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The Vigeland Park.
THE VIGELAND PARK covers an area of 80 acres. The 212 sculptures are all modelled in full size by Gustav Vigeland. He also designed the architectural setting and the layout of the grounds. The sculptures are placed on an 850 metre long axis divided into 5 main units: Main Entrance, The Bridge with the children's playground, The Fountain, The Monolith Plateau and The Wheel of Life.
The Vigeland Park includes a great number of Gustav Vigeland's works. Here are 212 sculptures in bronze and granite and several wrought iron gates. Vigeland modelled all his sculptures in full size without any assistance of pupils or other artists. The carving in stone and the casting in bronze were left to a number of talented craftsmen.
On the highest point of the park, on the Monolith Plateau, rise circular stairs towards the Monolith. The figural part, with 121 figures, is 14.12 m and the total height, including the plinth, is 17.3 m high. The Monolith was carved from one single granite block, hence the name (mono: one, litho: stone). Whereas the melancholy theme in the fountain is the eternal life cycle, the column gives room to a totally different interpretation: Man's longing and yearning for the spiritual and divine. Is the column to be understood as man's resurrection? The people are drawn towards heaven, not only characterised by sadness and controlled despair, but also delight and hope, next to a feeling of togetherness, carefully holding one another tight in this strange sense of salvation. The first smaller sketches to a giant column dates 1919. Vigeland modelled it in full size in clay in his new studio at Frogner in 1924 and 1925. It only took him ten months. Thereafter it was cast in plaster. The autumn of 1926 a granite block weighing hundreds of tons was transported by sea up the Oslofjord from a stone quarry near Halden. The block arrived its destination in the early 1927 and was erected the year after. A shed was built around the stone and the plaster model was installed next to it. In 1929 the transferring of the figures could begin. It took three stone carvers 14 years to finish the work. In 1943 the last part of the column's plaster model could finally be dismantled and carried back to the Vigeland Museum, where it still can be admired. Before the shed was demolished, around Christmas1944, the public was allowed in. Almost 180 000 visitors climbed the shed's steep steps to study the result closely. |
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