Word: frogner
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Norway's Gustav Vigeland spent a lifetime on one of the vastest projects a sculptor ever attempted. It fills Oslo's Frogner Park (TIME, July 16, 1945), and promises to remain among the most controversial works of modern times. With perhaps five years to go before all of Vigeland's sculptured legacy can be cast, TIME Correspondent William Gray found Oslo citizens of two minds about it. His report...
...those early years were realistically proportioned, often graceful. But Vigeland's conception of the human figure changed over the decades, and his work came more & more to reflect his new (and increasingly stereotyped) ideal-thick-bodied women of action and bull-necked men. Among the samples in Frogner Park: a male tossing a female over his shoulders; a male carrying off a female while she, with one leg over his shoulder and another around his chest, pulls his hair; a female knocking her male over with a high flying tackle...
Fruit First. In later years he was preoccupied with the cycle of human life, from embryo to the grave. One of the showpieces at Frogner is the Vigeland fountain, surrounded by four groups of "trees of life." One group depicts childhood, with babies dangling from the first tree like ripe fruit...
...theme of Frogner Park is nothing less than the birth, life and death of man. There are no monumental mementos of captains, kings and conquerors in the Vigeland cast of characters-just plain men, women & children. Massive males stagger under the weight of a heavy fountain-bowl; chubby children sport in & out of stone tree branches. A bridge over a pool bears 58 bronze figures of rugged toilers. At one corner of the bridge is a 20-ft. dragon clutching a reluctant woman whose bowed face, closely examined, reveals smiling pleasure. Topping the park is a 56-ft. white granite...
Vigeland's most enigmatic achievement for Frogner Park is a powerfully built man juggling three bronze babies on his arms, booting a fourth into the air with his right foot (see cut). The old sculptor was once asked to explain this caprice. His answer: "In dreams anything can happen...