Odd nerdrum biography of donald kuspit

Until the early s, Nerdrum's work, while rejecting modernism entirely, dealt with the more controversial socio-political issues of the day, using the figurative realism of Caravaggio combined with the fluid brush work of fellow northerners Rubens and Rembrandt, but with a language closer to the French Romantics or to Francisco Goya or even Theodore Gericault In the Early s Nerdrum had a sort of epiphany.

He found that in turning to mythology and inwardly to a deeply personal interpretation of the human condition based on the use of traditional world archetypes, modern literary works such as "The Wasteland" by T. Elliot, and films, he could forge a unique symbolic language to express his vision. Although Ingmar Bergman's use of mythic language in "The Seventh Seal" is similar to Nerdrum's, it is more recent films such as the cult status "Mad Max" "Road Warrior" series, that relate more directly to Nerdrum's view of the world.

Nerdrum favors archetypical, philosophically laden forms like the night-sea journey, and once he has found a motif that works powerfully for him he returns to it again and again. One of his longest-running series uses images of bricks, which many critics have come to read as representations of singularity, autonomy, or separateness. The bricks—detached, set apart, evidently doomed to crumble into nothingness—offer a bleak portrait of human existence.

But perhaps there are ways of reading the bricks that hint at the hope and resolution evident in later works. Seen another way, these bricks—permanent, singular wholes—might just as easily be existential treatises against oblivion: perhaps they are the seeds of substance taking root amid the warm darkness, shoring up physicality against extinction.

On the surface there is little to validate this hopeful reading over the old, more despondent view; after all, the same rough-hewn, battered bricks appear in and What can differentiate them are the other paintings created during the same periods. Nerdrum still paints bricks from time to time; they seem to be psychologically necessary to him.

The question of origins seems to be an ongoing one for Nerdrum, be it his personal, familial origins or a deeper existential ontology of the self. He values the individual, prophetic, singular perspective of natural man too much to sit comfortably with the twentieth-century claims that nature has no good, no evil, no purpose. He values life and consciousness in such a way as to assume their purposefulness.

Intimately as he understands the brutal aspects of reality, he nevertheless wants that reality and his role in it affirmed. PLATE 6.

Odd nerdrum biography of donald kuspit: If I'm not mistaken, Nerdrum

Baby, Tightly bundled for protection, the infants in this series are depicted in a state of sleep or quietude. Cherubic and still, the swaddled child represents far more than what it is— Baby at once shows us a single individual and implies an unseen community, a social network of people who have created and will care for this child. In the infant, burgeoning consciousness takes the form of a ringing cry to creation.

The bricks fold many metaphors in a singular object, creating a kind of unity of meaning. The brick, like the child, is a sort of irreducible unit. Both are vulnerable, yet form the basis of permanence. Each may be wounded; the child might easily be hurt, the brick easily chipped. Interestingly, and in contrast to the brick paintings, the way Nerdrum has depicted infants has changed dramatically over the years.

In earlier works like Baby, the babies are presented in the same light as the bricks, as if the two are directly analogous. Recent pictures of babies, such as Twins by the Sea or Twins at Dawnare more colorful, more real, and less symbolic. Still wrapped and protected, these later children are somehow more alive than the earlier figures, who seem to be caught in an eternal stillness.

This generative hopefulness seems to culminate in a wonderful painting from titled Summit. In this work, the swaddled infant sleeps in the foreground as the parents—their backs to us—tenderly lean toward each other. Atop some rocky mountain, with the sea and the sky and that grand horizon before them, this family is a tremendous sign of unity and affirmation.

The confidence and defiance with which the painter comports himself publicly cannot hide the deep sense of need in his work. They are a song to eternity. The old nihilistic assumptions about Nerdrum will not suffice for work that has moved beyond them. Unfortunately, in an exhibition of recent paintings at Forum Gallery, a decade-old remark attributed to Donald Kuspit was used to inaugurate the show.

He shows us just how dispensable we have become. The older paintings may often be nihilistic, indifferent, or apocalyptic, but the newer works offer a glorious reversal, taking on warmth, intimacy, and idyllic hopefulness. In the early pictures, the song of redemption began almost as a whisper; in more recent works it begins to ring out clearer and stronger, resounding with grace and hope.

Image depends on its subscribers and supporters. Join the conversation and make a contribution today. The Image archive is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Tags: art and faith art essay craft Matthew Ballou Odd Nerdrum painting purpose purpose of art. About Image. Current Issue.

Odd nerdrum biography of donald kuspit: Nerdrum's pictures rehumanize the dehumanized

Browse by Issue. Browse by Genre. Editorial Statement. Short Stories. Visual Art. Book Reviews. Recommended Reading. Image Reading Groups. More Media. Black Art Matters. Sandved was a highly. An interesting twist in this painting is the fantasy role reversal wherein the son is found by the father. In the background of the picture, after the reunion, together the two are shown sailing off to brighter horizons.

During many visits to local museums throughout his childhood, Nerdrum favored the. Even as a teenager, Nerdrum felt that this work typified modern art and its lack of social welfare. The painter stands there, empty-handed, before existence. However, he regarded this opportunity with suspicion which stemmed from the praise he received in response to his hastily compiled application portfolio.

If Nerdrum found nurturing of his individuality in the Waldorf-Steiner school, it did not follow him to the Academy, where he studied under Age Stortein. Also, the nickname might have referred to the Swedish romantic painter, Anders Zorn, who painted society portraits and outdoor scenes of young nude girls bathing in streams. Inwhen Nerdrum was 24, he mounted his first solo exhibition in the American.

One of these three, Amputation depicts a semi-clad man lying partially dismembered and disemboweled on the street.

Odd nerdrum biography of donald kuspit: Featuring color illustrations and 50 detailed

Adjacent to the dying figure is a set of bloody tire tracks. Nerdrum was not pleased that his submission had been culled. Following the reception, he cancelled the exhibition and had the work returned to Norway. When Nerdrum returned to Norway, he reportedly changed the identity of the dying figure in Amputation to resemble Warhol. Once free from what he considered to be the unsupportive institutions of art instruction, Nerdrum taught himself techniques used by the old masters, with emphasis on chiaroscuro.

For it was through chiaroscuro, the use of lights and darks and subtle shades between to render convincing, three dimensional images on a planar surface, that Caravaggio had been able to create realistic, engaging personalities. In this work a stagnant, dark room is brought to life by a naked man who writhes upright, encoiling himself in his bed sheets.

The tortured figure seems to scream in agony, yet has a tearful expression of happiness. The serpent appears symbolically in the bed sheets that coil around the dreadful man as well as in the jaundiced color of his skin-a result of the overpowering force within him. One component of these perversions is the unreconciled ego. According to Freud, splitting of the ego is a psychological phenomenon in which two psychical attitudes co-exist unconsciously in the ego.

One is in touch with, and functions in relation to reality, the other is a wish. The result in art is the uncanny double image. Some of these pictures exclusively depict a pair, as in the iconic composition of Twins fromwhich shows a pair of sleeping girls in identical garb as viewed from directly above. Others feature twins in more elaborate compositions such as Dying CoupleBlind Wandererand Twins He has published on the subjects of avant-garde aesthetics, postmodernismmodern artand conceptual art.

Kuspit graduated from Columbia College inand earned a M. Kuspit next taught at Pennsylvania State University and became increasingly interested in art history. He earned a M. He earned a PhD in art history from the University of Michigan in He was the A. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University — In he received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

In he was the Robertson Fellow at the University of Glasgow. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history.