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Norway’s Sinnataggen and Monolitten fair game for copycats: ruling

Oslo’s famous Sinnataggen (Spitfire or Angry Boy) and Monolitten (Monolith) monuments are free to be copied for profit, after the city’s municipality lost a bid to reserve rights to Gustav Vigeland’s sculptures.

Published: 15 November 2017 15:00 CET

Norway’s Sinnataggen and Monolitten fair game for copycats: ruling

Composite: Tore Meek, Terje Pedersen / NTB scanpix

The decision, made by the Norwegian Board of Appeal for Industrial Property Rights on Monday, has also been tried by the EU’s EFTA freed trade court with the same result, reports NRK.

The decision means that the sculptures can be freely copied by anyone for the purpose of making profit.

Norwegian sculptor Vigeland, who created the statues, was born in 1869 and died in 1943 – over 70 years ago, meaning his own rights over the works have expired, writes NRK.

Oslo Municipality has unsuccessfully attempted to prevent this resulting in unlicensed copies of the statues being sold.

“I completely agree with this verdict,” Inger Berg Ørstavik, associate professor at the University of Oslo’s Department of Private Law, told NRK.

No exclusive rights to works of art can be held once copyright has expired, she said.

The case has also become important in principle, since it is the first of its kind, and the EFTA ruling has added European interest in the verdict, she added.

“Both the Gistav Vigeland the sculptor and Vigeland Sculpture Park must be considered part of our cultural heritage,” the Norwegian Board of Appeal for Industrial Property Rights said in its verdict according to NRK.

The Monolitten sculpture at Vigeland Sculpture Park. Photo: Terje Pedersen / NTB scanpix

Vigeland was Norway’s leading figure in his art form in the first half of the 20th century.

Oslo Municipality said that it took consolation from the fact that no other third parties would be able to secure rights over the works.

The municipality will not be taking the case further.

“We have been given an outcome over this question and take it into consideration. We wil now continue with what is most important for us – showing who Vigeland the artist was,” Rina Mariann Hansen, a member of the municipality’s culture committee, told NRK.

READ ALSO: A-ha's Mags makes giant Oslo sculpture park

African-born director's new vision for Berlin cultural magnet

The “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” (House of World Cultures), or HKW, was built by the Americans in 1956 during the Cold War for propaganda purposes, at a time when Germany was still divided.

New director Ndikung said it had been located “strategically” so that people on the other side of the Berlin Wall, in the then-communist East, could see it.

This was “representing freedom” but “from the Western perspective”, the 46-year-old told AFP.

Now Ndikung, born in Cameroon before coming to study in Germany 26 years ago, wants to transform it into a place filled with “different cultures of the world”.

The centre, by the river Spree, is known locally as the “pregnant oyster” due to its sweeping, curved roof. It does not have its own collections but is home to exhibition rooms and a 1,000-seat auditorium.

It reopened in June after renovations, and Ndikung’s first project “Quilombismo” fits in with his aims of expanding the centre’s offerings.

The exhibition takes its name from the Brazilian term “Quilombo”, referring to the communities formed in the 17th century by African slaves, who fled to remote parts of the South American country.

Throughout the summer, there will also be performances, concerts, films, discussions and an exhibition of contemporary art from post-colonial societies across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

‘Rethink the space’

“We have been trying to… rethink the space. We invited artists to paint walls… even the floor,” Ndikung said.

And part of the “Quilombismo” exhibition can be found glued to the floor -African braids laced together, a symbol of liberation for black people, which was created by Zimbabwean artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

According to Ndikung, African slaves on plantations sometimes plaited their hair in certain ways as a kind of coded message to those seeking to escape, showing them which direction to head.

READ ALSO: Germany hands back looted artefacts to Nigeria

His quest for aestheticism is reflected in his appearance: with a colourful suit and headgear, as well as huge rings on his fingers, he rarely goes unnoticed.

During his interview with AFP, Ndikung was wearing a green scarf and cap, a blue-ish jacket and big, sky-blue shoes.

With a doctorate in medical biology, he used to work as an engineer before devoting himself to art.

In 2010, he founded the Savvy Gallery in Berlin, bringing together art from the West and elsewhere, and in 2017 was one of the curators of Documenta, a prestigious contemporary art event in the German city of Kassel.

Convinced of the belief that history “has been written by a particular type of people, mostly white and men,” Ndikung has had all the rooms in the HKW renamed after women.

These are figures who have “done something important in the advancement of the world” but were “erased” from history, he added. Among them is Frenchwoman Paulette Nardal, born in Martinique in 1896.

She helped inspire the creation of the “negritude” movement, which aimed to develop black literary consciousness, and was the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Reassessing history

Ndikung’s appointment at the HKW comes as awareness grows in Germany about its colonial past, which has long been overshadowed by the atrocities committed during the era of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.

Berlin has in recent years started returning looted objects to African countries which it occupied in the early 20th century — Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon.

“It’s long overdue,” said Ndikung.

He was born in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, into an anglophone family.

The country is majority francophone but also home to an anglophone minority and has faced deadly unrest in English-speaking areas, where armed insurgents are fighting to establish an independent homeland.

One of his dreams is to open a museum in Cameroon “bringing together historical and contemporary objects” from different countries, he said.

He would love to locate it in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s restive Northwest region.

“But there is a war in Bamenda, so I can’t,” he says.

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