After the Avant-Gardes

32. Hansen, Nerdrum, 22–23.


33. Hansen, Nerdrum, 23.


34. See Vine, Nerdrum, 40.


35. Hansen, Nerdrum, 22.


36. Hansen, Nerdrum, 23.


37. Vine, Nerdrum, 94 discusses how modernism leads to “in European welfare
    nations, a crass lobbying for financial support from the state cultural apparatus.”


38. For two of the many books dealing with the complex relation between modernism
    and totalitarianism, see Brandon Taylor and Wilfred van der Will, eds., The Nazification of
    Art: Art, Design, Music, Architecture, and Film in the Third Reich, Winchester: Winchester
    Press, 1990, and David Carroll, French Literary Fascism: Nationalism, Anti-Semitism, and
    the Ideology of Culture, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.


39. See, for example, Paul Johnson, Art: A New History, New York: Harper Collins,
    2003, 704–05.


40. Vine, Nerdrum, 94.


41. On Pound and Mussolini, see Rainey, Institutions of Modernism, 107–145. On
    the strange attraction of modern artists to totalitarianism of the right and of the left, and
    especially fascism, see Peter Conrad, Modern Times, Modern Places, New York: Knopf,
    1999, 491–96.


42. With his characteristic flair for overstatement, Nerdrum has a character named
    Edvard Munch say in a little dialogue he wrote called “The Curatoriat”: “Individualists
    are called fascists, while the scoundrel Hegel gets away with his pre-Nazi concept of
    State” (OK, 54).


43. Quoted in Pettersson, Nerdrum, 100.


44. Quoted in Vine, Nerdrum, 47.


45. For the contrast between Rousseau and Hobbes, see Vine, Nerdrum, 49.


46. For the Darwinian element in Nerdrum’s vision, see Donald Kuspit, “Old
    Master Existentialism: Odd Nerdrum’s Paintings” in Hansen, Nerdrum, iv.


47. For Nerdrum’s visits to Iceland and its importance to his paintings, see Hansen,
    Nerdrum, 38; Vine, Nerdrum, 64; and Pettersson, Nerdrum, 100.


48. To be precise, the largest number of human figures I have counted in a Nerdrum
    painting are seven in Wanderers by the Sea(2000) and eight in Two Tongues(1999).


49. See Vine, Nerdrum, 104.


50. Not all the paintings I cite may be part of the distinct world Nerdrum creates in
    his imagination. Unarmed Man, for example, depicts an actual man without arms
    Nerdrum knew, in fact a “Norwegian national hero, Cato Zahl Pedersen” (Pettersson,
    Nerdrum, 51). Many of the paintings, which I and others interpret mythically, are inter-
    preted in autobiographical terms in Pettersson’s book. He relates many of the most enig-
    matic features of Nerdrum’s paintings to incidents that happened in the artist’ life. But
    given the complexity of artistic vision, autobiographical interpretations of Nerdrum’s
    paintings are not necessarily incompatible with mythical interpretations.


51. Hansen, Nerdrum, translates the title as Man with a Green Leaf. See also
    Nerdrum’s 1991 drawing Girl with a Twig.


52. See Kuspit, “Existentialism,” in Hansen, Nerdrum, v.


53. This point may not be as fanciful as it sounds. Pettersson, Nerdrum, 82, quotes
    Nerdrum saying of the characters in his later paintings: “But these people have to carry
    guns in order to protect themselves against those living in our world. For we are the ones
    who constitute the greatest threat to their autonomy and spiritual existence.”

198 Notes to Pages 23–30