After the Avant-Gardes

Modern art cannot be exempt from history. It will fail by its lack of sen-

sual presence. Modern art lacks flesh.

—ODDNERDRUM

State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters.... Only where the

state ends, there begins the human being who is not superfluous: there

begins the song of necessity, the unique and inimitable tune.

—FRIEDRICHNIETZSCHE

I

The Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum is one of the greatest painters of
the century. Unfortunately, according to his detractors, the century in
question is the seventeenth. Thus Nerdrum has emerged as one of the
most controversial artists of our day. His admirers praise him for his
superb Old Master technique, while his critics condemn him as hope-
lessly reactionary. To look at Nerdrum’s paintings does seem to involve
a step back in time. His work calls into question all our customary nar-
ratives about art history, and especially the modernist dogma that the
artist can be creative only by turning his back on the past. Nerdrum has
openly acknowledged his debt to the Old Masters. He uses heavy layers
of paint to create chiaroscuro effects reminiscent of Caravaggio and
Rembrandt, and he also continually recalls the great Italian and Dutch
painters in his ability to capture the texture of things on canvas—from
shiny metals to rich fabrics—above all, he knows how to convey every
shade of human flesh. Viewing a Nerdrum painting is thus an uncanny
experience. We are not used to seeing such mastery of the art of figura-
tive painting in a living artist. And yet the subject matter of Nerdrum’s

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The Importance of Being Odd:

Nerdrum’s Challenge to

Modernism

PAULA. CANTOR