- Date
- 30 September 1999
Visited Vigelandsparken (Frogner Park), more than 80 acres filled with scores of granite and bronze sculptures by wood carver Gustav Vigeland. In 1921 the townspeople recognized Vigeland’s talent and offered him a free house and studio in return for his life’s work. Unveiled after the Second World War, his public art – scores of nude sculptures, and one 470-ton monolith, showing newborns, middle-age couples, skinny, wrinkled men and pot-bellied women in love and rage – horrified many. For me, the splendor in the art remains the honest depiction of life in bare sculpted stone, not erotic or sexual.