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Odd Nerdrum Biography

Odd Nerdrum (born 8 April 1944) is a controversial Norwegian figurative painter whose work is held by museums worldwide. Themes and style in Nerdrum's work reference anecdote and narrative. Primary influences by the painters Rembrandt and Caravaggio help place his work in direct conflict with the abstraction and conceptual art considered acceptable in much of his native Norway.

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Odd Nerdrum Quotes

Contemporary art is based on 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
critic. I have the feeling that when I am working it is more like working with soap opera or glamour. It is emotional and not art criticism or history of art.

Art, Emotional, Eye, Relates, Working

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.

Artist, Bad, Consideration, Example, Mean, Taken

If you fall asleep on horseback, the horse will stop by the rock. Art is a car. Kitsch is a horse.

Art, Car, Fall, Horse, Rock

I believe in positive despotism. That means an exchange between people. I'm thinking about the fact that someone serves me breakfast in my bed. I can not see anything wrong in that. Because everything is a question of exchanges between people. Everyone has some specific possibilities and can to a certain extent do whatever they want. If one wants to become rich one can study economy and if one wants to be poor one can choose to become a professor in butterfly wings for example. So we can choose.

Believe, Butterfly, Extent, Mean, Poor, Positive

To be contemporary actually means to be an artist. [But] I do not feel contemporary in my work. I perceive my work as old-fashioned. It does not have a frame of actuality in our time or locality.

Artist, Contemporary, Doe, Mean, Perceive, Work

Because modernism has conquered art, kitsch is the savior of talent and devotion.

Art, Conquered, Kitsch, Modernism, Talent

I believe one must be such a big egoist that it is possible to avoid the big tendencies that cut of your head. What we call fascism and things like that. It is about egoism. When you are egoistic enough you avoid such things. You become an incurable individualist and in that case you are sailing in your own sea anyway. What is very enjoyable for the individualist is to find this kind of "happy spaces" to be in and to live in.

Believe, Cutting, Egoistic, Live, Sea, Tendencies

Talking about success in society, no one can complain, because today everyone can choose what he or she wants. They don't just have to choose between being proletarian or middle-class. Those kinds of things do not exist anymore. Today working class boys can play football and become multimillionaires. On football! There are no longer classes, who say that we are poor, we are suppressed by you etc.

Boys, Complain, Football, Say, Talking, Things

We are all kitsch on our deathbeds.

Deathbed, Deathbeds, Kitsch

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.

Astonished, Elements, Hate, Revenge, Surprised, Time

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.

False, Meaningless, Nothing, People, Struggle, Sweet

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.

Death, Improve, Life, Love, Loving, Meaning

One talks much more about the evil than about the good. That is a paradox. We should only talk about the good to lighten up our existence. Chase anxiousness
fear away for a moment before it sneaks back in again to our life.

Chase, Evil, Good, Moments, Paradox, Sneaks