Nr. 36: Mann løfter mann

Nr. 36: Mann løfter mann stands on the steps that climb to the Monolith Plateau in Frogner Park, Oslo. The plateau is the highest point of the Vigeland installation, and the Monolith rises from its centre. That central column stands seventeen metres tall, carved from a single block of granite. A circular staircase wraps around it, and thirty-six figure groups line the steps. This one takes its place among scenes of human contact: relationships, family, the different stages of a life.

The stone itself was quarried at Iddefjorden near Halden in Østfold, and the massive blocks reached Oslo in the early 1920s. Stonemasons spent years translating Vigeland's models into granite, and the Monolith itself reached completion in the early 1940s. Vigeland shaped far more than the figures: he designed the wrought-iron gates, the layout and the landscape of the entire park. The grounds had belonged to Frogner Manor before opening to the public in the early twentieth century. More than two hundred of his sculptures stand across them. He had trained as a woodcarver, then studied in Paris, where he encountered the work of Auguste Rodin. Over the years his figures moved from classical restraint toward a more expressive and symbolic language.

The installation is one artist's life work and ranks among the largest sculpture parks in the world made by a single person. Each granite group has been read as a study of the human condition, the struggle for existence and the search for meaning. What the figures are finally saying is left open to whoever stands in front of them. A low granite balustrade rings the plateau, broken by eight double gates of wrought iron.