I am glad for our new meeting in the framework of our project on the art of Scandinavia. I want to introduce myself again – my name is Antonia Høуbakk. I am an artist living in Norway and I have Slavic roots.
Today we will also talk about contemporary art in Scandinavia, as I study the history of art and also conduct art practice.
So, sit comfortably on your soft sofa or a cozy armchair, and in Norway it is he – the sofa – that is the center of “cosiness” and we will dive into the world of art. And for you to really feel the Norwegian taste, you need very little to transform your “Hyggekrok”, which means “a corner of comfort” in a real relaxation center. For this you need very few things – a blanket and a few soft textile or knitted pillows – that’s all!!!!!!
Wrapped in a blanket and leaning back on the pillows, we feel like in a burrow, where it is warm, cozy and safe. Probably this feeling came to us since ancient times, when people lived in caves, huddled together and tried to keep warm. in the component of the philosophy of the Norwegian “Hugge” there are only two words: simplicity and modesty, in other words, minimalism, it is not for nothing that the style of Scandinavian minimalism soon appeared.
So today we will talk about a very shocking and best-selling artist in Norway – Khariton Pushwagner.
His life story is often called “the story of a fallen angel”, was filled with falls to the very bottom of hell and unexplained ups in his life.
His paintings scattered like autumn leaves in the city garden and only the Queen of Norway Sonya surpassed him in sales. She is a very talented person and artist, and if it is interesting, we will also touch on this topic in the next issues.
By the number of sold works, Sonya surpassed Pushwagner, but at the price, she cannot catch up with him.
The most expensive work by Khariton Pushwagner was sold for 1.3 million crowns.
So… Who is he – this “Fallen Angel”?
Khariton Pushwagner is truly a phenomenon, he is one of the first creators of graphic novels-paintings in a world where the anarchic artistic reigns, dumb, multilayer, allegorical and visual stories telling about the events of the 20th century.
There is no doubt that Pushwagner is a mystery and the noise around his works does not subside to this day.
So, it’s time to open the curtain of history.
Until a certain time, no one knew anything about him at all, and he was literally found in the “ditch”.
Khariton Pushwagner is not his real name. His name is Terje Brofos. He was born in Oslo in 1940 about a month after the German army invaded the country into a “not very prosperous family” we would say so now, since his father had a drinking problem and the family broke up.
From his childhood memories, he remembers how the older boys put him in a sled and pushed him under the wheels of a bus. His parents and doctors thought he was going to die, but he survived and was about to survive drug addiction, alcoholism, poverty and homelessness so that we eventually find his name as one of the most important contemporary artists in Norway.
There is an creepy symbolism about his difficult childhood and upbringing, maybe his creative connection crashed into his brain when he was hit by a bus?
Terje studied at the School of Design and Arts (this institute is still functioning), but could not find his own direction in art; until he met the famous Norwegian writer Axel Jensen in 1968, in the same year, Soviet tanks entered Czechoslovakia and Robert Kennedy was shot.
Khariton and Axel start working together, live and travel to create a new form of adult comics, which combine pop art with a desire to tell stories; which were aimed at political change. During 4 intense months in a filming apartment in Oslo, they developed several comic scripts.
The first scenario was called “Escape from Vurnak.” there was a swarm of enemy ships attacking the planet. The invasion drove them into a completely unknown world and where the imagination was given complete freedom.
Pushwagner drew and Axel wrote. Pushwagner developed a completely new style of shorthand. Later, a cartoon was developed from a comic book script. Musicians and other people who came to visit them were amazed at the new style of Khariton.
“Soft City” – the most famous of the creations was invented in Fredrikstad. Puschwagner drew a car driving out of a tunnel, in which the driver stared at the audience with a blank and preoccupied aquarium gaze. Axel would later write on the windshield “Soft,” which means soft. It became a buzzword that advertising gurus would stick to all kinds of consumer goods, and for Pushwagner and Axel, softness was the epitome of an alienating society.
Thus, they worked on what many years later became Pushwagner’s novel “Soft City.”
They lived together for many years in Oslo, Stockholm and London. His friend and son-in-law Axel saved him as an artist. Pushwagner said: “He turned me from a nihilist into a man with a vision …”
Pushwagner slept in cemeteries and abandoned houses and sold his works on the street to survive. A year later he was on the verge of suicide. He was alone, penniless and completely discouraged.
His personal life did not work out, since living with an unrecognized genius is not easy and after the second divorce he falls so low that
becomes an alcoholic and drug addict. Most likely, life as a gift gave him a chance – a person who helped him and in recent years even was his agent. It was an ordinary driver, under whose hood Pushwagner slept when he was drunk just on the street. The agent who worked for him before that took advantage of Khariton’s helpless state, promising to pay off the debt in exchange for his 200 works (you can imagine that this is a whole fortune now), but Khariton managed to sue some of his works in court, they were already estimated at tens of millions crowns and return them.
His work is not clear to everyone and it is really unusual.
This is what makes contemporary art interesting, since the artist sees the world with his own eyes. And Pushwagner in his mocking manner turned all the problems of society inside out, trying to achieve world truth, he gets into constant troubles, courts, sobering-up stations, fights against universal evil and creates BIGGEST COMICS.
Glory and truth still find Khariton Pushevagner – the truth is not the way he expected it …
