Odd Nerdrum is a Swedish-born Norwegian painter, who represents Kitsch art movement. His process of painting is "old-fashioned" in the sense, that he works with traditional tools and processes, mixing his own pigments and paints, stretching canvases by hand and using live models to create his works.
Background
Odd Nerdrum was born on April 8, 1944 in Helsingborg, Sweden. His parents, Johan Nerdrum and Edith Marie (Lillemor) Nerdrum, were Resistance fighters, who were sent to Sweden from German-occupied Norway to direct guerrilla activities from outside the country. In 1945, the family returned to Norway. In 1950, Odd's parents divorced, and he and his younger brother were raised by their mother.
After the death of Johan Nerdrum, Odd found out, that the man wasn't his biological father, but David Sandved.
Education
In 1951, Odd studied at Rudolf Steiner school in Oslo. Nerdrum excelled at art and when he was eighteen, in 1962, he enrolled at the National Academy of Art in Oslo. He was disillusioned by his time at the academy, particularly because the emphasis at the time was on modern art practices, which he found unattractive. Odd's personal discovery of Rembrandt’s work proved to be significant to him at this time and he began to teach himself how to paint like a Baroque artist. In 1965, Odd entered Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he studied painting under Joseph Beuys.
The first phase of Nerdrum’s work was openly hostile towards accepted wisdom, particularly with respect to social issues, economics and politics. His paintings consisted of large images, rendered in meticulous detail, making recognizable references to contemporary culture. He was also drawn to the more mystical artistic philosophies of writers like Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William Blake and Rudolf Steiner instead of more socio-critical Marxian thought, that drew his peers.
His early work can be considered reactionary in that it defined itself in opposition. He also came across the work of Caravaggio around this time and Caravaggio’s detailed images of everyday people inspired him. In 1979, Nerdrum painted a seminal piece, titled "Refugees at Sea", representing 27 Vietnamese people, crowded onto a boat. The play of light and shadow, the positioning of human figures and their postures all encapsulated his influences so far: it represented Rembrandt’s empathy, Caravaggio’s realism and the idealized sentiment of Romantic painting.
In 1981, Odd painted "Twilight", representing a young man, defecating in a forest. In this work, the painter tried to strip away the sentimentality or heroic fantasy of his previous work to represent a more accessible yet exotic reality. In 2011, Nerdrum stated, that the technique he used in the 1980's was faulty, "a special mixture of oils and paint in an effort to recreate the style of the old masters", which subsequently melted and disintegrated.
During his lifetime, the painter took part in many exhibitions at different museums and galleries, including Frye Art Museum (Seattle, Washington) in 1996, Harry Bergman Gallery (Stockholm) in 2000, Forum Gallery of New York in 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2012 and others.
Odd is known as the "father" of Kitsch movement, that was founded upon his philosophy and speech, that was delivered on September 24, 1998.
Paintings by Nerdrum range in price from $40,000 to $300,000, charcoal drawings are priced from $25,000 to $75,000, and prints are $7,000 and up.
Also, his works are kept in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the de Young Museum in San Francisco and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.
Quotations:
"Contemporary art is based on [the idea] that an artist is supposed to go into art history in the same way as an art historian. When the artist produces something, he or she relates to it with the eye of an art historian or critic. I have the feeling that when I am working it is more like working with a soap opera or glamour. It is emotional and not art criticism or the history of art."
"The world somehow is always the same. The only thing that can improve is the individual life. One can live a good life. One can give life a meaning. Either by drinking oneself to death or by painting oneself to death or by loving oneself to death."
"Art is a car, kitsch is a horse."
"The point is that only one thing matters in this world, to prepare oneself for death. One can try to be as comfortable as possible until one dies... Because being comfortable does not have any meaning either. It just does not. Everything is only a big meaninglessness that one must bear."
"Because modernism has conquered art, kitsch is the savior of talent and devotion."
"Everything is a meaningless struggle against nothing and when people say that the world has become a better place that is a false development-optimism. Nothing exists which ever becomes better. Everything stays the same. Somehow, there is nothing. That is so sad. Nothing to come to. Everything is an illusion. A very sweet illusion."
"Desire is something very egoistic. If you desire something, you also have to take the consequences of that. You have to study the market and see how it can go. I mean to become an artist... You never get the Nobel-price for example. You can normally never become a millionaire. Very few become millionaires, so the circumstances are very bad if one becomes an artist. And that should be taken into consideration."
"If a girl is in love with a poor guy and chooses him, then that is worst for her. If she chooses a rich man, it will be to her advantage. Everything will be fine."
"I have always been astonished by hate. Revenge and hate. That is such strange human elements. I have seen a lot of that in my life. I am just as surprised each time. By revenge and hate."
