It was September 6th, 2011...
... when I read Turid
Spildo’s
blog posting. Eloquently, she detailed the recent months in
which she and her husband battled tax evasion charges -- at times, in
the face of international media frenzy.
Her husband, of course, is Odd Nerdrum. Controversial
traditionalist painter. Arch-enemy of the modern art establishment.
Founder and inspirational head of the kitsch painting movement.
Norwegian celebrity, exile and, now, convicted tax evader.
He's unfortunately not as well known in his other
role... teacher and mentor – and not just for me, but for the dozens
of students he’s welcomed from all over the world over the years. All
he ever asked in return for the priceless painting (and life) lessons
he’d give was a little help in and around his studio.
It wasn’t only Turid's harrowing account of how she frantically
scoured bank records looking for “missing amounts”, or the shameful
badgering her husband faced during the trial that affected me…
It was the bonfire -- the midsummer bonfire that didn’t
happen this year, as it had the fourteen years prior.
I was there for three of them, but the first one is a
special memory for me. In the summer of 2004, I arrived in Norway
with no clue of what to expect. Before I knew it, I was asked to help
gather gargantuan amounts of wooden planks and tree limbs that were to
be transported closer to the shore where there were massive, smooth,
ancient rocks. There we crafted a sizable wood pyre, which was set
ablaze on the evening of June 24th. A red-blooded American
in every sense of the word, “midsummer” didn’t mean anything to me
until that day, the first of many new cultural experiences for which I
have the Nerdrums to thank.
The
thought of them being unable to gather with family, friends, and newly
welcomed students around a bonfire this year, as they had done for so
long, somehow brought the stark reality of their plight home for me in
a way that internet news reports had not.
What
Turid wrote helped me come to an important realization -- my
regrets had come to exceed my gratitude, and that's a place I never
want to be. Sometimes, I think, we need to be reminded of what
we already know.
Odd, a tax evader? Don't buy it.
Tax evasion is a pretty lazy crime -- we're talking about a man who dissects the history of painting, art, and philosophy with a
frightening attention to nuance and detail. I don't think I ever
saw another person get more out of one working day. He truly is an
outlaw...
...
but only on a canvas!
- RDW
9/9/11
RDW in 2005.
- UPDATE:
September 30, 2011
"... (Odd) Nerdrum and his wife are being forced to sell their
rural estate at Stavern on Norway's southern coast. "
- From
Artist Nerdrum Breaks His Silence by
Nina Berglund.
UPDATE: Read the full explanation in the words of
Odd Nerdrum at
FreeOddNerdrum.com...
UPDATE:
The February 2012 issue of American Artist magazine
will include a feature an article on Odd Nerdrum's
case and include comments by Florence Academy of Art founder Daniel Graves,
former Nerdrum student Joakim Ericsson, and contemporary painting master
Nelson Shanks. A
pdf of the article has been made available...
- Sign the
FREE ODD NERDRUM Petition...
-
