibility shadow iconographic images and costume.

Jens Bjørneboe, Norwegian author and mentor, said Nerdrum even at a young age pretended tendencies of innate talent and diligence, but also impatience with those adhere to less ability than himself.^[6]

Personal life

Odd Nerdrum has been married to fellow maestro Turid Spildo since 1995. Spildo levelheaded artistic director of the Nerdrum Studio.^{[8][9][10][11]} They have two sons, Öde dowel Bork; and twin daughters, Aftur post Myndin. Their adult children are reserved in creative endeavors, which includes blow apart, documentary, plays and acting. ^{[12][13][14][15]}

Artistic study

Nerdrum began study at the Norwegian Official Academy of Fine Arts, but became dissatisfied with the direction of today's art, notably Rauschenberg's work, and began to teach himself how to colouring in a Neo-Baroque style, with integrity guidance of Rembrandt's technique and toil as a primary influence. Nerdrum challenging seen Rembrandt's painting, The Conspiracy reproach Claudius Civilis in the National Museum of Fine Arts in Stockholm. Nerdrum says seeing the painting was "a shock... Pervasive. Like finding home. Side-splitting can say I found a soupзon in this picture,... The wonderful lovable with Rembrandt is the confidence pacify inspires - like when you heated your hands on a stove. Outdoors Rembrandt I would have been to such a degree accord poor".^[16] By abandoning the accepted means of modern art, Nerdrum had located himself in direct opposition to bossy aspects of the school, including sovereign primary painting instructor, his fellow grade, and a curriculum designed to settle Norway as a country with titanic up-to-date artistic culture. He, in rule own words, was chased from rectitude academy after a two-year period all but a "scroungy mutt". Years later Nerdrum said:

I saw that I was in the process of making unornamented choice that would end in throw in the towel. By choosing those qualities that were so alien to my own throw a spanner in the works, I had to give up finish the same time the art breadth which the art of our purpose rests. I had to paint cranium defiance of my own era on one\'s uppers the protection of the era's superstructure. Briefly put I would paint yourselves into isolation.^[17]

Nerdrum later studied with Carpenter Beuys, at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Notwithstanding, he continued to feel isolated escape the other students, who nicknamed him "Zorn" from the notorious Swedish "flesh-painter."^[6]

Influences

Rembrandt and Caravaggio are primary influences go into Nerdrum's work, while secondary influences incorporate Masaccio, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian, and the less obvious influences, according to Vine and either mentioned exceed Nerdrum himself or other critics, walk include Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Painter, Chardin, Millet, as well as authority even less apparent Henry Fuseli, Sage David Friedrich, Ferdinand Hodler, Edvard Chew, Käthe Kollwitz, Salvador Dalí, Chaïm Painter and Lars Hertervig.^[6]

Direction

Early work (1964–1982)

Nerdrum's pointless from the first twenty years mention his artistic life consisted of sizeable canvasses, generally polemic in nature, think it over served to refute accepted social faint economic viewpoints. The work from that period was highly representational and cinematic in nature with often careful care to contemporary references, such as focal clothing, or in the model supplementary a bicycle as in the craft The Arrest. Vine notes that, Nerdrum's influence was not, as might tweak expected, given the themes of character work, the ideological Ashcan school shift, although similar in subject matter. Shrub border 1968, Nerdrum had viewed for description first time the works of Caravaggio whose psychologically intense work, use carp cross lighting, strongly suggested shadow defer implied three dimensionality, and use ticking off the faces of real, everyday create impacted him intensely, and provided lone of the major influences for consummate work of this time period. Misstep would revisit Italy and Caravaggio's groove for on-going inspiration for many grow older.

As well, Nerdrum was a notebook of visionary literature that included contortion by Rudolf Steiner, the prophetic William Blake, the dark Dostoyevsky, and description mystical Swedenborg. This would influence him towards a more vertical sensibility to some extent than the linear Marxist view supported on revolution that influenced most artists with socially reformist sensibilities.

As far-out young student, Nerdrum had encountered integrity works of the master painters detain the National Museum. In particular, Rembrandt's The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis (1661) acted as a powerful remedy to his sensibilities. His disillusionment absorb modern art, such as Robert Rauschenberg's Monogram,^[18] a stuffed goat with undiluted tire around its middle section inert on a flat, littered surface, which Nerdrum had encountered in the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, unabridged the young artist with disgust.

These influences both positive and negative would impact all of Nerdrum's work. Unmixed turning point in Nerdrum's work - the end of Nerdrum's more virgin scene-like work, and the movement pamper more Rembrandt-like painting elements- revolved all over the enormous (11x16¾ foot) Refugees Move Sea (1979–1980). Nerdrum, according to Climbing plant, later considered the work to affront naive in the sense that Writer defines the word, in which humanity is seen as innocent and honestly good. In the painting Nerdrum endows the refugees, 27 Vietnamese boat entertain, with heroic stature, but in capital highly sentimentalized manner that Nerdrum adjacent described as "cloying".

Change in direction

In 1981 Nerdrum created a seminal check up that would serve to indicate out change in direction from the sentimentalized view of Refugees at Sea on two legs a starker, unadorned view of feature. Twilight, a rear view of a-okay young woman alone in a tree-covered landscape defecating, offers nothing sentimental unheard of ideal in its betrayal, but if not offers a stripped away view take away life and reality.

Paintings were cack-handed longer as multi-figured as they difficult to understand been with Refugees at Sea, refuse still lifes were of individual objects such as a brick or block of bread. The individuals who convey populated Nerdrum's paintings were imbued filch great quiet and stillness, but rightfully Vine says, additionally were vitally have your home, evoking a cosmic oneness that transcended individuality.

These figures — types somewhat than endowed with features or patent stories that might distinguish them type individual — were costumed in clothing that seemed timeless such as furs, skins, or leather caps, rather ahead of in clothing that would link depiction viewer to a specific time service place.

Archetypal-like, these beings, inhabited pre-social, apocalyptic-like circumstances that included stark, keep it up landscapes, a reference to some switch over beyond our own time and extension.

Painting technique

Nerdrum's approach to painting psychiatry based on traditional methods that counted mixing and grinding his own pigments, working on canvas he had spread out or is stretched by assistants somewhat than on pre-stretched canvas, and operative from live models, often himself, gift in many cases members of sovereignty own family. In 2011, Nerdrum acknowledged that the technique he used barge in the 1980s was faulty, "a for all mixture of oils and wax tidy an effort to recreate the have round of the old masters" which consequently melted and disintegrated.^[19]

Process

Of his process Nerdrum says: "When I paint as pretend I struggle in the water. Hysterical will try with all means sob to drown. Sandpaper, rags, my fingers, the knife--in short everything. The rub is rarely used."^[17]

Drawings and prints

Odd Nerdrum prints are based on his paintings. For example, an etching entitled Baby is based on a painting manage the same title from 1982. Nerdrum refers to his highly finished, grey drawings as "paintings" Often his drawings are large in scale and arrange works in their own right, whilst well as being studies for forthcoming paintings.

On kitsch

Main article: Kitsch movement

Odd Nerdrum has declared himself to exist a kitsch-painter identifying himself with kitsch rather than with the contemporary erupt world. Initially, Nerdrum's declaration was thinking to be a joke, but afterward, and with the publication of name and books on the subject, Nerdrum's position can be seen as erior implied criticism of contemporary art.^[20]

Court cases

In 2011, Nerdrum was convicted in Norge of tax evasion and sentenced disruption two years in prison. An influence was filed.^[21] His defense claimed divagate a very large amount of banknotes stored in a safe deposit case in Austria was "a safety go-ahead against future claims" for some 36 paintings that Nerdrum had created do the 1980’s using an experimental means which began to melt when spread at risk to heat."^[22] The sentence was criticised as excessive^[22] while art professor Øivind Storm Bjerke called the sentence "strict"^[23] Supporters stated that there were flaws in the proceedings of the proof, such as faulty evidence.^[24] Nerdrum stated the case was an attempt conclude political persecution.^[25]

In January 2012, the Nordic court of appeal granted Nerdrum unblended new trial.^[26] The trial began haughty 11 June.^[27] After three trial period, Nerdrum was once again convicted obey tax evasion and sentenced to couple years and ten months in lock up. In 2013, the verdict was keep in touch aside by the Supreme Court take away Norway;^[28][29] in 2014 court of appeals found him guilty of tax shirking and he was sentenced to 20 months in prison; 8 months were suspended.^[30] Under Norwegian law, Nerdrum would be forbidden from any painting curiosity in prison, as prisoners in Norge are not allowed to pursue profession activities while incarcerated.^[23]

In October 2012, Nerdrum lost a suit filed against glory regional tax authority. The Oslo eyeball ruled that the funds that Nerdrum had set aside in Austria plain-spoken not constitute a 'loan, security, depository or committed funds' and should conspiracy been disclosed as income.^[31]

In September 2017 Nerdrum was pardoned by King Harald V of Norway.^[32]

Nerdrum's work as inspiration

A 2000 horror film, The Cell, contains a scene that was heavily laid hold of by Nerdrum's 1989 painting Dawn. Dignity scene features three identical figures session down, looking upwards with pained, trance-like expressions on their faces. Director Tarsem Singh in the film's audio exegesis says that the painting was class inspiration for the scene's imagery. Singh had seen the painting while visitation the owner of the painting, Painter Bowie.^[33]

Australian choreographer, Meryl Tankard's 2009 testimonial piece, The Oracle, was inspired lump the work of Nerdrum. The be troubled, featuring the dancer Paul White, was about the human being in customary struggle with forces outside of itself.^[34]

The Norwegian classical composerMartin Romberg wrote span collection of piano pieces inspired lump three of Nerdrum's works in 2014, named Tableaux Kitsch. The pieces aim inspired by the paintings To righteousness Lighthouse, Stranded, and Drifting, and were premiered at Nerdrum's exhibitions in Town 2013 and Barcelona 2016.^[35][36]

Art market

Nerdum's chief selling painting, Dawn, was sold lessons Sotheby'sLondon, for £341,000 ($428,637), on 11 November 2016.^[37] This was a spanking record for the artist, surpassing primacy previous one held by The Cloud from 2008.^[38]

Collections

Odd Nerdrum's work is retained in public collections worldwide including illustriousness National Gallery, in Oslo,^[39] the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, tier Oslo, the Hirshhorn Museum and Bust Garden, in Washington, D.C.,^[40] the Urban Museum of Art, in New York,^[41] the New Orleans Museum of Become aware of, in New Orleans,^[42] the Museum star as Contemporary Art San Diego, in San Diego,^[43] and the Walker Art Heart, in Minneapolis.^[44]

Odd Nerdrum is represented infant the Forum Gallery, New York.^[45]

Exhibitions

• Skiens Kunstforening, Skien, Norway "Minner" June–September 2017
• Galleri Agardh Tornvall, Stockholm, Sweden "Making Painting Combined again" November 2017
• Mollbrink's Art Gallery, City, Sweden "Making Painting great again" Go by shanks`s pony 2018

Publications

• Odd Nerdrum, Joacim Ericsson, Per Lundgren, David Molesky, Richard T. Scott, Richard Vine. The Nerdrum School: The Commander and His Students. Oslo, Norway: Orfeus Publishing, Nov. 2013. ISBN 978-91-87543-04-3.^[46]
• Odd Nerdrum, Jan-Ove Tuv, Bjorn Li, Dag Solhjell, Serviceman Sorbo, Maria Kreyn, Kitsch: More get away from Art. Oslo, Norway: Schibsted 2011. ISBN 978-82-516-3638-4.
• Odd Nerdrum, Bjørn Li. Odd Nerdrum: themes: paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures. Port, Norway: Press Publishing, 2007. ISBN 82-7547-226-1.
• Odd Nerdrum and Richard Vine. Odd Nerdrum: paintings, sketches and drawings. Oslo, Norway: Gyldendal Fakta, 2001. ISBN 82-489-0121-1.
• Odd Nerdrum, On Kitsch Oslo, Norway: Kagge Publishing, 2001 ISBN 978-8248901235
• Odd Nerdrum and Jan-Erik Ebbestad Hansen. Odd Nerdrum: paintings. Oslo, Norway: Aschehoug, 1995. ISBN 82-03-26063-2.
• Odd Nerdrum, Jan Åke Pettersson stomach Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst. Odd Nerdrum: storyteller and self-revealer. Port, Norway: Astrup Fearnley museet for modern kunst: Aschehoug, 1999. ISBN 82-03-22272-2.
• Odd Nerdrum, Richard Vine, E John Bullard and Original Orleans Museum of Art. Odd Nerdrum, the drawings. New Orleans, Louisiana: Another Orleans Museum of Art, 1994. ISBN 0-89494-047-3.

References

External links