Odd Nerdrum, Frye Art museum, katalog 1997

Old Master Existentialism: Recent Paintings by Odd Nerdrum, Frye Art museum, Seattle, 1997.

Odd Nerdrum kunstkatalog, Frye Art Museum 1997, Seattle, USA. Katalog i perfekt og ubrukt tilstand. Katalogen har vært I orginalemballasjen siden 1997. Unik katalog som er i perfekt stand (Pristine Condition) og har ikke blitt pakket ut fra sin opprinnelige kartong fra trykkeriet på 23 år.

Katalogene forble uåpnet fra 1997 og frem til 2014 da de ble hentet fra USA. Trolig en av meget få kataloger i tilsvarende tilstand.

Fra anmeldelsen av kunstutstillingen ved Frye Art Museum, Seattle 1997:

A 53-year-old Norwegian who has won great acclaim in Europe, Nerdrum and his bracing allegorical realism are just starting to catch on in the U.S. His expert rendering of the human figure and sublime attention to light and shadow cause some critics to call him a contemporary "Old Master," a late 20th-century throwback to Rembrandt. Others see his apocalyptic allegories and compare them to the hideous hells of 15th-century painter Hieronymus Bosch.

Nerdrum's paintings evoke both painters, though his combination of masterly figurative technique and edgy portrayal of the human condition make his work highly original and utterly contemporary.

It takes time to look at this show. A too-quick walk through will leave you mystified. What is to be made of Nerdrum's fleshy men and women who all seem to be wandering in a barren moonscape? They wear robes and rags that look medieval. Their heads are covered in crude leather helmets. The skin on their faces is translucent. Their eyes are ringed in feverish red. A fair number look completely mad. The snakes slithering among and sometimes on them doubtless add to their anxiety.

No time frame

Likewise, it's impossible to determine the time frame of this work. There are no buildings to give clues, though the rifles that show up often look 19th century. These people could be survivors of a 21st-century apocalypse, bladerunners on a post-industrial wasteland. They could also be 10th-century European peasants waiting out a deadly plague in a no-man's land of parched soil and muddy pools.

The paintings in this show, which was organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, then augmented with more paintings borrowed by the Frye, are mostly big, some nearly 6 feet by 6 feet. Their grand size makes them heroic. Their allegorical themes further suggest that the work is about the essential nature of humankind, people's primal relationships to one another, and the eternal questions about life and death that obsess us.