Monumentality and historicism in Edvard Munch's University of Oslo Festival Hall paintings

This dissertation examines Edvard Munch's paintings in the University of Oslo Festival Hall (Aula; 1909-1916) within the framework of Norwegian cultural politics and fin-de-siecle theories of decorative painting. It analyzes the narrative structure of Munch's earliest painting cycle, the "Frieze of Life" (1892), and traces his elaboration of the frieze paradigm in his subsequent monumental painting cycles-- commissioned friezes for Max Linde in Lubeck (1904) and Max Reinhardt in Berlin (1906-7); an allegorical cycle entitled War and Peace (1913-1918); sketches probably intended for a painting cycle in the Bergen Exchange (1918); and commissioned friezes for the Freia Chocolate Factory (Oslo; 1921-1923) and the Oslo City Hall (1927-1936). Through these projects, Munch's changing conceptions of narrative structure, the idea of monumentality, and the ideology of style are addressed in relation to the Aula.;This study also investigates the Festival Hall murals in light of the Norwegian national regenerationist movement that emerged in the decades prior to Norway's independence from Sweden in 1905. It links Munch's art and ideas to textual and visual sources that serviced the Norwegian cultural agenda. Munch's visual mediation between Classical tradition and indigenous folk culture is viewed as the leitmotif of the Aula paintings. Moreover, this dissertation considers Munch's references to Renaissance art in sketches for the Aula within a broader discussion of Northern reassessments of history and native culture at the turn of the century. New sources for Munch's Aula painting cycle are suggested and the institutional bases for his frieze paintings are explored in this first synthetic study of his monumental painting cycles.