Category: Stories

The word ‘Art’ has given me the feeling of a knot in the belly because it is something I do not understand.

Showing other people your work for the first time makes you vulnerable. After putting effort into it you long for honest feedback, so that you can develop in your work. 

Calling someone an artist is like questioning their work. You cannot understand if the work is twisted, ugly, sensitive, confusing, or good. 

People’s reaction is often: “My gosh you are a true artist,” or “this is something only an artist can do.”

My experience is that the worse your work is, the more of an artist you are. If something looks like it went terribly wrong, it is real art. 

People will sympathize with your work and call it “genius art” if it is revealed that you have personal issues such as mental illness.

The work is the same regardless of context. The story of the maker should not make it better. 

Even when I acted irresponsibly in personal matters, people would forgive me and say “you have an artist’s spirit and can’t see the world clearly.”

Are you an artist because you craft things and act irresponsibly? 

At a point this affected me so much that I wanted to become a doctor instead, just to show the world that I am a serious person and can achieve my goals.

Although distraught, I still craved to craft. I continued in loneliness, dreaming of Rome, sculptures, ruins, draperies, goddesses, and mythical stories.

The turning point was during school, at Oslo National Academy of the Arts, when I messed up my assignment in an experiment. I was overambitious, and anxious to show it to anyone. 

I wanted to bury myself in a hole in the ground. I cried.

My teacher told me with a comforting voice: “we don’t make pretty things dear, we make art!”

I felt alienated. I do not make art. I live to create beauty! 

Meeting with the kitsch movement was like coming home. Finally, I found other people on this globe that are striving to make work in an honest way, sharing knowledge, and best of all: criticising each other with love for the sake of improvement. 

I feel honored to work towards a long-lasting expression that will surpass time. I demand to be judged by my talent as a craftsman, not by trends.

This is why I stopped calling myself an artist.

At 18 years old I studied philosophy in the capital, and studied painting in my spare time. By chance I came across Odd Nerdrum’s work. Until then I had no specific taste in painting or an explicit reason about what I wanted with painting. However, I knew that I liked to tell stories. Seeing Odd’s paintings and being amazed by their dramatic content, I came to the conclusion that that is what I wanted to do! “I’m going to imitate him.”

I got to know other painters who followed him, and the kitsch movement. I started to study it, and to imitate them.

A question that intrigued me during my stay in the capital arose from seeing works of art (figurative and scenic). I did not understand their content or purpose. This art was linked only to the feeling, personality, and worldview of the person who made it. Only with help from critics or the artist himself could one understand art. Not even the artist’s description helped to clarify because they were imbued with subjective, conceptual, and allegorical questions linked to modernism. Instead of helping the public’s understanding — the description made it more confusing. Observing further, I realized that art is only for those immersed in intellectual, conceptual, and allegorical theories. For outsiders it is impossible to understand.

Classical narrative painting, known as ‘kitsch’, is universally understood. In it, the painting and title are enough. There is no need for further explanation by the painter or critics. I have come to understand that this has to do with our intentions. If you want to put just a black dot on a white canvas: do it. Don’t ask me to do so. Kill me or exile me. I don’t follow the current spirit of art.

Art is not what my soul longs for — I want to make paintings that everyone can understand, and see for their poetry. Through my paintings I want to tell about human life and its nature. That is why I have not become an artist, but a kitsch painter.

The summer before I started middle school, it was a practice of teachers to make home visits to meet incoming students.  During the meeting, the teacher asked me what I would like to be when I grow up.  In my hesitation to answer, my mother interrupted, 

“He wants to be an artist.  He draws all the time.”

While I liked to look at old paintings in books and tried to draw things that I saw and make my own story pictures, my instant reaction was,

“No.  I don’t want to be an artist.  Everyone thinks I do because I draw a lot, but I don’t want to be an artist.”  The notion of being an artist was completely foreign to me.  I couldn’t relate what I did to what I was taught art was. 

When I graduated from high school, my father suggested that I go down to the local art school for a portfolio review.  The interview misled me and I thought that I would be able to get help learning how to improve my drawing and learn how to paint.  I enrolled and enjoyed my Foundation year, which was packed with drawing from observation of different arrangements of basic objects.  

In the next two years, students who were in the Fine Art major mostly began working with abstraction and conceptual work, which was praised during periodic critiques.  While I tried to make my work more “art-like,” I endured comments and remarks about my technical errors and failings.  

I would think, “That’s why I’m here–to get instruction that will help me improve my work.  Telling me it’s not right is something anyone off the street can do.  You’re supposed to be teaching me something.”

I once again felt alone and hopeless.  I knew that I was no artist.  But what was I?  I liked to draw and wanted so badly for someone to teach me something about painting.  Anything to get me set off in the right direction.  Even so, the work I wanted to make wasn’t anything like the work that I saw around me.  I was immersed in an Art world.

It was during some time in Art school that there was a show of Andrew Wyeth’s work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  My father said to me that people were saying that Wyeth’s work wasn’t art.  

“It isn’t.” I replied, thinking to myself, “It’s better than Art.”

After Art school, I entered a University to earn a degree in Art Education.  During this time, I continued to make my own work and acquire books of old paintings I enjoyed.  I had a small living space and made small work.  I left painting with oils when I left art school.  I didn’t have much practice with them anyway and just got to the point where some of the paintings looked ok enough to keep around or sell cheaply. After I earned my degree, I immediately got a position teaching Art, and within a year started a family.  A couple of years later, I discovered Odd’s work.

During one of my routine trips to the used bookstore looking to find the best possible reproductions of old paintings in old books, a small thin spine caught my eye that read “On Kitsch, Odd Nerdrum. “  I pried it out from between the larger books to investigate it further.  The image on the cover didn’t seem to be one of his works, even though I only ever saw a couple in passing through an old Art News.  The cover image looked like a painting from the Victorian time period.  This increased my interest and I opened up the book to read the inside cover passage:

“As soon as I had discovered the nature of art and of kitsch, I understood where I belonged.  I would therefore like to take this moment to offer an apology.  I have referred to myself as an artist, though with a foul taste in my mouth…”

I began shaking my head in disbelief.  I was instantly agitated and held the book to my side with my index finger inside the book to keep my place as I paced back and forth in the bookstore isle.  

“I have to get this book,” I thought.

“I can’t believe that there is someone else out there that feels like this.”

I didn’t know Odd at all, but immediately felt as if we were lost brothers being reunited through the text.

I don’t remember what I paid for the book because it didn’t matter how much it was.  I went to the counter, paid for it and continued reading as I walked out the door.  I tried to read and walk a bit more, but found that I had to sit because my attention to the book demanded it.

As I read, I found hope.  I was realizing what I already knew, that I was not and artist.  But instead of feeling dejected, I felt empowered.  I went home and dug into my abandoned art supplies to find my paint that had leaked their linseed oil and bound themselves to one big clump of tubes.  After I pulled apart the tubes and scavenged what I could of the brushes I had, I then coated sheets of Arches rag paper with gesso and began to paint again.  

I set forth on the difficult path of Kitsch knowing that there was so much work ahead of me if I were to make even one good painting.  Yes, it is a difficult journey but I am no longer lost.  The work ahead is hard.  And it is great!

After walking miles in shoes too tight, when someone gives you a comfortable pair to continue your journey, you don’t put the tight ones back on.  Even though I may never reach that distant point on the horizon,  I now know that I am moving toward the right one.

The realization is just as Odd has put it.  As soon as you discover the nature of art and of kitsch, you understand where you belong.

Our modern economy relies on the notion of the smallest amount of energy and resources to yield the maximum return.  Art reflects that model.  Making Kitsch, however, takes a great amount of time, intellect and skill.  Although the return of Kitsch is not guaranteed and slow to come if there is any, it is far greater.  It is the path of Greatness and of the Gods.  If we do not make it to the end, we still have the glory of having traveled on it. 

I remember the day I was in my painting class at undergraduate school in the late 1990s.  My professor gave all his students photocopies of four pages in ArtNews magazine.  The photocopied text was Odd Nerdrum’s kitsch philosophy.

My professor only said he wanted us to read it.  The topic of kitsch, however, much less what it meant to students in a 20^th century art school, was never brought up in class.  To this day, it isn’t clear to me why he gave us those photocopies.  Recalling the personal work of that professor, I can’t help but wonder if he saw the text as a kind of salvation or escape route from the path he had found himself on.

By the time I read Nerdrum’s kitsch philosophy, I was already fixated on his work and obsessed with learning how to create the kind of dark, dramatic narratives he made in oils.  I furiously studied and painted failure after failure, creating entire bodies of work that I didn’t show to my professors, searching for the secrets of the Old Masters.  In 2004, I came to Norway and found colleagues in Odd Nerdrum’s studio who were searching for the same things I was; the handcraft traditions and storytelling techniques of the Old Masters and the Greco-Roman tradition.

In the two decades I have immersed myself in the kitsch philosophy, I have read no art theory or criticism that refutes its principles.  Kitsch is sentimental, sensual, and appeals to the timeless of human experience, and creating quality works of kitsch requires a heightened level of talent and skill.  Art is an unceasing linear march towards a disconnect from humanity, having nothing to do with handcraft or skill.  The principles of kitsch can’t be refuted because the art establishment, through more than a century of criticism and oppression, has so perfectly defined it; kitsch is all that is evil to art.

Because the sentimental, timeless, and sensual is evil to art, I am not an artist.  I am a kitsch painter, and happy to be so.

At the University I attended, the professor told the class that everyone shall paint a girl from life. She was a beautiful young student that was our model for the evening.

Everyone in the class stood in front of their canvases, very seriously, while the model entered the room. She was naked, lying on a sofa with her back to us.

I asked the professor “How should I begin painting?” and he replied “doesn’t matter how, just paint.” So I did, but after a while, too much oil and turpentine, the whole painting was dripping and looked very bad. 

The professor left the room and I went to the painting books. I took one and found a photo of the painting ‘Venus at her mirror’ by Velasquez. I understood something about the way I should paint her. How the light glowing skin should be painted with thick layers of white and ochre, and the shadows with thin layers of red and black. I took this as an example and combined it with what I was looking at: the beautiful girl that was modeling for me. I was able to achieve a very good effect.

The professor came back and asked me what I was doing. Without waiting for an answer he took the book and closed it in front of me. He said “a real artist never copies!”

Then is when I understood I was not and never will be an artist.

I have, as any other human, always imitated. Ever since I was a newborn child copying the facial expressions of my mother, to when I discovered the great cartoonist Don Rosa and wanted to become as good at drawing as him. Also when I discovered the wonderful land of Kitsch, populated by the greeks, Leonardo, Bach, Rembrandt, Shakespeare and Odd Nerdrum. Looking back at my period making cartoons, I never worried about finding my own style (because I knew that was very easy; just make a bad copy of whatever you’re copying). I always sought to make noble representations of noble men. I loved the myths, from the Christian to the norse. I have realised that ever since I discovered Don Rosa, I was a lonely wanderer seeking a place where I could belong. Where I could tell timeless myths and represent man as he ought to be, and to also work in a value system where my work could be given fair criticism on the right premisses. I had no point of reference for how to represent the stories I so desperately wanted to tell. On my journey to finding a place where I could belong, I had to find guides to show me the way. 

My first stage of becoming a kitschman was to learn how to imitate my idol. I learned to shamelessly imitate the cartoonist Don Rosa, my first master. Although some people around me encouraged me to call myself an artist, I refused, and referred to myself as a cartoonist. I was aware of Picasso and Edvard Munch’s worst paintings, which were always referred to as «art». Obviously I, an imitator seeking to look like my master, could not see myself as an artist. During this period I got to know another cartoonist, Mikkel Hagen, who told me about books he had read. They were great stories about grand heroes getting their gold back, fighting dragons and saving princesses. He introduced me to watercolors of battle scenes, kings, wizards, trolls and dwarves. I loved these stories. They had a very strong appeal to me, and I later learned that this appeal was extremely universal. Mikkel Hagen became my guide, and he showed me what I should read to experience these great myths. So I had no other choice than continuing my journey on the destination of which still was unknown to me. In this first stage, I learned that imitation was the most natural thing in the world, and by imitating well enough great things can be made.

In my second stage of becoming a kitschman, I learned about myths and was greeted by the Lord of the Rings, which I read several times. I was also captivated by the myths the vikings told each-other, and I even learned how to write in Runes. As earlier mentioned, I learned in the first stage that one could copy without shame, the copy just had to be good enough. Now, as a cartoonist I was a storyteller. The only problem was that I didn’t know where the best stories were, but that was why I decided to go to the house of the myths. I discovered how fascinating the myths in the bible were, I began watching movies that had classical music in them, and by chance, watching a documentary about the Lord of the Rings. I rediscovered the same watercolors Mikkel Hagen had shown to me. The watercolors, made by Alan Lee and John Howe for an exclusive publication of the Lord of the Rings, were first introduced to me by Mikkel Hagen but they seemed very familiar. The two illustrators referred to themselves as artists. I was still conscious about the fact Picasso and Munch was referred to as «the greatest artists ever», so I remained sceptical about calling myself an artist. Lee and Howe clearly had way different ideals and values than Picasso, so I couldn’t understand why they put themselves into the same professional category as him. 

I copied Alan Lee and John Howe. I learned the importance of good storytelling and myths, also how powerful the human face can be. I wrote poems and short stories. I had almost stopped making cartoons as I focused on making portraits in charcoal. My ideals of Lee and Howe, were better than my past ideals, namely the duck cartoonists. But could there be any better? I didn’t feel at home yet. I knew I was no artist, but I had no clear value system. What was I?

One day, when I was 13, I heard about a painting class in a town nearby. I looked up the teacher of the class, Monika Helgesen. Her paintings reminded me of the illustrations by Alan Lee and John Howe. I saw this as an excellent opportunity to get help with making a good copy of one of the illustrations that I admired: a portrait of Gandalf. I went to the painting class which lasted for three days. I made a poor copy of the portrait of Gandalf, but it was much better than anything I had done before. This was the first time I tried painting, and the teacher was very impressed with me, so she showed me something which made a great impression on me: «Amo», painted by Odd Nerdrum. She said to me: «This is a painting by my master, Odd Nerdrum. Would you like to make a copy of it?» So I did. The name Odd Nerdrum stuck to my mind. I looked up his paintings, which were the most fantastic things I have ever seen. «Twilight» was the first painting I saw after the «Amo» portrait. It did not wake laughter in me. Rather, it made a huge and serious impression on me. It was difficult to process how he had made a shitting woman look… visually pleasing! In retrospect, I realised that a painting like this, painted in the manner it’s painted in, is as far away from art as you can get. The father of art, Immanuel Kant, argued in The Critique of Judgement, that a beautiful object is beautiful in itself; it cannot be made beautiful. Then there is «Twilight», which made such a strong impression on me… if it is not art, what is it?

Soon after the painting class I made self portraits from the mirror, heavily influenced by Odd Nerdrum and another painter I had just discovered; Rembrandt. I had completely stopped making cartoons, and I was reading all I could about Nerdrum. I remember very well reading that he didn’t call his work «art»… but «kitsch»! That was very interesting to me… In terms of technique I had no doubt about what I should do. I should become as good as Nerdrum. But the philosophy, however, was very unclear. I was looking everywhere on the internet for what kitsch was. All I could find was… art… the Michael Jackson figure with the monkey and similar things, that didn’t look like Rembrandt or Nerdrum at all. So I realized that the internet was almost hiding something for me. I never found anything about kitsch, until…

Half a year after the painting class I was visiting my grandmother, who would take me to a café next to a book store which I always used to visit. My main motivation, ever since the discovery of Nerdrum, was to find books on kitsch, but I knew it would be difficult. I was searching every bookshelf in the store for about an hour, and finally I had reached the last bookshelf. I was just about to give up and I lifted up what I thought would be the last book for the day. Then, under that very book; a painting of a Messiah in a golden robe, holding a brush in one hand and a pallet in the other… The name of the book: ‘Kitsch – more than Art.’ A book that later confirmed that I was no artist, but a Kitschman. A book that would finally bring me home to where I had always belonged: the land of Kitsch, where the greatest of mankind lived.

When I look back at this journey, I realise that I have been extremely lucky to be a shameless imitator, discover myths, discover the great masters and the philosophy of kitsch without any interference from the art police (as opposed to most of my fellow Kitschmen). I have been extremely fortunate to discover all of these things before the art police could force me into becoming an artist; for example through further ‘education’ at an art academy. I always knew a little bit about what art was, and certainly what it looked like. I knew I was not an artist, but I didn’t know what I was before the fall of 2016. As Odd Nerdrum has said: «After I discovered the nature of art and the nature of kitsch, I understood where I belonged». If I had called myself an artist, I would not have gotten a fair critique. Now, when I am so open and clear about not being an artist, but a Kitschman, there is a chance. 

I Am Not An Artist.

As a child I remember looking through my father’s books on Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo with complete amazement. How was it possible that paint and stone could be transformed into flesh? At the age of eleven my only thoughts were, “I would like to be able to do that”, and so I drew incessantly. 

Fast forward to the age of twenty and I had made the decision that painting would not just be a hobby, but my live’s work. The more I pursued this path however, the more discouraged I became. In the hopes of applying, I took tours of art schools. None of them taught what I wanted to learn. I wanted to paint like Leonardo! Any art history book or documentary I could find, I devoured, only to find that you had to paint like Picasso or Rothko in the modern age. I began to make detached modern paintings, which only increased the bitterness I felt towards art.

The more dissatisfied I became, the more I began researching old master techniques and painters with the idea that the “true art” would one day come back.  

Then it happened. I came across a video on Youtube. It was a discussion between Odd Nerdrum and Roger Scruton about the values of kitsch. In all honesty I didn’t understand a thing, but I was intrigued and began looking for more information. As soon as I found out that Odd Nerdrum ran a school for painting I applied, and in January of 2017 I arrived in his Norwegian studio. It was there that I began to learn the differences between kitsch and art. The more I learned the more I could see that the old masters and modernists were based in completely opposing philosophies, something I had not even considered before. While the old masters worked in a tradition of handcraft where storytelling and skill are developed through decades of practice and competition, artists rely on creativity and originality, demoting skill to something unnecessary and even bad.

Despite the knowledge of the philosophy and history behind the terms art and kitsch, I was still hesitant to leave behind the word art. It wasn’t until months after I had left the Nerdrum school that I realised something which seems so obvious to me now. Quite simply it’s the fact that you can’t change people who don’t want to change. It’s the exact same for anyone who has ever known a drug addict or has been in a bad relationship. You can however change the way you respond to these people. Let me put it this way. Imagine you were in a political party or club that held completely opposite views from your own. Would you try to change the entire party to your views? Would you change your views to match the party’s? Or would you leave and find a party that held similar views to yourself. I would choose the latter, and that is why I call myself a kitsch painter and not an artist.

When I introduce myself to someone, the conversation always follows the same pattern. I tell them that I am a painter, and specifically on canvases, since they usually invite me to touch up the paint on their house. Illuminated they exclaim what I would least like to hear “Aah, so you’re an artist!”

“No, I’m not.”
The word carries a weight I cannot bear. The image of an expressive, extroverted person, who loves parties, draws attention for his eccentricity, and knows how to enjoy “the best of life,” does not match my personality. ‘Artist’ should not be considered an occupation but a word to describe an individual. There are artists who are painters, sculptors, musicians, architects, actors, and even everything at the same time. In all cases, they suck!
If it is necessary for you to: act like an infallible genius without any evidence, to overshadow the lack of technical knowledge about the area in which you operate, and have little dedication or interest for improvement. Congratulations, you are an artist but I am not.

After spending over three years and many thousands of dollars to attend an art college in the United States, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to study with Norwegian master Odd Nerdrum at no financial cost. Nerdrum’s studio was different, because he taught under a completely different standard of aesthetics than what I was used to at the college; a big reason why I went to study with him in the first place. Nerdrum is a Kitsch painter who paints in the classical standard. I was taught by Modernists at the art college who teach and paint in a Modernist standard. The two are completely opposite each other in every way, from their goals to their criteria of quality. It was no surprise to me that I was battling teachers and students alike so often at the college. They were operating under the Modernist standard, and I wasn’t. They all called themselves artists, and I did the same with a bitter taste because I knew I was striving for something completely different than them. Today, there is not one college or university that will teach the classical standard because they are all run by modernists. 

The origins of Modernism can be found in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment and the origins of Classicism can be found in Aristotle’s Poetics. After reading the origins of both ways of thinking, and recognizing the stark contrast of philosophy between the two practices, it made no logical sense to call myself something that I was not.

Imagine a group of men that come to demolish a building. They are called a “Demolition Crew”. Their task is to take apart and destroy the structure. Another group of men come to build a new building in its place. They are called a “Demolition Crew” as well. Well, of course this is wrong. The men who are building are doing the exact opposite task as the men who are destroying. Therefore, we call the builders “Carpenters”. 

This logic works the same for Art and Kitsch. Art is modern and an artist is a modernist. My paintings are classical, and Kitsch is classical; therefore, I am a Kitsch painter and not an Artist.

In my adolescence I was taught about great Artists from Leonardo and Rembrandt – to modernists with conceptual art and installations. It is quite obvious, even to a child, that the old masters have different works and intentions than conceptual artists. I was told this was because the painters of the Renaissance did not have cameras. However, this did not explain one important aspect of painting which struck my attention: storytelling. Like most people, I did not search to understand how such polarized works could be put into the same category. 

The first time it was clear to me that this was not just a trend, but an underlying philosophy at work, was while prospecting art academies. Art school was what I expected; praising self expression, originality, spiritual truth behind the work, etc. etc. However, while touring an academy in the USA, acclaimed for its rigorous training and lineage to the old masters, one of the instructors told me ‘first you have to learn the rules, then you can learn to break them!’ At the end of my stay she said I would have the foundations on which I could find my own style. This was troubling. They did not have competitions and completely lacked narrative and purpose in their paintings. In fact, every academy I researched was just as infected by the ideals of art.

After a couple of months however, my mentor told me about an old master style workshop he was going to study at: the Nerdrum studio. It immediately resonated with me because it was the only place in the world that combines painting and philosophy. It was a truly grand discovery and I later became engaged in the philosophy of Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, and Odd Nerdrum per the recommendation of my mentor: Jeremy Caniglia. Nerdrum wrote about the principles of two opposing value systems that have existed for more than a millennia. Furthermore, he explained why he called his paintings ‘Kitsch’ and the parallels to the Greco Roman value system. I became more fully aware of my values and the necessity of having my title in line with them. 

My goal is to make a timeless masterpiece, and kitsch is the value system that has this goal at its head. The dogmas of kitsch are, in contrast to Art, clear, objective, and have an observable purpose.  I knew that if I called myself an artist I would be grouped into the same degrading category as mediocre modernists. Many people are unaware of the term, but by calling my paintings kitsch I am able to bring the presumptions made about them and my intentions more close. Gallerists and collectors have different expectations for my paintings since they are not Art. Rather than being crushed like many figurative artists who comply with the demands of Art, I decided to learn the underlying values and take a strong stance. I am a kitsch painter.