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At first, to be in the middle Edvard MunchFreia frieze is about to be swept away by the dance. In the 12 rooms on display at Oslo’s Munch museum, fruit pickers’ hands reach out boldly, water flows from watering cans together, goodbyes are waved goodbye and engaged couples walk across the arm of the beach. Even Munch’s brushes, dominated by blue and green, cannot remain silent.
But when you start to ponder why these pictures – created in 1922 as public art to decorate the walls of the women’s canteen at the factory of the famous Norwegian chocolate company Freia – were created, the urge to move evaporates.
Public art is often viewed with respect. How exciting that the world famous creator The Scream also wants to create art for industrial workers! But are the needs of the girls and women who worked in the chocolate factory – often called “chocolate girls” – especially in the mind of their boss, or Munch, when this was created?
“The years when Munch worked on the Freia frieze were strange and dark for all of Europe, especially after the First World War,” says curator Ana María Bresciani, who, through the exhibition – called. Edvard Munch and the Chocolate Factory – uses the frieze to tell many stories about workers’ rights and the struggle for equality between men and women. It also touches on the violent, oppressive and racist history of Freia’s cacao – which first came from South America and the Caribbean, and later in Ghana, then a British colony – and its trade.
This exhibition marks the first time that the frieze – which was loaned to the museum until October while Freia’s canteen was being renovated – was shown in Norway outside the factory, and the second time it left the factory at all (it was already shown in 1968 at the National Museum in Stockholm). Production of Freia chocolate (which claims to offer “a little piece of Norway”) is still based in Oslo, but the company is now owned by US food giant Mondelēz International.
The cold first arrived at the factory in 1923 at a crucial time for Norwegian workers’ rights. At this time he found the freedom to have eight hours and a summer vacation, but, says Bresciani, many girls and young women could not have the variety of activities that Munch shows. “I don’t think they had access to summer cottages, they probably didn’t have access to swimming and they probably didn’t have access to art right now.”
Munch doesn’t seem to care about this. In fact, perhaps, this was the point: to teach them. “The little chocolate girls, sat there eating, understanding the pictures better and better,” he wrote, after visiting to see his paintings in situ.
It seems that there were complaints about the lack of doors and chimneys on the buildings in the painting, which Munch was asked to return to the factory to add – but he only agreed to do so if a driver waited for him outside the factory. When this did not happen, writes writer and journalist Marta Breen, he told the factory director to do it himself.
Then there was the question of price. Famous chocolatier Johan Throne Holst paid his partner 80,000 Norwegian kroner (equivalent to about 2.5m Norwegian kroner or about £192,000 today) for the job, while the women survived with little money.
This amount of money did not go forward. “Although the workers are only paid for starvation wages, much money is invested in valuable paintings, which in the long run can be sold at a great profit,” reported Arbeiderbladet, a daily newspaper in Oslo, on October 15, 1923, along with a picture of the canteen, paintings hanging in the background.
Despite this, Freia wanted to be seen as a progressive worker and played an important role in nation building. Workers were given a shower once a week, a monthly manicure (for hygiene reasons rather than cosmetic reasons), access to modern toilets, uniforms, a factory doctor and cheap paste and cacao milk (supposedly better than poor quality coffee).
The Freia frieze is one of Munch’s two public works, the other being Aula, a series of paintings for a hall at the University of Oslo. But the artist was very taken with the idea of public art. He had started working on plans – and had strong support – to create a public project for Oslo’s new city hall. But he was never sent, and when it was finished he was dead.
Although his workman’s look may indicate that he knows that the times and capital of Norway are changing, Bresciani believes that it is the fame that Munch wanted and that he saw the public committees – and his friends in high places – as a way to progress.
He said: “He was very interested in government commissions. “Because he thought his art should be in the public eye – and he was an expert at that.” From the beginning of his career he was doing shows, charging admission and selling his work, he added. “He knew he wanted to be known and he wanted to be out there.”
