Arts & Culture

Sorry for the pun. 

I had never heard of Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum until the other day someone looked at a couple of books about him. Later when I flipped through them I thought "ahh the frisson of new art".  

I was struck by the "old master" quality to his painting.  They
reminded me of Rembrandt and Rubens, Goya and Velázquez with a touch of Gustave Moreau and a tiny bit of Attila Richard Lukacs and William Blake's artwork.

They include a lot of figurative paintings and would fall into the
Romantic/Realist category.  He rebelled in the 1960s against the
prevailing modernist and especially abstract art world.  This "brave"
act set him outside the spirit of his times.   His passion for "old
fashioned" painting is explored in depth in the book Odd Nerdrum : themes: paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures

To quote the back cover of his artistic manifesto Kitsch More than Art : The Kitsch painter is committed to the eternal: Love, Death and the sunrise.   

Nerdrum is quite internet savvy with a Nerdrum museum site and the beautifully designed The Nerdrum Institute. Recently Nerdrum has fallen victim to the most insidious expression of modernism – the tax man.  He was convicted of tax fraud in a controversial (somewhat bizarre) court case and sentenced to almost 3 years jail.  There are abounding conspiracy theories regarding his trial and imprisonment and his own interview on TV about it is quite disjointed yet oddly engrossing. Nerdrum has many passionate supporters – some of whom have blogged about the injustice of his trial and sentencing.