Art: Vigeland's Visions

The most ambitious sculptural scheme of modern times was rising last week in Oslo's Frogner Park. It was the life work of Norway's leading sculptor (and eccentric), Gustav Vigeland, who died in 1943, aged 74. Not since Michelangelo, claimed one critic, had a sculptor chiseled such a forest of figures—over 100 separate versions of the human form, in granite and bronze, standing, reclining, cavorting, caressing, all over some 190 grassy acres. Vigeland simply ignored the Nazi invaders, and they let him go on with his sculpture. The work took 40 years to complete, cost Norwegian taxpayers $5 million.

The barrel-chested populator of...