Classic Rock of the 90s

It was Ole Bull’s eighth birthday party, and the concert master took full advantage of the open bar, rendering himself unable to fulfill his duties with the house band. Bribed with candy, the boy filled in, ripping through a Louis Spohr composition. The performance was so spectacular that an uncle rewarded young Ole with his first adult-sized violin. The self-taught musician’s unusual playing style, memorialized in bronze on the north end of Loring Park, may be a result of countless wrestling matches with that grown-up violin. Ole Bull’s position was unorthodox: He held the violin with the brute strength of one thumb, not clasping it under the chin in the usual way. And that’s exactly how fellow Norwegian Jacob Fjelde sculpted him in 1897. A fierce realism permeates the piece, from the recently restored violin (with strings tightened to the same tension as a real violin and tuned to Bull’s preferred key) to a suit so detailed, according to U. of M. art history professor Karal Ann Marling, “you could practically cut a pattern just by looking at it.”

The thing about the sculpture is . . . well, it’s dull. Instead of seducing the attention, this bronze “Paganini of the North” stands there, stalwart, precise and sturdy. It belies Bull’s made-for-TV life: He struggled with gambling as a young man, masterminded an ill-fated colony for Norwegians in Pennsylvania (named Oleana, after himself), and all but abandoned two wives as he tootled across Europe, the Americas, and Africa. His adventures and virtuosity inspired cameos in works by Ibsen and Hans Christian Andersen. The musician in Longfellow’s “Tales of a Wayside Inn”—roughly an American Canterbury Tales—was a direct knock-off.

But this sculpture is so earnest you just don’t pick up on any of that. There’s no hint of metaphor, no rock star or satyr. Then again, that’s the paradox of great performers, isn’t it. Startlingly human, they’re capable of expressing the transcendent. It’s heartening that Minnesota’s first public sculpture doesn’t honor a deity or a virtue, but a real guy—and an artist at that. For sculpture more like TV, there’s always the legion of bubble-headed Charlie Browns in St. Paul. Or, for that matter, Minnesota’s newest public sculpture, Mary Richards on Nicollet Mall with her hat suspended right here between heaven and hell.