'the tax coin' by odd nerdrum, via aftonbladet.se

Regular Seattle art-scene followers remember the show at the Frye museum some years back by hyper-realist Norwegian figure painter Odd Nerdrum. His meticulously detailed images reveal the survival and/or defeat of the human spirit within life’s struggles.

Now he’s become the victim of what his supporters call a, yes, odd campaign of official harassment.

The way his attorneys put it, back in the late 1980s Nerdrum made some paintings with materials that turned out to be non-archival. He’d then made new copies of the same images, and gave them away to everybody who’d bought the now-fading originals.

He even paid national sales tax on the replacements, out of his own pocket. But Norway’s bureaucrats still cried foul. They claimed he was selling new works to overseas buyers without claiming the income on his tax returns.

The result, many years of courtroom hagglings later: a sentence of 34 months in prison, during which he’s forbidden to engage in “commercial activity” (i.e. his art).

Nerdrum’s supporters claim he was targeted for harassment, because of his past political stances against Norway’s ruling regime. (He’s inserted snarky remarks about Norway’s tax system into the titles of some of his most kitschy works; see above.)

His supporters have a “Free Odd Nerdrum” online petition going. Its page says:

Odd Nerdrum is an International treasure, some even say a savior of the art world. He is a man of integrity and a stand against what many see as the essential emptiness of modern art and life. To put a man of his age away in a prison cell for some dubious tax claims is unjust and unfair and a crime in itself. Odd Nerdrum is more than an artist, he is a symbol of pure individualism and that, in itself, is the highest hope for art and man.