After the Avant-Gardes

(Bozica Vekic) #1

  1. Odd Nerdrum et. al., On Kitsch, Oslo: Kagge Forlag, 2001, 8. The name of the
    translator is not given anywhere in the volume. I do not have access to the original
    Norwegian text and in any case I do not know Norwegian, but it looks to me as if this
    translation is deficient at several points. Nevertheless, I have been forced to rely on it as
    my principal source for Nerdrum’s views on the nature of art (and those of some of his
    colleagues). All future citations to this work will be incorporated into the text and abbre-
    viated as “OK.”

  2. Pettersson, Nerdrum, 20. See also Vine, Nerdrum, 30.

  3. Quoted in Pettersson, Nerdrum, 20.

  4. Quoted in Pettersson, Nerdrum, 22.

  5. Quoted in Pettersson, Nerdrum, 22–23.

  6. Quoted in Pettersson, Nerdrum, 23. See also Vine, Nerdrum, 37.

  7. Helen D. Hume provides in her The Art Lover’s Almanac, San Francisco: Wiley,
    2003, one of the most comprehensive reference works on painting. She lists only two
    Norwegian painters: Edvard Munch and Odd Nerdrum.

  8. All three quotations in this paragraph are from Pettersson, Nerdrum, 184.
    13 Pettersson, Nerdrum, 241, note 29.

  9. Pettersson, Nerdrum, 192.

  10. OK, 18. These are the words of a journalist, Sindre Mekjan, from the Oslo
    Morgenbladet(October 23rd, 1998), reporting Nerdrum’s opinions in the course of an
    article/interview.

  11. For the record, in general, public funding of the arts plays a more important role
    in European countries than it does in the United States.

  12. Just as “public schooling” should more properly be called “government school-
    ing,” “public funding” of the arts should be called “government funding.” In what is
    called “public funding,” a government bureaucracy invariably makes the funding deci-
    sions. In such circumstances, it is precisely the public that never has any say in what art
    gets funded, and indeed “publicly funded art” is usually of little or no interest to the pub-
    lic, and often outright offends it. It is the private market that generally delivers the kind
    of art the public wants, above all in movies, television, and commercial music. A
    Hollywood blockbuster is in fact the best example of a work of art truly funded by the
    public. The failure of the public to embrace the kind of art modernist elites favor is what
    leads to calls for so-called public funding of the arts.

  13. For this mistaken view, see F.M. Scherer, Quarter Notes and Bank Notes: The
    Economics of Music Composition in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,
    Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004, 200. Despite this error, Scherer’s book pro-
    vides a useful analysis of how patronage and the commercial market work as systems of
    financial support of the arts in the specific case of classical music.

  14. On Kitschcontains an interesting essay by Dag Solhjell, “The Ethic of Pietism
    and the Spirit of Art” (69–104), which attempts to document the connection between
    Protestantism and Kantian aesthetics.

  15. For a comprehensive and powerful defense of the market as a basis for art, see
    Tyler Cowen, In Praise of Commercial Culture, Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

  16. On painting in particular, see the excellent chapter “The Wealthy City as a Center
    for Western Art” (83–128).

  17. For a discussion of Nerdrum’s rejection of government support and embrace of
    the commercial marketplace for art, see Dag Solhjell, “The Concept of Art at Stake:
    The Symbolic Power and Counter-Power of Odd Nerdrum’s Art” in OK, 32–37; Solhjell


196 Notes to Pages 9–20

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