Ian Bunn | Political & Popular Culture Arts

Bjarne Melgaard the 45 year old Norwegian artist born in Sydney Australia by Norwegian parents, raised in Oslo, Norway, and now works and lives in New York has been profiled by Julia Halperin in a Blouin Artinfo article titled “The Most Famous Norwegian Artist Since Munch Brings a Buddy to the Armory Show’. Halperin states “Rising art star Bjarne Melgaard is using his critical clout to introduce a relatively unknown Scandinavian painter to New York audiences. …a series of bright, brash paintings Melgaard created in collaboration with Sverre Bjertnes, a fellow Norwegian a decade his junior. …The artists met 15 years ago, when Melgaard gave Bjertnes his first gallery exhibition at a now-defunct experimental space he founded in Oslo. Now, they often work side-by-side. Bjertnes estimates the two have produced more than 300 artworks together. …The new paintings, made especially for the Armory Show, combine Melgaard’s nihilistic, childlike smears and Bjertnes’s studied, academic figures. (The younger artist’s formal style is informed by years as a student of Norwegian realist Odd Nerdrum.) Text, images of sneakers, and shapeless, abstract shapes dance around portraits of cult individuals like Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake, fixtures of New York’s downtown art scene who committed suicide within a week of one another in 2007.  …a series of paintings devoted to New York dealer Mary Boone. “She is the ultimate dealer, and the paintings are about a relationship with her as this sort of unattainable dream,” Bjertnes said. The largest homage is almost nine feet wide and contains dozens of sketches of Boone’s face and close-ups of her eyes. The words, “The beauty of Mary Boone” are scrawled across the front. A yellow Chanel suit hangs primly overtop. Collaborating with Melgaard, who has been called the most famous Norwegian artist since Munch, lends Bjertnes instant legitimacy…”

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Johan Galtung the 82 year old Norwegian sociologist, mathematician and the founder of the Peace Research Institute Oslo in 1959, has published an article on the Inter Press Service titled ‘Preventing World War III’ in which he states “A Third World War is not impossible, but fortunately is rather unlikely. Let us explore why, and what can be done to prevent it. The worst-case scenario is a world war between the West – NATO, U.S., EU with Japan-Taiwan-South Korea – and the East – the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) with Russia, China, Central Asia as members and India, Pakistan, Iran as observers. With four nuclear powers on each side, and West versus Islam as a major issue. In the centre is the explosive mix of a divided territory (Israel-Palestine) and Jerusalem, a capital divided by a wall. …The United Nations vote showed a 3/4 world united in YES for Palestine, NO to USA-Israel. Both are turning any moral high ground into moral deficit through continued expansion-occupation-siege and invasion-occupation-extrajudicial killings. The world is not against U.S.-Israel defending true homeland borders or 1967 borders but against the force and excesses they seem incapable of reversing. Reverse those policies and they could regain the moral high ground. …Islam, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, covers more of the world territory and population than the West, but has few friends outside; unlike the West, emulated and admired by Russia-China-India, by Latin America and Africa. In all but Israel, Islam has a huge and growing diaspora by immigration-birth-conversion. Not a superpower, not an alliance, only “Islamic cooperation”; but present everywhere. The result is uncertainty and fear: what do they want? A challenge to other worldviews, guaranteed by the freedoms of speech and religion. Islam offers healing togetherness and sharing to a West suffering from materialist individualism and egoism.”

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Tomas Magnusson the 62 year old Swedish co-president of the International Peace Bureau has published an article on the Inter Press Service titled ‘why isn’t the Nobel Peace Prize for the champions of peace? Magnusson states “Leaders of the European Union (EU) will gather … to receive an increasingly controversial Nobel Peace Prize. Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor and industrialist, established the five prizes by his will in 1895 and there is a growing international awareness that his prize “for the champions of peace” does not go to the recipients Nobel had in mind. …nowhere has the EU declared a political ambition to promote the global peace order of demilitarised nations that Nobel described with unmistakable clarity in his will. …Norwegian politicians are entitled to have their opinion on the EU as a contributor to “peace” and they are free to throw great parties for political friends. But they are not free to use the entrusted money and the prestige of the Nobel prizes to promote their own agendas. A will is a legally binding instrument, yet, in the last decade, the prize has become totally disconnected from Nobel’s disarmament purpose… …In the will, Nobel formulated his purpose in unmistakable terms: he wished to free the world from the scourge of militarism and wars and ensure that resources were used for the benefit of people rather than feeding the voracious appetite of arms races. Nobel gave his peace prize to the world, wishing to foster innovative changes that would “confer the greatest benefit on mankind”. …The legitimate Nobel winner should be an opponent rather than a proponent of military programmes and policies. The world spends exorbitant amounts on a busted model of security and an illusion that it can be achieved in confrontation rather than cooperation. To use the peace prize to promote the visionary peace plan of Nobel would be the best thing that could happen to the poor and unhappy of the world, to the environment, human rights, democracy, women and children, victims of war ¬ everywhere, every year.”

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Anders Behring Breivik the 32 year old Norwegian right wing extremist responsible for the dual terrorist attacks in Norway with the bombing of a government building and the mass shootings of youths as young as 14 years at a Labour Party camp, killing a total of 77 people. Breivik in his 1516 page manifesto titled ‘2083: A European Declaration of Independence’ claimed membership to an “international Christian military order” in the tradition of the Knights Templar, established as an “anti-Jihad crusader organization” to fight against “Islamic suppression”. Breivik claims the order was established by nine members from across Europe who met April 2002 in London, and now has up to 80 “ordinate knights” set up in cells expecting to take political and military control of Europe by 2083.

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