Kitsch Is Only A State of Mind – David Molesky & Odd Nerdrum

I had returned from a visit to the Joslyn Museum in Omaha, having seen an exhibit of life size charcoal drawings by Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum. The work was haunting, powerful, allegorically reminiscent of Caravaggio, and something about it hooked me. Attached to the experience was reference to an entirely new meaning of the term Kitsch. I returned to Los Angeles with surreal cloud shapes stealing my dreams, not consciously aware of how deeply the apocalyptic images had affected me. The souvenir book I purchased, published by the New Orleans Museum of Art, remains one of my favourite possessions. It chronicles the artist’s life and early education at the Oslo Academy where his unorthodox reconstitution of 17th century methods apparently caused him to be “chased out like a scroungy mutt.” If you are unfamiliar with this controversial artist, you can read more about him on the possibly un-Kitsch “Google.”

 

With regard to the art movement, or Kitsch manifesto that Nerdrum coined, traditionalists and modernists rarely see eye-to-eye; I can only offer that reverence of quality, artistic integrity, and sheer emotion are, to me, what differentiates good art from bad. If art is not passionate, it leaves me cold, but to each his own.

I have prefaced this piece with Odd Nerdrum to provide some background on artist David Molesky, who for two years had the rare opportunity of being chosen to live with and apprentice the elusive Nerdrum in his studios in Iceland and Norway. After reading a Juxtapose article on his being held hostage by pirates, and of course eager to find out what his experience with Nerdrum was like, I contacted David last year. I discovered not only a genuinely nice person with a finely honed artistic skill and impressive artistic resume that includes numerous museum exhibitions, but also a uniquely individual artist, who while influenced by the enigmatic painter we both admire, owes his talent more to the awareness that to be a “good” artist, one must first master the ability to see.

A native of Washington D.C., David moved to the west coast in 1995 to study fine art and molecular biology at UC Berkeley. Indeed, the science/art relationship is haunting me. Mythological symbolism, animals, the sea, and ancient cultures pervade his work and are reflective of his travels to exotic places. There is a distinctive understanding and love of nature in his paintings, as well as the capacity to translate life experience onto canvas. Several close calls with water no doubt account for the intensity of his wave paintings. The works are fluid, changing, and evocative. Traces of Rembrandt, as well as the Venetian Renaissance style can be seen in his classical approach to a canvas, the use of light, and brushwork. Perhaps what was most apparent to me was that Molesky has managed to absorb his encounter with the Norwegian modern master and generate an artistic style that is quintessentially his own, and only suggestive of Nerdrum in its depth of emotion. 

Tales of near death experiences, Indonesian pirates, communes with nature, and journeys to faraway lands translate onto canvas into visually compelling images, but beyond the themes are works of art that rather than polarize, seek to unify man and nature and remind us that the separation line between the two is thinner than we acknowledge. “We are losing some of our faculties, at least in terms of their development in the educational system. People are being pushed away from those things and ignoring parts of themselves that rooted them more deeply in Nature. I’ve definitely felt that it’s my duty as an artist to make objects and work that helps remind people of these faculties they have that make their existence more beautiful and mysterious. And so they don’t get swept away in the rational, analytical part of modern life.” 

Nerdrum and Molesky are two very different painters from widely divergent backgrounds, who share one very important quality… they paint from the heart. 

 

I will leave you with what sums it up best… “During the time I was apprenticed under Odd Nerdrum, he invited me to live at his house in Reykjavik, Iceland during the winter. It was a spooky place because there was no sunlight for a long time and he left me there by myself. The last thing that Odd said to me before he left me in the darkness there was that I needed ‘to go into a dark cave and look for a small dark flame.’ He was telling me that I could not count on the outside world for inspiration for my work and that I would have to look deep inside my mind and find it for myself.”

You can learn more about David Molesky at http://www.davidmolesky.com/