Sculpture
The name "Amanda" is derived from a song, or sea shanty, titled "Amanda fra Haugesund". Supposedly the song in turn refers to a real woman from the 1920s – a lone mother who made a living from selling liquor to sailors during the prohibition period.
The figurine that is awarded to prize winners originated from a competition held by the local newspaper Haugesunds Avis in 1985, to create a sculpture of the legendary Amanda. The competition was won by Kristian Kvakland from Nesodden in Akershus. The full-size sculpture now stands outside the newspaper's office, but a miniature version was adopted as a trophy for the Amanda Award. The figurine is 30 cm (11.81 in) tall, with a skirt measuring 14 cm (5.51 in) in diameter. While the current sculpture is hollow and weighs 2.5 kg (5.51 lbs), for the first few years it was made of solid metal. Weighing in at 4.5 kg (9.92 lbs) it was difficult to hoist for many winners.
It was one of these prizes that, in the year 1986, was won by director Anja Breien, who decided to sell it through a newspaper advert, as a protest against that year's budget cuts for Norwegian film. The Swedish Film Institute, which had experienced similar cuts and sympathized, bought the sculpture. In 2005, as Breien was presented with an honorary award, she was also given back the original sculpture by former Minister of Culture and director of the Swedish Film Institute, Åse Kleveland.
Read more about this topic: Amanda Award
Famous quotes containing the word sculpture:
“You should go to picture-galleries and museums of sculpture to be acted upon, and not to express or try to form your own perfectly futile opinion. It makes no difference to you or the world what you may think of any work of art. That is not the question; the point is how it affects you. The picture is the judge of your capacity, not you of its excellence; the world has long ago passed its judgment upon it, and now it is for the work to estimate you.”
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)
“Ah, to build, to build!
That is the noblest art of all the arts.
Painting and sculpture are but images,
Are merely shadows cast by outward things
On stone or canvas, having in themselves
No separate existence. Architecture,
Existing in itself, and not in seeming
A something it is not, surpasses them
As substance shadow.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)