The Monolith
121 intertwined bodies from one granite block.
Godot13 โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Unknown authorUnknown author โ Public domain ยท Unknown authorUnknown author โ Public domain ยท Unknown authorUnknown author โ Public domain
A rare artist-municipality deal (1921): Vigeland surrendered all future work to the city in exchange for a lifetime studio, home and materials budget โ Oslo turned that investment into Europe's greatest public art collection without a single paying museum. His museum (the former studio) beside the park tells the deal's and the process's details.
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Vigeland is history's strangest public art project: 212 bronze, granite and wrought-iron sculptures (1924-1943) carved by a single artist โ Gustav Vigeland โ without a lead assistant, his life's gift to Oslo in exchange for a permanent studio and home the city guaranteed him, devoting three complete decades to one theme: the human life cycle from cradle to grave. The stone-figure bridge leads to a giant bronze fountain borne by giants, then the work's summit: the Monolith โ seventeen metres of one hundred and twenty-one intertwined bodies climbing as if toward heaven, carved from a single granite block that took fourteen sculptors fourteen years to hollow out. The park is free and always open within 45 hectares of the wider Frogner meadows โ a complete family outing joining art and nature, and the small Angry Boy statue its most popularly famous, rubbed by visitors for luck until his bronze gleams.
121 intertwined bodies from one granite block.
Rubbed for luck to a shine.
Nobels gate 32, 0268 Oslo