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Carl Milles | |
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 Carl Milles by his desk in the Millesgården in Sweden 1955 | |
| Born | 23 June 1875  Lagga |
| Died | 19 September 1955 (aged 80) Lidingö Parish |
| Occupation | Sculptor,architect |
| Spouse(s) | Olga Milles |
| Parent(s) |
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| Relatives | Ruth Milles, Tage Millés, Evert Milles, Stig Milles |
| Website | www |
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Carl Milles (Swedish pronunciation:[ˈkɑːɭˈmɪ̂lːɛs]ⓘ; 23 June 1875 – 19 September 1955) was a Swedishsculptor. He was married to artistOlga Milles (née Granner) and brother toRuth Milles and half-brother to the architectEvert Milles. Carl Milles sculpted theGustaf Vasa statue at the StockholmNordic Museum, the Poseidon statue inGothenburg, the Orpheus group outside theStockholm Concert Hall, and theFountain of Faith inFalls Church, Virginia. His home near Stockholm,Millesgården, became his resting place and is now amuseum.
He was born asCarl Wilhelm Emil Andersson, son of lieutenant August Emil Sebastian "Mille" Andersson and his wife Walborg Alfhild Maria Tisell, atLagga outsideUppsala in 1875. In 1897 he made what he thought would be a temporary stop in Paris on his way toChile, where he was due to manage a school of gymnastics. However, he remained in Paris, where he studied art, working inAuguste Rodin's studio and slowly gaining recognition as a sculptor. In 1904 he and Olga moved toMunich.
Two years later they settled in Sweden, buying property on Herserud Cliff onLidingö, a large island near Stockholm.Millesgården was built there between 1906 and 1908 as the sculptor's private residence and workspace. It was turned into a foundation and donated to the Swedish people in 1936.
In 1931, American publisherGeorge Gough Booth brought Milles toCranbrook Educational Community, in Bloomfield Hills,Michigan, to serve as his sculptor in residence.[1] Part of Booth's arrangement with his principal artists was that they were expected to create major commissions outside the Cranbrook environment.[2]
In 1938, for the 300th anniversary of the founding ofNew Sweden, the country commissioned a sculpture by Milles featuring a replica of theKalmar Nyckel, the ship which originally brought the Swedish colonists to America. The sculpture is located atFort Christina inWilmington, Delaware, near the landing site where the colonists arrived in 1638.
In America he is best known for his fountains. Milles' fountain groupThe Wedding of the Waters inSt. Louis symbolizes the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers merging just upstream. Commissioned in 1936 and unveiled in May 1940 to a crowd of about 3000 people, the fountain caused a local uproar because of its playful, irreverent, naked, and nearly cartoonish figures, and because Milles had conceived the group as a wedding party. Local officials insisted that the name be changed toThe Meeting of the Waters.
OutsideDetroit's Frank Murphy Hall of Justice is a Carl Milles statue,The Hand of God, which was sculpted in honor ofFrank Murphy, Detroit Mayor,Michigan Governor, andUnited States Supreme CourtAssociate Justice. The statue was placed on a pedestal with the help of sculptorMarshall Fredericks. The statue was commissioned by theUnited Automobile Workers,[3] and paid for by individual donations from UAW members.[4] TheGlobal Award for Entrepreneurship Research, an annual award for research onentrepreneurship, consists of a replica statuette ofThe Hand of God and a prize of 100,000 euros.[5]Milles' sculptures sometimes offended American sensibilities, and he had a 'fig leaf' maker on retainer.[1]
Photographs of his sculptures, taken for a monograph on Milles, are now held in the Carl Milles Photograph Collection, c. 1938–1939, in theRyerson & Burnham Libraries at theArt Institute of Chicago.
Milles and his wife returned to Sweden in 1951, and lived in Millesgården every summer until Milles' death in 1955. They spent winters in Rome, where the American Academy had supplied them with a studio. Milles and his wife, Olga, who died in 1967 inGraz, Austria, are buried in a small stone chapel, designed by Milles, at Millesgården. Because Swedish law requires burial on sacred ground, it took the assistance of the then reigningGustaf VI Adolf to allow this resting place.
Carl Milles expressed admiration for Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler during the 1920s and 1930s, as well as for Benito Mussolini and Francisco Franco. Carl Milles feared the growing communism and was impressed by the rhetoric of Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco. To his friend Frances Rich, he exclaimed, "I love people who clean up their homes and have Sunday finesse. I don't care what they're called, but I hate disorder...". To Olga Milles, who remained in Graz for a while after the annexation (Anschluss) of Austria to the German Reich, Carl enthusiastically sent "Heil Hitler" greetings. However, Milles was hesitant about the methods "to clean up." In 1938, he wrote to his sister Ruth: "... but no matter how skillful he (Hitler) is in managing Germany, he rattles too much, but maybe it's the only way to make others understand...".
Like many intellectuals in Sweden at that time, Milles was also involved in the appeal to the National Association Sweden-Germany. The association was formed in 1937 to show its support for Germany and as a reaction to the Swedish journalism, which mostly took a negative stance towards the growing Nazi Germany. Milles believed that the Swedish press risked dragging Sweden into the war and argued: "The press's ignorant writers, who have fantasized their small brains to disgusting mockery of a great people striving for independence from hunger and communism...".
Milles had a complex attitude towards Nazi Germany. Many letters are ambiguous, and there are also examples where he opposed German methods. But when he visited Germany, which he did annually throughout the 1930s, the criticism often subsided, and he was swept away by the general pro-Nazi "fighting spirit".
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