Lucian Freud: In Private

Photographies by David Dawson

Sigmund Freud Museum, October 9, 2013 – January 6, 2014

Opening: October 8, 2013

Curators: David Dawson and Jasper Sharp

From October 9, 2013 to January 6, 2014, the Sigmund Freud Museum shows photographs taken by David Dawson in Lucian Freud’s studio. The exhibition takes place in co-operation with the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Museum of Fine Arts). The pictures the surroundings in which Lucian Freud’s works came into being as well as his method of work. Furthermore, they offer an intimate, personal view on Sigmund Freud’s grandson, who is ranked among the most influential artists of 20th century.

Lucian‘s grandfather Sigmund Freud had supported his grandson’s talent from early on; films, notations and memorabilia in the exhibition serve to illustrate the personal aspect of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his grandson.

Painter David Dawson (born 1960) worked as an assistant of Lucian Freud and became a close friend during the final years of Lucian Freud’s life. With his camera, he documented the final 15 years in life and work of the famous painter and portraitist. After Bruce Bernard, Dawson was the only artist allowed to take pictures of Lucian Freud in his studio and served him as a model for several paintings. The show in Vienna contains pictures never shown before.
 

Photography: The Painter in His Chair, 2010
© David Dawson, courtesy of Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert

Remains of Memory, Disturbances in Reading

From the Sigmund Freud Museum Collection

The presentation “Remains of Memory, Disturbances in Reading – From the Sigmund Freud Museum Collection” takes visitors into the archive and the library of the Sigmund Freud Museum. Pictures, writings and objects, which until now have been stored away out of sight, are on display for the first time, providing an overview of collecting activity at the institution housed in the rooms where Sigmund Freud lived and worked.

The presentation was curated by Lydia Marinelli and adds material from the archive at Berggasse 19, which is compounding around 50,000 pieces.

“Remains of Memory, Disturbances in Reading” serves to provide visitors with a view into the museum’s “back stage”. In this way it closes gaps in the permanent exhibition, but simultaneously it makes them visible anew. Additionally, it also poses fundamental questions regarding the archivability of knowledge and the Freudian perspective on collecting, reading, and documenting. On the one hand, Freud had little faith in archives: in his psychoanalytic theory they are frequently described as sites of censorship. On the other hand, his work made him an object of public interest, and thus Freud himself became an object to be collected.

First editions and corrected manuscripts from Sigmund Freud are shown alongside works from psychoanalysts such as Richard Sterba, whose emigration to the USA forced him to discontinue work on his Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. Many private photos and writings from Anna Freud, who also lived at Berggasse 19 and conducted analyses there, are on view as well.

Papers, Corrections

Under the title “Papers, Corrections”, the exhibition features a section illustrating Sigmund Freud’s handling of his own manuscripts and shedding light on the work of Richard Sterba, whose papers were acquired by the Sigmund Freud Foundation.

For Freud, manuscripts were a medium for work, surfaces on which his thoughts took form. They were subjected to incessant correction or unceremonious disposal in the wastebasket. For a long time he was very careless with his papers: the manuscript of The Interpretation of Dreams was thrown away immediately after its publication. A market for autographs began to develop around the turn of the century, and in the late 1920s a Freud manuscript surfaced for the first time in a dealer’s assortment. Freud was aggravated by this development and bought back the manuscript. In the future he would be more careful with his papers.

 Psychoanalysts, Patients

The Sigmund Freud Museum library developed around a gift made by Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud’s youngest daughter. It was especially important to her that a library and a research center be established. Thus she left a part of her library to the museum and started an international effort encouraging psychoanalysts to donate books as well.

In 1923 Anna Freud set up her own psychoanalytic practice at Berggasse 19. Two years later she was already teaching courses at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society’s training institute. The experience gathered in her practice was brought together in her first book Introduction to the Technique of Child Analysis (1927).

The exhibition also features numerous items from the papers and collections of Eva Rosenfeld (1892-1977), which the Sigmund Freud Foundation acquired in 2002. This is the largest intellectual estate in the collection, and its acquisition was funded by the City of Vienna and the Austrian Federal Government. Eva Rosenfeld was a close friend of Anna Freud, and together with her and Dorothy Burlingham she founded the Hietzing School. The exhibition section devoted to Rosenfeld includes letters and signed Anna Freud originals and also a note from Marlene Dietrich.