Odd Nerdrum
399296
218661906
2008-06-11T16:56:34Z
Littleolive oil
3008356
/* Direction: Next twenty years */ add as title
[[Image:earlymorning.jpg|thumb|''Early Morning'', oil on canvas, 206cm x 175.5cm, by Odd Nerdrum]]
''
'''Odd Nerdrum''' (born [[April 8]] [[1944]]), in Sweden, is a controversial, [[Norway|Norwegian]], figurative painter whose painterly, pre modern, Renaissance-style work, is highly reminiscent of Rembrandt in style and composition. This style, and the themes in Nerdrum's work based on anecdote and narrative place him in direct conflict with the abstraction and conceptual art considered acceptable in much of his native Norway.
Nerdrum claims that his art should be understood as [[kitsch]] rather than art as such. "''On Kitsch''", a manifesto composed by Nerdrum describes the distinction he makes between kitsch and art.<ref>http://www.nerdrum.com/kitsch/</ref>
Odd Nerdrum, now lives in Iceland where he is applying for Icelandic citizenship. He divides his time between his home in Iceland and his farm in Norway. <ref>Vine, Richard. Odd Nerdrum: Paintings, Sketches and Drawings, Gyldendal Norsk Forlog A/S,Gyldendal Fokta,Oslo,2001.</ref>
==Biography==
===Early life===
Odd Nerdrum was born in 1944, in Sweden, during the last of year of [[World War II]]. His parents, [[Resistance movement|Resistance]] fighters, had been sent to Sweden from German occupied Norway to direct guerrilla activities from outside the country. At the end of the war, a year later, Odd and his parents moved back to Norway. Nerdrum’s mother, Lillemor soon after went to New York to study at the [[Fashion Institute of Technology]]. The feeling of being unwanted and abandoned Nerdrum felt at this time would stay with him until he was in his late forties, at which time he would begin to understand the underlying reasons for the sensations he felt. In 1950, Nerdrum’s parents divorced leaving Lillemor to raise two small children, Odd, and a younger brother, on her own. <ref>Vine, Richard. Odd Nerdrum: Paintings, Sketches and Drawings, Gyldendal Norsk Forlog A/S, Gyldendal Fokta,Oslo,2001.</ref>
Nerdrum's father, Johan Nerdrun later remarried but kept an emotional, although supportive distance between himself and his son. At his death, Odd was asked not to attend the funeral, and 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. Lellemor and Sandved had 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 Nerdum'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. <ref>Vine, Richard. Odd Nerdrum: Paintings, Sketches and Drawings, pgs. 23-26. Gyldendal Norsk Forlog A/S, Gyldendal Fokta,Oslo,2001.</ref>
===Early education===
Nerdrum began his formal education in 1951 in Oslo, in a private [[Waldorf education|Rudolf Steiner school]] rather than in the standard, public school system. This education would set Odd apart from his contemporaries. The system was based on [[anthroposophy]] that saw mankind as once living in harmony with the universe but now existing in a lesser state of rationality.
Through spiritual or esoteric practice Steiner believed mankind could find his its way back to a connection with higher realities and to renewed harmony with the universe. Learning for students was often kinesthetic, for example, through dramatic enactments of history and fantasy, and through musical exercises that were reminiscent of the patterns found on ancient Greek vases depicting figures moving in parallel patterns. These parallel patterns could be found in later Nerdrum work as can a sensibility for iconographic images and costume.
[[Jens Bjørneboe]], a grade school mentor said Nerdrum even at that age exhibited tendencies of innate talent, industry, but also impatience with those with less abilities than himself.<ref>Vine, Richard. Odd Nerdrum: Paintings, Sketches and Drawings, pgs. 23-26. Gyldendal Norsk Forlog A/S, Gyldendal Fokta,Oslo,2001.</ref>
==Artistic study and direction==
Nerdrum began study at the Art Academy of Oslo, but became dissatisfied with the direction of [[modern art]] , and began to teach himself how to paint in a [[Neo Baroque]] style, with the guidance of Rembrandt's technique and work as a primary influence. In doing so he placed himself in direct opposition to most aspects of the school, including his primary painting instructor, his fellow students, and a curriculum designed to have Norway seen as a country with an up-to-date artistic culture. He, in his own words was chased from the academy after a two year period like a "scroungy mutt". He later studied with [[Joseph Beuys]], at the [[Kunstakademie Düsseldorf]].
== Painting technique==
Nerdrum devised his own methods of painting founded on traditional methods: mixing and grinding his own pigments, working on canvas stretched by himself or assistants rather than on pre-stretched canvas, and working from live models which in many cases were members of his family or himself.
==Influences==
[[Rembrandt]] and [[Caravaggio]] are primary influences, but secondary influences include the masters Mosaccio, [[Leonardo de Vinci]], [[Michelangelo]], [[Titian]], and the less obvious influences of, according to Vine and either mentioned by Nerdrum himself or other critics, that include [[Brueghel]], [[Goya]], [[Chardin]], [[Millet]], as well the even less apparent [[Henry Fuseli]], [[Caspar David Friedrich]], Ferdinand Hoddler, [[Edvard Munch]], Kathee Kollwitz, and [[Lars Hertervig]].
==Direction: First twenty years ==
Nerdrum's work from the first twenty years of his artistic life consisted of large canvasses, generally polemic in nature, that refuted some accepted social or economic view point. The work from this period was highly representational and detailed in nature with often careful attention to contemporary references, such as in clothing, or in the model of a bicycle as in the painting ''The Arrest''. Vine notes that, this was not an influence of the ideological [[Ashcan school]] movement, but predates it. As well Nerdrum was a reader of visionary literature that included his early encounters with [[Rudolf Steiner]], the prophetic [[William Blake]] , the dark [[Dostoyevsky]], and the mystical [[Swedenborg]]. This would influence him towards a more vertical sensibility rather than the linear [[Marxist]] view based on revolution that influenced most artists with socially reformist sensibilities.
In 1968 Nerdrum had viewed for the first time the works of Caravaggio whose psychologically intense work, use of cross lighting, strongly suggested shadow that implied three dimensionality, and use of the faces of common man impacted him intensely, and provided one of the major influences for his work of this time period. He would revisit Italy and Caravaggio's work for on-going inspiration for many years.
==Direction: Next twenty years==
As a young student Nerdrum had encountered the works of the master painters in the National Museum. In particular Rembrandt's,'' The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis'' (1661) acted as a powerful antidote to his sensibilities in terms of more modern art. His disillusion with modern art, such as Rauschenberg's ''Monogram'', a stuffed goat with a tire around its middle section standing on a flat, littered surface,<ref>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/rauschenberg_r.html</ref> that Nerdrum had encountered in Moderna Museet, in a show of recent American Art filled the young artist with disgust.
These influences both positive and negative would impact all of Nerdrum's work, and are made visible in the second twenty years of his paintings. The end of Nerdrum's more contemporary scene-like work, and the movement towards more Rembrandt-like painting elements revolves around the enormous (11x163/4 foot) ''Refugees At Sea''(1979-1980). Nerdrum according to Vine considered the work naive in the sense that [[Rousseau]] defines the word, in which mankind is seen as innocent and innately good. In the painting Nerdrum endows the refugees, 27 [[Vietnamese]] [[boat people]] with heroic stature, but in a highly sentimentalized manner.
Later, a large proportion of Nerdrum's work would involve [[Classicism|classical]] figures set in an [[Apocalypticism|apocalyptic]] landscape (Paul A Cantor at [[ArtCyclopedia]], compares Nerdrum's art to "the result if [[Rembrandt]] had painted the sets of [[Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior|The Road Warrior]]").<ref>The Importance of Being Odd: Nerdrum's Challenge to Modernism, Paul A Cantor, ArtCyclopedia [http://www.artcyclopedia.com/feature-2004-02.html]</ref>
==Nerdrum's work as inspiration==
A well known [[2000]] [[horror film]], ''[[The Cell]]'', contains a scene that was heavily influenced by Nerdrum's 1990 painting, ''Dawn''. The scene features three identical figures sitting down, looking upwards with pained, trance-like expressions on their faces. Director [[Tarsem Singh]] in the film's audio commentary says that the painting was the inspiration for the scene's imagery. Singh had seen the painting while visiting the owner of the painting, [[David Bowie]].<ref>Nerdrum kopiert i Lopez-thriller, Jon Selås, ''VG'', Sep 8 2000 [http://www.vg.no/pub/vgart.hbs?artid=7353724]</ref> ,
Nerdrum also created the cover of the [[progressive rock]] band, Junipher Greene's LP, ''[[Friendship (album)|Friendship]]'' ([[1971]]).
[[Image:Odddrifting.jpg|thumb|left|250px|''Drifting'', oil on canvas, 204cm x 284cm, by Odd Nerdrum]]
==Drawings and Prints==
[[Image:Nerdbaby.jpg|thumb|right|250px|''Baby'', etching, 112cm x 84cm, by Odd Nerdrum]]
Odd Nerdrum prints are based on his paintings. An etching entitled ''Baby'' is based on a painting of the same title from 1982. Nerdrum refers to his highly finished, charcoal drawings as "paintings" Often his drawings are quite large in scale and are works in their own right, as well as being studies for future paintings.
[[Image:OneStory.gif|thumb|left|250px|''One Story Singer'', charcoal on paper, 116cm x 140cm, by Odd Nerdrum]]
==Collections==
His work is in several important public collections including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, NY, The National Gallery in Oslo, Norway, The New Orleans Museum in LA, The Portland Art Museum in OR, The San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art in CA, and The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN.
==Exhibitions==
[[Image:the kiss.jpg|thumb|''The kiss'', oil on canvas, 98cm x 78cm, by Odd Nerdrum]]
Kunstnerforbundet 1967-70-73 Oslo-76-84
Galleri 27 Oslo 1972
The Bedford Way Gallery 1982
Martina Hamilton Gallery 1984
Delaware Art Museum Wilmington 1985
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago IL 1988
Lemberg Gallery Birmingham 1991 MI
Gothenburg art Museum Sweden 1991
Bergen Art Museum Norway 1992
Edward Thorp Gallery New-York 1992
New Orleans Museum of Art 1994
Forum Gallery, New-York 1996
Frye Art Museum, Seattle, 1997
Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo Norway 1998
[[Kunsthal]] Rotterdam, The Netherlands 1999
Amos Andersson Museum, Finland 1999
Young Classic, Harry Bergman Gallery, Alands Art museum 2000 Finland
Forum Gallery, New-York and Los Angeles 2002
Forum Gallery, New-York and Los Angeles 2004
Forum Gallery, Los Angeles 2006
Forum Gallery, New-York January 2007
Forum Gallery, New-York May 2007
[[Image:sleeping prophet.jpg|thumb|left|''Sleeping prophet'', oil on canvas, 294cm x 288cm,2000, by Odd Nerdrum]]
==Reviews==
"There are more men than women here, but sexual pairing seems to occur only in death (or a sleep resembling death). Which is not to say desire is nowhere present. It is everywhere. If anything makes these pictures compelling, it's their consistent fascination with the human body. The images--of paired corpses, madmen, men in pain, a man without eyes--may be frightful and abhorrent, but every limb and torso is lovingly rendered. Pale, muscular, sexual, the figures are painted so that one must take them seriously--in much the same way that it is music that grounds the otherwise bizarre stage spectacles of Wagnerian opera."
*[http://www.thefreelibary.com/Odd+Nerdrum.a0139580/ Odd Nerdrum by Justin Spring, part of a review first published in Artforum International, April 1, 1993]
==Bibliography==
*Odd Nerdrum and Richard Vine. ''Odd Nerdrum: paintings, sketches and drawings''. Oslo, Norway: Gyldendal Fakta, 2001. ISBN 8248901211.
*Odd Nerdrum and Jan-Erik Ebbestad Hansen. ''Odd Nerdrum: paintings''. Oslo, Norway: Aschehoug, 1995. ISBN 8203260632.
*Odd Nerdrum, Jan Åke Pettersson and Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst. ''Odd Nerdrum: storyteller and self-revealer''. Oslo, Norway: Astrup Fearnley museet for moderne kunst: Aschehoug, 1999. ISBN 8203222722.
*Odd Nerdrum, Richard Vine, E John Bullard and New Orleans Museum of Art. ''Odd Nerdrum, the drawings''. New Orleans, LA: New Orleans Museum of Art, 1994. ISBN 0894940473.
*Odd Nerdrum, Bjørn Li. ''Odd Nerdrum: themes: paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures''. Oslo, Norway: Press Publishing, 2007. ISBN 8275472261.
==References==
{{reflist}}
==External links==
*[http://www.nerdrum.com/ Odd Nerdrum official website]
*[http://www.forumgallery.com/ Forum Gallery] - the gallery representing Nerdrum
*[http://www.artincontext.org/artist/n/odd_nerdrum/index.htm Art in Context] - relevant links to Nerdrum, including list of exhibitions
*[http://www.kitschforum.no/mesterverk.php A web page showing paintings by Nerdrum] - "selvportrett" = self portraits (lower part of page show paintings by other painters)
*[http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article.jhtml?articleID=690154 "Odd Nerdrum near Icelandic citizenship"] - article in Norwegian newspaper [[Aftenposten]], December 12, 2003
*[http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/nerdrum_odd.html/ Odd Nerdrum in artcyclopedia]
*[http://hirshhorn.si.edu/collection/record.asp?Artist=Nerdrum&hasImage=1&ViewMode=&Record=1/ Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington - ''Spring'',1977]
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[[Category:1944 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:Norwegian painters]]
[[Category:Contemporary painters]]
[[Category:Postmodern artists]]
[[Category:People from Oslo]]
[[Category:Waldorf school alumni]]
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