make people see that everything we now look upon as qualities are neg-
atives of the true qualities.”^58 Quoting Nerdrum, Pettersson says that his
“objective was to represent all ‘that man has abandoned in order to make
the world go around the way it does.’”^59 These quotations from Nerdrum
strongly suggest that his artistic project is fundamentally Nietzschean in
his effort to reach back in time in order to move beyond a sterile pres-
ent—to strip away the distortions in human nature introduced by
Christianity and return to a kind of pagan past, in which man’s elemen-
tal nature is once again revealed.
There does seem to be something elemental about the human beings
Nerdrum depicts. It is in the nature of their situation that they find them-
selves with life and death staring them in the face. The characters in
Nerdrum’s early paintings turn away from human suffering, and the state
may help them in this evasion by institutionalizing the sick, the elderly,
the deviant, and the dying, and thus getting them out of sight. But the
characters in Nerdrum’s main phase of painting are confronted with the
facts of life on a daily basis. Many of his paintings offer images of birth,
and everything associated with it—infancy, breast-feeding, in general
the close bond between mother and child (Women with Milk[1988–93];
Pregnant Woman with Followers [1999]; Breast-feeding Fog[1999];
Twin Mother by the Sea [1999]). Many paintings focus on the other end
of life, and offer stark and uncompromising images of old age, dying,
and death (Dying Couple[1993]; Buried Alive[1995-96]; Old Man with
Dead Maiden[1997]). With life constantly under threat in the world of
Nerdrum’s paintings, and his characters living in the shadow of death, it
is no wonder that life comes to seem precious and the one thing above
all worth defending. In The Lifesaver(1995–96), Nerdrum shapes a
striking image of a man protecting his family, as one of his fiercest
Nordic warriors, with the trademark rifle strapped to his back, holds a
tiny, fragile baby delicately in his huge and powerful hands. Summer
Night(2000–01) epitomizes the whole world Nerdrum creates in these
paintings, as a naked man, once again holding a rifle, stares out of a
cabin to an empty horizon, on the lookout for any threats to the wife and
infant who are asleep at his feet. It is as if Nerdrum is saying that human
beings must lose their modern sense of comfort and safety in order to
get back in touch with their primal emotions and learn what is really
important in their lives. Indeed Nerdrum explicitly says of his charac-
ters: “The people I have depicted become less and less tied to our con-
cept of security.”^60 They must leave the state in order to find themselves
and their true freedom to be themselves. As Nerdrum said of himself:
“The only happiness I can feel is when I can get away from society and
The Importance of Being Odd 33