resenting the human figure, and he at first encountered fierce opposition
from the art establishment. By the late 1990s, Nerdrum was faced with
equally fierce opposition for championing traditional ways of drawing
the human figure. The reversal could not be more complete, and sug-
gests how quickly the originally rebellious tendencies of modernism
hardened into a new orthodoxy. Note that Nerdrum and his supporters
were not seeking to drive modernism out of the Norwegian Academy.
They were simply trying to make room in the curriculum for traditional
approaches to painting. It is also worth noting that Picasso had proven
that he was supremely adept at drawing the human figure before he
broke with traditional figurative art (indeed he was a child prodigy).
One might say that Nerdrum and his followers were simply trying to put
Norwegian art students in a position to make Picasso’s informed
choice—to reject figurative art, not because they had never learned how
to do it, but because they had mastered it and wished to go beyond it.
Nerdrum and his supporters were not demanding that the Norwegian
government take a stand in favor of figurative art and against mod-
ernism. They simply sought peaceful coexistence for the two approaches
to painting. One must wonder about the insecurity of modernist artists
who feel it necessary to insist that their art and only their art is “the art
of our century” or “the art of the future.” Despite their many gestures
toward pluralism, the modernists have ended up with as narrow and con-
fining an aesthetic as any traditionalist ever advocated. On theoretical
grounds, they claim to know what is and what is not appropriate in art,
and seek to keep young minds safe from contamination by the forces of
a false aesthetic. Do the modernists fear the challenge traditional art still
represents to the triumph of their own aesthetic? Are they unwilling to
face competition from alternative approaches to art? The way Odd
Nerdrum has been treated by the art establishment in Norway raises seri-
ous questions about modernism and its attempts to crush any deviation
from its new orthodoxy.III
For all the bitterness generated by the Norwegian Academy affair for
those involved, outsiders might be excused for regarding it as a case of
making a political mountain out of an aesthetic molehill. It seems
strange that a national government would get embroiled in such a heated
controversy over the appointment of a single professor to an art school.
One might in fact admire the Norwegians for taking art seriously enough
to get all riled up over the question of who should be teaching painting12 Paul A. Cantor