Nerdrum presented the painting as a "tribute to the natural, the true human being whom we all fear".

[1] The painting was rejected by Høstutstillingen in 1981, along with all other submissions in a similar figurative style, which created media reactions in Norway.

According to the jury president Per Kleiva, it was rejected solely because of a lack of technical accomplishment, and not because the subject was seen as controversial.

"[3] Joseph Beuys, who had been Nerdrum's teacher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, described Twilight as "possibly the most radical" painting he knew of.

[4] Twilight has been described as the start of a new course in Nerdrum's oeuvre, where he abandoned the political and social themes that had dominated his works in the 1970s.