20230621 Vigeland and the Oslo Museum

The next morning we got up at six and walked down to Sagene to catch the bus to Vigeland. I visited Vigeland park and took a bunch of pictures the last time I was in the city but it would be a new experience for Amanda. We walked past the rose gardens towards the main bridge lined with dramatic representations of men and women moving and fighting and she immediately plunged into the bushes to take pictures of the swans, tufted ducks, and goldeneye in the lake below.

We were camped out near the fence that separated the park from a public pool and I listened to the children shouting and splashing in the water and jumping off the high boards as Amanda took pictures.

When we eventually made it back to the Vigeland bridge I saw a group of 10-12 year old boys arrive. They seemed to be part of a school group and on seeing the statues they started giggling and pulled out their cell phones to take close up pictures of all the penises.

A busker with an accordion sat on the corner of the bridge playing the chicken dance song among other great accordion hits. The granite statues, fountains, and flesh obelisk were as impressive as ever.

From Vigeland we took they trolley down to the waterfront to visit the national museum. Once through the gate with an exhibit map in hand I left Amanda to go through the exhibits on her own while I went looking for the type of art I liked. I've grown more opinionated about art. I have almost no patience with the impressionists because that sort of hazy and soft style is used as excuse for the worst of the posers and I've seen so many bad examples it makes me angry to look at anything in that style. I knew in a massive building with thousands of works of art I'd prefer to spend my time trying to learn something from the artwork I liked, rather than giving equal attention to everything.

As I photographed the paintings I tried to remember to record the accompanying plaque because nothing is worse that coming home with a bunch of amazing images with no way to follow up. I skipped the landscapes and religious paintings and went straight to the Kittering room to see the fairytale artwork. I also liked the Picasso, Van Gogh, Degas, and some of the Norwegian artists.

They had an entire room devoted to Norwegian cubist Thorvald Hellesen. He'd presented his art in Oslo at the dawn of the cubist movement to terrible reviews and left for Paris where his skills were more appreciated. In France he grew famous and made a bunch of money. The size of his collection (he had more space in the museum than any other artist) suggested they still felt guilty they'd driven him away in 1919. On the placards that sketched his life story they hailed him as "the most consistent cubist".

Amanda took a break to eat lunch but I kept going, staring until my eyeballs grew dry and my feet hurt. When I came out of the museum I had a headache.

Before we left the building I used the bathroom. The space was an undecorated empty marble cube with a single toilet in the center of the large room. I'm kicking myself for not taking a picture while I was there because it was brutal and strange and there are not pictures of it online.

Afterwards we wandered around the tourists traps along the waterfront and made our way up to the old castle that looks over the city. Ja came down to meet us and we played phone tag until we found each other at the fort. While we sat chatting some people dressed in period clothes rebuffed a tourist holding a camera with a curt "Not right now, we're working" and hurried past carrying a box. We saw them later chatting by a sandwich board setup on the sidewalk and Amanda approached to point out the actor and the sandwich board for me to take a picture. The guy turned around and hammed for the camera.

I still had a headache and an upset stomach so we stopped at a bakery for a cardamon roll (I was pleased to see mine were as good as the professional ones) and then we fought our way through the crowds to Oslo S and down to one of the underground grocery stores to buy ingredients for Finnbiff a reindeer stew with a milky mushroom sauce and juniper berries.