Exhibition shines light on Freud the collector

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, is known worldwide and more than 80 years after his death in 1939, he remains a cornerstone in the study of mental health.

Born in 1856, Freud built his reputation in Austria before fleeing in 1938, following its annexation by the Nazis. He settled in London and his home in Hampstead is now a museum.

Although Freud's life has been closely studied, one largely overlooked aspect is his interest in China. And a new exhibition called Freud and China at the museum hopes to correct this.

The exhibition focuses on around 100 Chinese pieces in his collection of more than 2,000 antiquities. Although they are outnumbered by pieces from other cultures such as Rome or ancient Greece, Freud's flight from Vienna showed their importance because when he was forced to flee, he initially smuggled out just two pieces－and one of them was Chinese.

"Later on, he managed to get the whole collection to London. But in his moment of desperation, when he thought he would lose everything, one of the items he took was a jade screen that sat on his desk in Vienna," Craig Clunas, the exhibition's curator and professor emeritus of the history of art at the University of Oxford, told China Daily.

"There was an element of practicality－the pieces he chose were small enough to fit in a handbag－but this screen was a fixture on his desk. Every day when he was working, it would be in his vision. Refugees often have to make painful decisions as to what part of their lives to take with them. And in that moment, Freud chose to take this, as a fragment of his old life." Clunas said the story of Freud and China was long overdue. "It should have been told long ago, but the pandemic got in the way," he said.

The Chinese part of Freud's collection is not its biggest element, but it does include some of the finest pieces, though frustratingly there is little information about how he acquired them.

"We have no explicit statements to tell us why, when or where he got them. He kept a diary in the 1930s, which give us some hints, but no more," Clunas said.

"Quite a few pieces are copies made for collectors, but not being passed off as anything that they aren't, so some people will find the screen pretty, but it's not especially rare－but that's not what the exhibition is about. I hope people will go away thinking about the significance of China in the life of one of the great figures of the 20th century, rather than having learned specifically about Chinese art."

'Intellectual landscape'

In his lifetime, Freud was "very much part of the intellectual landscape" in China before falling out of fashion, only to undergo a revival in more recent times, Clunas said. It is hoped the exhibition and its related events will tap into that.

"In the 1980s, there was a Freud craze in China; his books were retranslated and republished and now he's part of discussions around therapy and psychoanalysis just like everywhere else," Clunas said.

"We have online events in connection with the exhibition, including discussions with psychotherapists in China who can explain the status he has there today."

Clunas said efforts have been made to make this exhibition particularly appealing to Chinese visitors.

"All the item labels, panels and explanations, and also the exhibition publication, are bilingual and that's very deliberate," he said. "We would love Chinese people to be aware of the museum and Freud's interest in China, so accessibility is an important part of that."

The exhibition runs at the Freud Museum in Hampstead until June 26.