Odd Nerdrum is a Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 figurative

Figurative

Figurative may refer to:*Figurative art*Figurative language*Neo-figurative art...

 painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

. Themes and style in Nerdrum's work reference anecdote

Anecdote

An anecdote is a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person. It may be as brief as the setting and provocation of a bon mot. An anecdote is always presented as based on a real incident involving actual persons, whether famous or not, usually in an identifiable place...

 and narrative

Narrative

A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...

, while primary influences by the painters Rembrandt and Caravaggio

Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque...

 place his work in direct conflict with the abstraction

Abstract art

Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...

 and conceptual art

Conceptual art

Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...

 considered acceptable in much of his native Norway, and in opposition to the art of the time.

Nerdrum creates six to eight paintings per year. These include Still life

Still life

A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural or man-made...

 paintings of small everyday objects like bricks, portraits and self portraits whose subjects are dressed as if from some other time and place, and large paintings, allegorical

Allegory

Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...

 in nature that present a sense of the apocalyptic and again reference another time.

Nerdrum says 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.

Early life

Odd Nerdrum was born in 1944, in Sweden, during the last year of World War II. His parents, Resistance

Resistance movement

A resistance movement is a group or collection of individual groups, dedicated to opposing an invader in an occupied country or the government of a sovereign state. It may seek to achieve its objects through either the use of nonviolent resistance or the use of armed force...

 fighters, had been sent to Sweden from German-occupied Norway to direct guerrilla activities from outside the country. A year later, at the end of the war, Odd and his parents moved back to Norway. Nerdrum's mother, Lillemor soon after that went to New York to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology

Fashion Institute of Technology

The Fashion Institute of Technology, generally known as FIT, is a State University of New York college of art, business, design, and technology connected to the fashion industry, with an urban campus located on West 27th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of...

. 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.

Nerdrum's father, Johan Nerdrum later remarried. Although he was supportive of Odd, he kept an emotional distance between himself and his son. At his death, Odd was asked not to attend the funeral. He found out three years later that Johan was not his biological father. Odd, was in fact, the result of a liaison between David Sandved

David Sandved

-Life and work:He was born in Sandnes and received his architectural education at the Norwegian Institute of Technology in 1937. He established his own practice in Haugesund. His architecture developed from classical modernism to a form of critical regionalism, using local building motifs and...

  and Lillemor. Lillemor 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 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.

Early education

Nerdrum began his formal education in 1951 in Oslo, in a private 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

Anthroposophy

Anthroposophy, a philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner, postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world accessible to direct experience through inner development...

 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 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

Greek art

Greek art began in the Cycladic and Minoan prehistorical civilization, and gave birth to Western classical art in the ancient period...

, 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

Jens Bjørneboe

Jens Ingvald Bjørneboe was a Norwegian writer whose work spanned a number of literary formats. He was also a painter and a waldorf school teacher. Bjørneboe was a harsh and eloquent critic of Norwegian society and Western civilization on the whole...

, a grade school mentor said Nerdrum even at that age exhibited tendencies of innate talent and industry, but also impatience with those with less abilities than himself.

Artistic study

Nerdrum began study at the Art Academy of Oslo, but became dissatisfied with the direction of modern art

Modern art

Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...

, 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. Nerdrum had seen Rembrandt's painting, The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis

The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis

The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis is a 1661–62 oil painting by the Dutch painter Rembrandt, which was originally the largest he ever painted, at around five-by-five metres in the shape of a lunette. The painting was commissioned by the Amsterdam city council for the Town Hall. After the work had...

in the National Museum of Fine Arts in Stockholm. Nerdrum says seeing the painting was "a shock... Pervasive. Like finding home. I can say I found a home in this picture,... The wonderful thing with Rembrandt is the confidence he inspires - like when you warm your hands on a stove. Without Rembrandt I would have been so poor," By abandoning the accepted path of modern art, Nerdrum had placed himself in direct opposition to most aspects of the school, including his primary painting instructor, his fellow students, and a curriculum designed to present Norway 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". Years later Nerdrum said,

I saw that I was in the process of making a choice that would end in defeat. By choosing those qualities that were so alien to my own time, I had to give up at the same time the art on which the art of our time rests. I had to paint in defiance of my own era without the protection of the era's superstructure. Briefly put I would paint myself into isolation.

Nerdrum later studied with Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys

Joseph Beuys was a German performance artist, sculptor, installation artist, graphic artist, art theorist and pedagogue of art.His extensive work is grounded in concepts of humanism, social philosophy and anthroposophy; it culminates in his "extended definition of art" and the idea of social...

, at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf

Kunstakademie Düsseldorf

The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, formerly Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, is the Arts Academy of the city of Düsseldorf. It is well known for having produced many famous artists, such as Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Thomas Demand, and Andreas Gursky...

.

Early work 1964-1982

Nerdrum's work from the first twenty years of his artistic life consisted of large canvasses, generally polemic

Polemic

A polemic is a variety of arguments or controversies made against one opinion, doctrine, or person. Other variations of argument are debate and discussion...

 in nature, that served to refute accepted social or economic view points. The work from this period was highly representational

Representation (arts)

Representation is the use of signs that stand in for and take the place of something else. It is through representation that people organize the world and reality through the act of naming its elements...

 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, Nerdrum's influence was not, as might be expected, given the themes of the work, of the ideological Ashcan school

Ashcan School

The Ashcan School, also called the Ash Can School, is defined as a realist artistic movement that came into prominence in the United States during the early twentieth century, best known for works portraying scenes of daily life in New York's poorer neighborhoods. The movement grew out of a group...

 movement, but predates the Ashcan school, although similar in subject matter. In 1968, Nerdrum had viewed for the first time the works of Caravaggio

Chronology of works by Caravaggio

The following is a list of paintings by the Italian artist Caravaggio, listed chronologically.-List of paintings:-Further reading:* Roberto Longhi, Caravaggio. Dresden, 1968....

 whose psychologically intense work, use of cross lighting, strongly suggested shadow that implied three dimensionality, and use of the faces of real, everyday people 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.

As well, Nerdrum was a reader of visionary

Visionary

Defined broadly, a visionary, is one who can envision the future. For some groups this can involve the supernatural or drugs.The visionary state is achieved via meditation, drugs, lucid dreams, daydreams, or art. One example is Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century artist/visionary and Catholic saint...

 literature that included works by Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and esotericist. He gained initial recognition as a literary critic and cultural philosopher...

, the prophetic William Blake

William Blake

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...

, 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.

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. His disillusionment with modern art

Modern art

Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...

, such as Rauschenberg's Monogram, a stuffed goat with a tire around its middle section standing on a flat, littered surface, that Nerdrum had encountered in Moderna Museet, filled the young 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 work, and the movement towards more Rembrandt-like painting elements- revolved around the enormous (11x16¾ foot) Refugees At Sea (1979–1980). Nerdrum, according to Vine, later considered the work to be 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 Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

ese boat people

Boat people

Boat people is a term that usually refers to refugees, illegal immigrants or asylum seekers who emigrate in numbers in boats that are sometimes old and crudely made...

, with heroic stature, but in a highly sentimentalized manner that Nerdrum later described as "cloying".

Change in direction

In 1981 Nerdrum created a seminal work that would serve to indicate a change in direction from the sentimentalized view of Refugees at Sea to a starker, unadorned view of reality. Twilight a rear view of a young woman alone in a wooded landscape defecating, offers nothing sentimental or ideal in its betrayal, but instead offers a stripped away view of life and reality.

Paintings were no longer as multi-figured as they had been with Refugees at Sea, and still lifes were of individual objects such as a brick or loaf of bread. The individuals who now populated Nerdrum's painting were imbibed with great quiet and stillness, but as Vine says, additionally, were vitally alive evoking a cosmic oneness, but yet did not transcend individuality.

These figures, as types rather than endowed with features or apparent stories that might distinguish them as individual, were costumed in garments that seemed timeless: furs, skins, leather caps, rather than in clothing that would link the viewer to a specific time and place.

Archetypal-like, these beings, inhabited pre-social, apocalyptic-like circumstances that included stark, severe landscapes, a reference to some place beyond our own time and space.

Painting technique

Nerdrum's approach to painting is based on traditional methods that included mixing and grinding his own pigments, working on canvas he had stretched or stretched by assistants rather than on pre-stretched canvas, and working from live models often himself, and in many cases members of his own family. In a 2011 court case, Nerdrum claimed that the technique he used in the 1980s 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.

On kitsch

Odd Nerdrum has declared himself to be a kitsch-painter identifying himself with kitsch rather than with the contemporary art world. Initially, Nerdrum's declaration was thought to be a joke but later, and with the publication of articles and books on the subject, Nerdrum's position can be seen as an implied criticism of contemporary art.

Process

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 rarely used."

Influences

Rembrandt and Caravaggio were primary influences on Nerdrum's work, while secondary influences include Masaccio

Masaccio

Masaccio , born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, was the first great painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, Masaccio was the best painter of his generation because of his skill at recreating lifelike figures and movements as well as a convincing sense...

, Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...

, Michelangelo

Michelangelo

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...

, Titian

Titian

Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 – 27 August 1576 better known as Titian was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near...

, and the less obvious influences, according to Vine and either mentioned by Nerdrum himself or other critics, that include Brueghel

Brueghel

Brueghel or Bruegel was the name of several Dutch/Flemish painters from the same family line:* Pieter Bruegel the Elder — The most famous member of the family and the only one to sign his paintings as 'Bruegel' without the H....

, Goya, Chardin

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin was an 18th-century French painter. He is considered a master of still life, and is also noted for his genre paintings which depict kitchen maids, children, and domestic activities...

, Millet

Jean-François Millet

Jean-François Millet was a French painter and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France...

, as well the even less apparent Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli was a British painter, draughtsman, and writer on art, of Swiss origin.-Biography:...

, Caspar David Friedrich

Caspar David Friedrich

Caspar David Friedrich was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning...

, Ferdinand Hodler

Ferdinand Hodler

Ferdinand Hodler was one of the best-known Swiss painters of the 19th century.-Life:Hodler was born in Berne, the eldest of six children. His father, Jean Hodler, made a meager living as a carpenter; his mother, Marguerite , was from a peasant family...

, Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionist art. His best-known composition, The Scream, is part of a series The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of love, fear, death, melancholia, and anxiety.- Childhood :Edvard Munch...

, Käthe Kollwitz

Käthe Kollwitz

Käthe Kollwitz was a German painter, printmaker, and sculptor whose work offered an eloquent and often searing account of the human condition in the first half of the 20th century...

, Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí

Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....

, Chaim Soutine

Chaim Soutine

Chaïm Soutine was a Jewish painter from Belarus. Soutine made a major contribution to the expressionist movement while living in Paris....

 and Lars Hertervig

Lars Hertervig

Lars Hertervig was a Norwegian painter. His semi-fantastical work with motives from the coastal landscape in the traditional district of Ryfylke is regarded as one of the peaks of Norwegian painting.-Background:...

.

Drawings and prints

Odd Nerdrum prints are based on his paintings. An etching

Etching

Etching is the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal...

 entitled Baby is based on a painting of the same title from 1982. Nerdrum refers to his highly finished, charcoal

Charcoal

Charcoal is the dark grey residue consisting of carbon, and any remaining ash, obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from animal and vegetation substances. Charcoal is usually produced by slow pyrolysis, the heating of wood or other substances in the absence of oxygen...

 drawings as "paintings" Often his drawings are large in scale and are works in their own right, as well as being studies for future paintings.

Collections

Odd Nerdrum's work is held in several public collections worldwide including in the United States: the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft and is part of the...

 in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

, the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

, New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), New Orleans, Louisianna, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD), San Diego, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

, Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, Cleveland, Ohio

Ohio

Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...

, and in Norway, the National Gallery in Oslo

Oslo

Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...

. Odd Nerdrum is represented by the Forum Gallery, New York City.

Exhibitions

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,MI, 1991

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 of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway, 1998

Kunsthal

Kunsthal

The Kunsthal is a museum in Rotterdam, which opened its doors in 1992. The museum is situated in the Museumpark of Rotterdam next to the Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam, and in the vicinity of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. Entrance to the Kunsthal is from the Westzeedijk...

 Rotterdam, The Netherlands 1999

Amos Anderson Art Museum, Helsinki, Finland, 1999

Young Classic, 2000

Harry Bergman Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden, 2000

Åland Art Museum, Mariehamn, Finland, 2000

Forum Gallery, New York and Los Angeles, 2002, 2004

Forum Gallery, Los Angeles, 2006

Forum Gallery, New York, January, 2007

Forum Gallery, New York, May, 2007

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."

• Odd Nerdrum by Justin Spring, part of a review first published in Artforum International, April 1, 1993

Nerdrum's work as inspiration

A well-known 2000 horror film

Horror film

Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...

, The Cell

The Cell

The Cell is a 2000 science fiction psychological thriller film directed by Tarsem Singh, and starring Jennifer Lopez in the lead role.-Plot:...

, 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

Tarsem Singh

Tarsem Dhandwar Singh , known professionally as Tarsem, is an Indian director who has worked on films, music videos, and commercials.- Life and career :...

 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

David Bowie

David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...

.

Nerdrum also created the cover of the progressive rock

Progressive rock

Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...

 band, Junipher Greene's LP, Friendship (1971).

Australian choreographer, Meryl Tankard

Meryl Tankard

Meryl Tankard is an Australian dancer and choreographer who has a wide national and international reputation....

's 2009 dance piece, "The Oracle", was inspired by the work of Nerdrum. The work, featuring the dancer Paul White, exhibited the human form in constant struggle with forces outside of itself.

Legal Difficulties

In 2011, Nerdrum was convicted in Norway of tax evasion and sentenced to two years in prison. His defense claimed that a very large amount of money in a safe deposit box in Austria was "a safety fund for some 36 paintings that he created in the 80’s using an experimental medium which collectors complained began to melt when exposed to heat." The sentence was criticised as excessive. Art professor Øivind Storm Bjerke called the sentence "strict." Under Norwegian law, Nerdrum would be forbidden from any painting activity in prison, as prisoners in Norway are not allowed to pursue business activities while incarcerated.

External links

• Odd Nerdrum official website
• Forum Gallery - the gallery representing Nerdrum