personality while soliciting the viewer’s identification and compassion.
The subject is therefore an illumination of what we can characterize as
the loser, or victim of society.”^32 Again, we might be tempted to give a
left-wing interpretation to these paintings and assume that Nerdrum was
calling for the government to come to the aid of these sufferers, as if he
were some kind of typical European social democrat. But Nerdrum
never portrays the forces of the state in a positive light; as Hansen
writes, “it is society that is the negative opponent. This negativism is
either indirectly present or represented by institutions or various author-
ity figures.”^33 One of the most powerful of these early paintings is The
Arrest(1975–76), which melodramatically presents the supposed crimi-
nal as an object of sympathy, and casts the arresting policemen as the
villains. Even the pattern of lighting in the painting confirms this inter-
pretation. The arrested man is bathed in light à la Rembrandt from the
upper left corner of the painting, thus making him the center of our con-
cern, while the policemen appear in varying degrees of shadow, thus
darkening them in our view. The arrested man is unkempt and poorly
dressed, and surrounded by a group of supporters who are evidently try-
ing to intervene on his behalf and interfere with the arrest. One of them
is a weathered old man supporting himself on a crutch, and another is a
young boy, perhaps the arrested man’s son, who is desperately clinging
to him as he is dragged away. The policemen are presented as implaca-
ble, wrapped tightly in their dark uniforms, expressionless, and almost
featureless. One can almost hear them saying: “We’re just doing our
duty,” as they tear the man out of what little community he has. In The
Arrest, the Old Master reference is obviously to traditional depictions of
the seizing of Jesus, thus creating even more sympathy for this victim of
modern tyranny.^34 Nerdrum’s negative attitude toward government
authority is captured in a charcoal sketch he made in 1976 for a paint-
ing to be entitled The Prisons Are Being Opened. As Hansen describes
it: “A horde of prisoners set free emerge through an enormous prison
gate. They are met by a waiting crowd. The scene is portrayed like a
great operatic drama; those escaping from within wear expressions of
despair and suffering, while those in the expectant crowd express joy.”^35
In depicting modern society, Nerdrum thus concentrated on its
carceral aspects; as if he had been reading the contemporary writings of
Michel Foucault, he portrayed all the institutions of society as impris-
oning and not just the literal prisons. In one of the most telling of these
early paintings, The Admission(1976), we are apparently witnessing a
troubled young woman being taken away to some kind of institution,
probably a mental asylum. Her family have literally and figuratively
The Importance of Being Odd 23