Vigeland's Beautiful Freaks

 Alright. The beautiful, insane statues present at Frogner Park, Oslo. Let's discuss them.

Made by Gustav Vigeland, the park contains just over 200 figures. Large, naked people just hanging out.

This is the sort of thing one might imagine an alien race discovering in the far future. The centrepiece is a pillar of bodies, twisted and lumped together in a scene reminiscent of the last moments of Shin Godzilla (2016). And that shit looks awesome. But it's not all, not by a long shot, because surrounding this, we see a mass of people in different configurations. What I love most about it is perhaps the active poses many of them take. Most are in couples, and they're doing stuff with each other - holding each other, playing with each other, climbing on each other, etc. Some of these poses are downright acrobatic!

I love this expression of not just humanity and the body, but of life and living, and ultimately, our interactions with each other. There's something lovely about the slightly chunky look of these people, and there's a great sense of realism through a certain amount of variation - we see the folds of old men and the exuberance of children play out in various scenes.

And there's something about the particular look of the genitals here that looks so real and great. Round, cute scrotums everywhere. How nice.

They also are, in some cases, pretty funny. A man carries a woman on his back in the most peculiar way, while she tucks her knees up to her chest, feet and bum in the air. Another man struggles with four babies, who appear to be glued onto his limbs. What's going on here?

This is life, baby. This is what it's all about.