Eroticism at its artistic best in the sculpture museums of Scandinavia
It’s tough spending a winter in Scandinavia, where by March the relentless cold and darkness can take a toll on the emotional state of any sun loving Australian. When the sun goes down at three in the afternoon and the candles burn brightly on the sills of window after square window, though, the domesticity of Scandinavia in the dark months doesn’t seem so bad after all. Have you ever seen the sun at noon barely skirting the horizon, sky glowing inky, pinky purple, the day screaming to reach around the Equator just a little bit further?
In the midst of the cold, bluster, and gloom thrives another world of warmth, calm, and enlightenment. This is the Scandinavia of winter when cultural and sporting activities in some of Europe’s most progressive societies offers residents and visitors a plethora of diversions ranging from august Strindberg plays to sold-out ski jump competitions. For those who prefer males nudes, there is no shortage of them here. Not overtly sexual, yet very sensual, rather ethereal, sometimes surreal, who would have expected cool Scandinavians to bring such human warmth to the sculpture of the human form?
Thorvaldsens Museum in Copenhagen, a petit palais built especially to house the oeuvre of Danish hero sculptor Bertil Thorvaldsen, is a must-visit for any admirer of muscles in marble. There’s a word combination you don’t see too often these days: hero sculptor. Yes, ‘tis true, when Nordic Thorvaldsen returned to Denmark after a long stay in Mediterranean Rome (as was the fashion of the time), he was welcomed back with parades and fanfare to rival our modern-day counterparts, a.k.a. coddled sports stars and vapid supermodels.
He lived in Rome for several years, a blond man in a Mediterranean land honing his skills with countless nude males. His artwork improved, too. The museum’s main sculptures are displayed individually, each in its own room, stone gods and goddesses in luxurious cubicles watching trade pass by, perfect visages undemonstrative. Sound familiar? As befits an aristocratic, anal-retentive, perfectionist, unmarried artist of his time, each room’s décor is specific to the sculpture displayed within; the ceilings are themselves exquisitely decorated works of art.
Oslo’s recently renovated Vigeland Museum is the same in this respect. Norway also had a favourite son who spent his time creating exquisite facial expressions and perfect buttocks from lifeless material. His name was Gustav Vigeland. He, too, was provided a home for his collection by city fathers (great gig, sculpting, or so it was long ago…) eager to keep Norwegian artistic patrimony in the country. The Vigeland Museum’s raison d’être is to provide background to the monumental works of art inhabiting Frogner Park next door, where Vigeland’s massive swirling pole of humanity is accompanied by attendant statuary and a colossal fountain quite unlike any other.
Vigeland’s style progressed from Thorvaldsen’s neo-Classicism to embody a more interpretive expression of emotion expressed through the physicality of the human body. Like his more famous countryman, painter Edvard Munch, Vigeland’s subjects—are as startling as they are unsettling in both form and beauty.
Stockholm, a city endowed with so many museums it would take a lifetime supply of meatballs to get through them all, is home to Millesgården, the former studio and residence of sculptor Carl Milles. Milles is better known in the art world and the world in general than most other Scandinavian sculptors. He lived in the US for 20 years as Head of the Department of Sculpture at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and left an impressive body of work in his adopted country. Before his death in 1955, Milles returned to his villa on Lidingö (Liding Island) just outside Stockholm. Here, on the splendid stone-paved terrace now overlooking the less splendid industrial works across the water (what would Carly Boy think today—keep looking up?), Milles’ sculptures are seen against the sky. Preferably blue, not grey.
Itself as eclectic as the artwork it displays is the brilliant Hotel Hellsten, conveniently located just off Stockholm’s Sveavägen. The personal project of a Swahili-speaking Swedish anthropologist cannot be expected to be a normal hotel. Luckily, owner Per Hellsten exceeds expectations in this small property for those who like to mix their cultures and shake well. Hellsten has taken beautiful antique European, North African, Indian, and Far Eastern furniture and artwork and put them all inside a classic Swedish building which used to be the national headquarters of EMI-Thorn Music (the basement recording studio is still in use). Also alluring is the very hip Lydmar Hotel, where the young and beautiful of Stockholm enjoy the social scene in the buzzy bar in this Small Luxury Hotels Of The World property located right next to the National Museum Of Sweden. Avenue Hotel, a chic, three-star property with a five-star clientele in Copenhagen’s Frederiksberg district, offers a similarly classy place to lay your head in Denmark—here, on Missoni bedspreads.
Oh, and just so you know, it’s not only statues in Scandinavia that have chiseled good looks and sculpted buttocks. Art is all around, indeed. And don’t they love Australians up here.
Written by Robert La Bua
MORE INFORMATION
Images by www.JohnDouglasArt.com
