As the producer and director of this film and son of the master, I am relieved that I am finally able to release the six part documentary-series on Odd Nerdrum’s life and work on Vimeo where you can rent and buy individual episodes or the entire show.

Since spring 2016, Jan-Ove Tuv, my brother Öde and I have traveled the world to seek out Nerdrum’s former students and his sources of inspiration. We have visited museums that made an early impact on my father, as well as the film director who inspired him to go to Iceland where he developed his allegorical imagery.

Odd Nerdrum, 20 years old, beside his painting “Standing Child” at his debut exhibit at the Art Union in Oslo. Morgenbladet, 1964

Along the way we made some very interesting discoveries about his paintings that have previously been left out or overlooked by historians and critics who perhaps have examined Nerdrum’s work a bit haste-fully as poor imitations of Rembrandt and Caravaggio. Nerdrum’s yearning for imitation covers many masters of history and in some aspects the painters of the Romantic Era inspired him more than those of the Baroque.
But they all had one thing in common: they did not represent the spirit of their time.

“Sometimes you have this notion or feeling that you recognize an influence, but suddenly you deeply understand exactly what the influence is. And that happened a lot during our journeys, where all the pieces came into place,” Öde told Juxtapoz magazine in January, and described the documentary in the following way: “It’s not a how to paint video, it is more about the realm of ideas.”

Jan-Ove Tuv — the lead character and voiceover for the documentary — studied with Nerdrum from 1996 to 2002 and has often pointed out that his teacher never looks at painters from an historical point of view but from a perspective where paintings must withstand comparisons across time.
In the same way that we follow Odd’s development going forward in time, we go backwards in time to the Greeks.¹— Jan-Ove Tuv

In the coming weeks I will publish six articles here at worldwidekitsch.com with an extensive look at each episode from The Hunt of Odd Nerdrum and mainly focus on his professional life and the paintings that influenced his work.

Thank you to everyone who helped us to realize this project and check out the documentary at vimeo.com/ondemand/oddnerdrum.

1. Öde S. Nerdrum and Jan-Ove Tuv interviewed by David Molesky for Juxtapoz Magazine