Odd Nerdrum Quotes

Kitsch is deep in its superficiality. Art is superficially deep.

Everything is a meaningless struggle against nothing and when people say that the world has become a better place that is a false development-optimism. Nothing exists which ever becomes better. Everything stays the same. Somehow, there is nothing. That is so sad. Nothing to come to. Everything is an illusion. A very sweet illusion.

Talking about success in society, no one can complain, because today everyone can choose what he or she wants. They don't just have to choose between being proletarian or middle-class. Those kinds of things do not exist anymore. Today working class boys can play football and become multimillionaires. On football! There are no longer classes, who say that we are poor, we are suppressed by you etc.

The point is that only one thing matters in this world, to prepare oneself for death. One can try to be as comfortable as possible until one dies ... Because being comfortable does not have any meaning either. It just does not. Everything is only a big meaninglessness that one must bear.

Art is a car, kitsch is a horse.

One talks much more about the evil than about the good. That is a paradox. We should only talk about the good to lighten up our existence. Chase anxiousness/fear away for a moment before it sneaks back in again to our life.

I had a choice. I could become an economist & managing director. I choose to do something else. I would have become much, much richer than I am. I choose to not do that. It's that simple.

We are all kitsch on our deathbeds.

Because modernism has conquered art, kitsch is the savior of talent and devotion.

I believe in positive despotism. That means an exchange between people. I'm thinking about the fact that someone serves me breakfast in my bed. I can not see anything wrong in that. Because everything is a question of exchanges between people. Everyone has some specific possibilities and can to a certain extent do whatever they want. If one wants to become rich one can study economy and if one wants to be poor one can choose to become a professor in butterfly wings for example. So we can choose.

I believe one must be such a big egoist that it is possible to avoid the big tendencies that cut of your head. What we call fascism and things like that. It is about egoism. When you are egoistic enough you avoid such things. You become an incurable individualist and in that case you are sailing in your own sea anyway. What is very enjoyable for the individualist is to find this kind of "happy spaces" to be in and to live in.

I have always been astonished by hate. Revenge and hate. That is such strange human elements. I have seen a lot of that in my life. I am just as surprised each time. By revenge and hate.

Contemporary art is based on that an artist is supposed to go into art history in the same way as an art historian. When the artist produces something he or she relates to it with the eye of an art historian/critic. I have the feeling that when I am working it is more like working with soap opera or glamour. It is emotional and not art criticism or history of art.