The figures of Nerdrum's (seemingly) post-apocolyptic landscapes reflect a clear belief in the manipulation of anatomy to express a mood or an idea. The master himself talks about this:
"The highest level you could think about is when you make a picture where you can't say when it was made. You have to make small heads, big hands, long stomachs, so the whole figure is moving upwards". (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUrP2cvtFJ4#t=21m34s)
"Two Green Feathers"
"The Singers"
In other of Nerdrum's paintings he distorts the figures in a less graceful way.
"Woman Kills Injured Man"
Man Bitten by a Snake
Nerdrum works exclusively from life, with multiple sittings from multiple models. He selects those features he needs, distorting and interpreting to create the characters that populate his landscapes.
As an example of this, in my time studying with Nerdrum, I was asked to pose for one of the figures in a painting, that of an old wizard. The model for the wizard was a well-built older gentleman with a healthy head of hair while the figure in the painting was bald. My head came in handy as I was the only bald student around.
This quote from the website sine qua non sums up Nerdrum's work beautifully:
"In Nerdrum's work the body and its natural functions - erections, defecation, even aging- are used to jolt us out of our tidy complacency. His blighted landscapes also do much to increase the overall disquiet.
But at the core, the essence, Nerdrum's paintings violate with one final traumatic twinge: that of almost unbearable beauty"
For more pictures of unbearable beauty: http://www.nerdrummuseum.com/Paintings.php
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