"Munch was a very inventive artist"

The exhibition Munch's Laboratory. The Path to the Aula is the Munch Museum's (Norway) contribution to the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the University of Oslo. We interview Petra Pettersen, curator of the exhibition, who explains the artistic collaboration between Edvard Munch and the University.

To what extent were Munch’s works radical and controversial at the time they were produced?

Munch's art was radical and controversial in several aspects, considering the official art scene of his time, especially in Norway. This goes as well for his style and his choice of motifs. The art of 1860-ies was in Norway dedicated to national romanticism influenced by academic realism, and the development was quite slow. In the 1870-ies artists began to open towards new styles and France, impressionism touched Norway briefly in the 1880-ies.

Munch begun his career as a naturalist in the early 1880-ies, but went quite soon over to developing his own style. His paintings from 1883 on are executed in a non-academic manner, influenced in a way by impressionism, to begin with. Broken brush stroke, sliding, partly abstracted background, lack of details which were not important to what he aimed to express, are quite typical early in his art, some throughout his career. One of the best examples is the painting The Sick Child (1885-86), heavily criticized when exhibited in the autumn 1886. Also the subject of the painting was shocking, based on the artist's memories related to his sister's death. Subjects in his most famous paintings of The Frieze of Life are based on the artist own experiences and feelings, The Scream is only one of examples.

How did the major cultural, economic, and political situations of the time impact Munch's work?

Major cultural and political situation was the necessity of building a new nation, due to the liberation from Sweden in 1905. It seems to me that Munch was not dealing with these matters in his art in general, neither politics or nation building. But he was of course aware of these issues.

In order to work in a large scale, Munch had to invent new techniques. What were the main ones?

Working in a large scale demanded a great deal of invention -Munch was not used to make such a monumental paintings. One of the consequences was the invention of outdoor studios, where Munch could execute paintings up to 5 x 12 m large. Another one was finding ways of making high-quality compositions in large scale. A good example is his first monumental draft for The History, originally planned for the rear wall (enclosed). Munch started with enlarging the small composition of 1910 on three canvases on stretchers, then taken of stretchers, attached to the wall in the outdoor studio.

Then canvas pieces to both sides were added, smaller ones also over and under the composition. The painting is made of 13 canvas pieces. We can see the same approach in building different The Researchers/Alma Mater compositions. We have also traces of Munch copying details (especially figures) from existing large compositions creating new ones. Also Munch experimented with techniques – he intended to give the decorations a dry, not glossy surface, a kind of al fresco look. He used little oil combined with water soluble binding media, such as kasein, tempera and gluepaint.

By working for the university, Edvard Munch faced the challenge of creating images understandable to a wider audience. Do you think he fulfilled this specific goal?

I think that he really managed to combine the demands of a great university decoration -through the choice of motifs with their allegorical and symbolic meaning- with creating images understandable to a wide audience. By example, The History as a faculty and as a subject at the University, is shown through an old fisherman narrating and passing life knowledge on the young boy under a gigantic oak. Also The Alma Mater, a symbol of university in academic way, shown as a peasant woman breast feeding a child, surrounded by her children. But this was of course quite unusual at this time, when university decorations were executed in classicistic style, often with motifs from antiquity or a nation's history.

This exhibition and catalogue presents as wide as possible Munch's sketches, drafts, new ideas, variations and alternative proposals to the Aula decorations. How would you describe Munch as an artist?

Munch was a very creative and inventive artist, playful, experimenting, open and always looking for new ways of expression. His Aula decorations are among the most experimental wall paintings in Europe. Being able to look at the process behind the eleven monumental Aula paintings, one may also call him extremely productive: in our collection we have 138 sketches, paintings and full size drafts on canvas, plus a big amount of drawings related to the decorations.