Inside The Freud Museums

Sigmund Freud spent the final year of his life at 20 Maresfield Gardens, London, surrounded by all his possessions, in exile from the Nazis. The long-term home and workspace he left behind in Berggasse 19, Vienna is a seemingly empty space, devoid of the great psychoanalyst's objects and artefacts. Now museums, both of these spaces resonate powerfully. Since 1989, the Freud Museum London has held over 70 exhibitions by a distinctive range of artists including Louise Bourgeois, Sophie Calle, Mat Collishaw, Susan Hiller, Sarah Lucas and Tim Noble and Sue Webster. The Sigmund Freud Museum Vienna houses a small but impressive contemporary art collection, with work by John Baldessari, Joseph Kosuth, Jenny Holzer, Franz West and Ilya Kabakov. In this remarkable book, Joanne Morra offers a nuanced analysis of these historical museums and their unique relationships to contemporary art. Taking us on a journey through the `site-responsive' artworks, exhibitions and curatorial practices that intervene in the objects, spaces and memories of these museums, Joanne Morra offers a fresh experience of the history and practice of psychoanalysis, of museums and contemporary art.

Accompanying CD-ROM includes catalog of Freud's library including descriptions of titles, ownership signatures, dedications, and marginalia, with illustrations in JPEG format.

(Dover thrift editions).

Fleeing from the Nazis, Freud arrived in London in June 1938. He moved into 20 Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead, London and lived there with his family until his death in September 1939. All his life Freud was an avid art-collector. 20 Maresfield Gardens is now a museum which contains his collection, the couch his patients reclined on and many unique documents relating to Sigmund and Anna Freud and the history of psychoanalysis. Written by the curators of the Freud Museum, 20 Maresfield Gardens is an essential guide to the mind of the founder of psychoanalysis and one of the essential thinkers of the twentieth century.

An exploration of the art and writing of Louise Bourgeois through the lens of her relationship with Freudian psychoanalysis From 1952 to 1985, Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) underwent extensive Freudian analysis that probed her family history, marriage, motherhood, and artistic ambition--and generated inspiration for her artwork. Examining the impact of psychoanalysis on Bourgeois's work, this volume offers insight into her creative process. Philip Larratt-Smith, Bourgeois's literary archivist, provides an overview of the artist's life and work and the ways in which the psychoanalytic process informed her artistic practice. An essay by Juliet Mitchell offers a cutting-edge feminist psychoanalyst's viewpoint on the artist's long and complex relationship with therapy. In addition, a short text written by Bourgeois (first published in 1991) addresses Freud's own relationship to art and artists. Featuring excerpts from Bourgeois's copious diaries, rarely seen notebook pages, and archival family photographs, Louise Bourgeois, Freud's Daughter opens exciting new avenues for understanding an innovative, influential, and groundbreaking artist whose wide-ranging work includes not only renowned large-scale sculptures but also a plethora of paintings and prints.

Responses to psychoanalysis through selections from the Sigmund Freud Museum's contemporary art collection In the Alsergrund district of Vienna at the turn of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) developed a new conception of the human mind that would forever change the way people looked at art, psychology and interpersonal relationships. Today, the building at Berggasse 19 where Freud established his theory of the subconscious serves as a museum dedicated to the founder of psychoanalysis and his thought. This publication focuses on the Sigmund Freud Museum's contemporary art collection, which was initiated by American conceptualist Joseph Kosuth in 1989 after the success of his installation Zero & Not, which drew inspiration from psychoanalytic texts. John Baldessari, Pierpaolo Calzolari, Georg Herold, Jenny Holzer, Ilya Kabakov, Franz West, Clegg & Guttmann, Jessica Diamond, Marc Goethals, Sherrie Levine, Haim Steinbach and Heimo Zobernig all donated works to the museum. Acclaimed author Siri Hustvedt provides the book's introduction.

For nearly twenty years David Dawson was Lucian Freud’s assistant, companion, and model. Freud moved in rarefied, powerful circles and was tenacious about protecting his privacy. He also carefully avoided distraction. With few exceptions, he wanted only those he knew well, like the late Bruce Bernard, to photograph him. David Dawson, however, was in a unique position, and as Freud became comfortable in the presence of Dawson’s camera, photographing became part of the daily ritual of the studio. These photographs reveal in a most intimate way the subjects and the stages of paintings in progress. Few artists, if any, have had their lives and their work recorded over such a length of time. Despite Freud’s sense of privacy, his circle was wide. Among those who regularly visited Freud were figures from the art world, including art historian John Richardson, and painters David Hockney, and Frank Auerbach, along with model Kate Moss and friends such as the Duke of Beaufort. The book begins in Freud’s old studio in Holland Park and then records the artist in his eighteenth-century house in Kensington, the first floor of which was his final studio. Dawson also photographed Freud on his visits to look at masterpieces in various museums in New York, Amsterdam and Madrid. The book ends with views of the rooms in which Freud’s own extraordinary collection of paintings was hung. It is the only record of the house itself before the dispersal of the art on his death, but ultimately, the photographs create an intimate portrait of the man. The final images in this book are of the hanging of Freud’s work in his posthumous London exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Haunting and fascinating, this is a revelatory document about one of our most important and influential painters.