Glad for the information, Bradley. We'd discussed Nerdrum before on petc,
and at that time I'd checked out his images and some biog info. I do credit
him for refusing, in his own art, the trend that his peers contributed to.
However, a close look and analysis of his paintings, at least the several
dozen I've seen online, show his physical and 'mind' techniques [including
allegory] unremarkable relative to those whose work he admired and imitated.
A discernibly surprising reworking of those artists, a fresh way of seeing
and interpreting [i.e., the soul of Creativity] is what I'd expect of
someone whose work you seem to admire so much.
Can you tell me what I'm missing?
Best,
Judy
2008/11/14 Bradley Omanson <[log in to unmask]>
> I should clarify why I brought up the subject of Odd Nerdrum in the first
> place.
>
> I apologize ahead of time for this art history 101 quickie survey, which is
> probably familiar to everyone, but I'm trying to provide the basic context
> for Nerdrum's appearance, and don't know how else to do it.
>
> The high-water mark of literary Modernism was shortly after WWI, but in the
> visual arts it was shortly after WWII. Modernism in both instances began by
> a process of stripping away what was viewed as extraneous. In literature
> this process may have been fairly fluid and open-ended, depending on which
> school you are considering, but in painting, after WWII, the situation was
> much more restrictive. The range of possibilities began contracting with a
> vengeance and -- far more than in literature -- this process was conducted
> by a mere handful of critics, whose authority was virtually total. Painting
> became ever more and more reductive, ever closer to absolute minimalism,
> with the result that ever fewer artists were found to merit serious critical
> consideration. One response to this situation of increasing suffocation was
> Pop Art in the 60s, which basically thumbed its nose at the whole notion of
> serious art, and effectively broke the hammerlock of the critics and opened
> the f!
> lood gates.
>
> Just all this was happening, Nerdrum was commencing his own one-man
> revolution against minimalism and pop-art both, and it involved a rejection
> of virtually the entire Modernist enterprise in European art -- not just the
> previous generation, but the whole previous century. (There are now quite a
> number of exceptional artists working in pre-Modernist modes but, at the
> time, in the 60s, there was only Nerdrum). He was a student in a
> prestigious painting academy (I forgot which one), and because he refused to
> change his direction, he was thrown out. Later he became the student of, of
> all people, Joseph Beuys, who considered Nerdrum the most radical student he
> had ever encountered.
>
> Once it was known that Beuys took him seriously, the critics had to deal
> with him. As one of them put it (I'm paraphrasing from memory), Nerdrum
> embodied the whole post-Modernist dilemma. The critics didn't know how to
> admit Nerdrum to the pantheon of 20th-century European art without cracking
> the Edifice.
>
> And I'm going to stop there. Personally I see meaningful parallels between
> painting and poetry in regards to Nerdrum's situation and questions of
> post-Modernism generally, but that's a larger subject than I'm qualified to
> tackle. What I can do, though, if anyone wishes to take a closer look at
> Nerdrum's effect on European painting, is provide the titles & authors of
> the first significant critical responses to Nerdrum.
>
> bj
>
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