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This interview was conducted by Laurent Le Vaguerèse with the friendly help of Danielle Arnoux.

Traduction Michael Mourez Ronald S. David Madeleine Lapointe

Yesterday the exhibition “Passion at work, Rodin, Freud as collectors” was inaugurated at the Rodin museum. This exhibition will be held until February 22nd. Oedipe is a partner of this exhibition.

Oedipe : Rodin and Freud were both born in the 19th century, who is the elder ?

Benedicte Garnier : It is Rodin of course. [Rodin : born in Paris in 1840, Freud : born in Frieberg in 1856]. They were born 16 years apart. Rodin died in 1917 in Paris, at the end of the First World War, whereas Freud passed away on the eve of the Second World War, in 1939. He died in London, one year after leaving Vienna. He had lived in this city since he was four, and only left it in 1938 thanks to the financial and diplomatic support of colleagues and friends and especially princess Marie Bonaparte, a former patient of his, who negotiated with the Nazis to secure his departure. His collection and personal belongings were also saved, and were transported to England soon after his arrival.

O : They both crossed the century, but they came from very different backgrounds.

BG : Rodin came from a modest environment. His father was a civil servant at the Police Department. Money was scarce and the Rodin family was more concerned with material than artistic matters. His upbringing went on, despite multiple difficulties. He failed the entrance exam to the fine arts school three times, and he did not obtain the ‘prix de Rome’which was an invitation to bid for official commissions. He only starts to come out of the shadows and relative poverty in 1880, when he receives a commission from the government for ‘The Gates of Hell’He was 40 at that time.

For Freud, the surroundings were very different. He comes from the Jewish community of Vienna, a city where his family took root soon after his birth. This is a milieu that could be best described as modest middle class, but with an inclination towards culture. His father was a merchant and wool trader. Everyone agrees that he was open minded and enlightened. He gave his son, who was 5 at the time, an illustrated book (Description of a journey in Persia). Freud had a scientific mind. He studied medicine and started a career as a researcher in physiology before founding in 1895, with his colleague Joseph Breuer, what will later become psychoanalysis. Very early on, he developed a friendship with Emmanuel Löwy, who would become a famous archeologist and with whom he would exchange ideas until 1930.

O : Their first point in common is likely their lifelong fight against contemporary perception : against academism for Rodin and against the numerous opponents of his discovery of the Unconscious for Freud. Apparently they never met even though their paths may have crossed.

BG : We have no record attesting to a meeting between Freud and Rodin. There would have been several possibilities for such encounters however, especially during the time Freud stayed in Paris when he came to listen to the teachings of Charcot at the Salpétrière Hospital. Indeed, Charcot, himself a collector, was kindly inviting artists and his students to his private mansion on the St-Germain boulevard, where the House of Latin America now stands. The daughter of Charcot, Mrs. de Liouville, would later become a great admirer of Rodin, from whom she ordered several pieces. In 1902, Rodin was welcomed in Vienna in a triumphal manner. There, he had been presenting his work for several years in the demonstrations of the Secession. In 1908, thanks to the help of Rainer Maria Rilke, the sculptor exhibited 120 drawings in the Viennese gallery of Hugo Heller, at the precise location where Freud gave a seminar at the end of 1907. It was also at Hugo Heller that he published in 1907 the first edition of ‘Delusions and Dreams in Jensen’s Gradiva’They could have met there or at least gotten acquainted with the one another’s work. We cannot say more today.

O : The middle of the 19th century was the triumph of archeology. There were two important events : the discovery of Troy (1868-1873) and the first systematic excavations in Pompeii (which started in 1748 and were actively pursued until 1815, they then stopped before being resumed in 1860). Archeology was therefore ‘trendy’

BG : Indeed there were numerous excavation sites and therefore a lot of artifacts on the market, not necessarily rare or expensive. Neither of them buys extremely rare objects or masterpieces. Artifacts can be easily shipped out of their country of origin and traders do not refrain from offering both of them new pieces for their collection. Freud owned several books of Heinrich Schlieman’s illustrating the excavation sites at Troy. Drawings represent the layers of the excavation and therefore the several periods of the city, to Freud a metaphor for the structure of the psyche. At the end of Freud’s life, there was no room in is office to put a single statue. Rodin solved this problem by expanding his property in Meudon and by constructing new buildings to show his work and collection.

O : May we quickly describe the places where these objects will be collected.

BG : We can first say that Freud and Rodin, despite their age difference, start their collections approximately at the same time, around 1893 in the case of Rodin and 1896 in the case of Freud. For Rodin this is the moment when he acquires the ‘Villa des Brillants’in Meudon, to which he moves with Rose, his life partner. He buys the land around and completes several purchases. After1880 and the commission of the ‘Gates to Hell’the government lets him use a studio on ‘rue de l’Université’Thus, he has a lot of room for the objects he purchases. Near the end of his life, after long negotiations, the government, grants him that the ‘Hotel Biron’which was originally scheduled to be demolished, be restored and that his works be gathered there, along with his collection of antiques. The latter will be problematic because, although everyone agrees to accept the bequest of the works of the now internationally famous Rodin to the government, no one is interested in is collection of antiques, whereas in the mind of Rodin the two things cannot be separated. His wish is initially granted and visitors can see the collection of antiques of the artist in the Rodin museum when it opens its doors in 1919. Public interest in the collection declines until late after the Second World War. In 1967, the exhibit, “Rodin the Collector” is organized but again the collection sinks into oblivion. In short it is a fluctuating story with ups and downs.

O : And Feud ?

BG : Freud has three rooms for his objects : His office, a waiting room and a consultation room. He does not display his antiques in the private section of his apartment, with the consequence that he will only have little room to display his objects, numbering over 3,000 pieces near the end of his life. But his collections are displayed in such a way that eventually they reflect his innermost thoughts. He lives amid the objects of his collection. He speaks to them and does not hesitate to consider them like living creatures with whom he communicates in his everyday life, in a manner similar to the actions of Hanold the main character of Jensen in his book ‘Gradiva Pompeiian Fantasy’a book that Freud will comment on in a famous article. His biographers reports that he used to always greet the statue of an old Chinese wise man that he had placed on a small table next to his desk.

To say a word on the fate of these two collections, the one of Rodin, after many episodes was kept as a whole with his sculptures, which required some effort. In the case of Freud, it is even more of a miracle since, with the help he received, Freud was able to move to London his whole collection of antiques even though the Nazis who were holding Vienna threatened his own life and his books were being burned since 1933.

O : Do they collect the same things ?

BG : There is a common thread and the exhibit will demonstrate this by showing some pieces obtained by one, which could very well have been found in the collection of the other. In the beginning they both collected objects coming from ancient Egypt, ancient Greece and Rome. Later they turned toward the Far East. Freud, after the death of Rodin, turns toward objects of more varied origins (Indigenous Art, New Zealand, Pre-Columbian art).

Freud is interested in the origin of writing as well as old languages ; he owns several books teaching how to read hieroglyphs. Rodin, who is primarily interested in the esthetics of the objects he purchases, ignores this aspect. They both identified themselves with a ‘hero’For Freud it was Schlieman, the “discoverer of Troy”, who proved that the poems of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which until then were thought not to be based on historic facts, were indeed grounded in History ; and for Rodin it was Phidias, the antique sculptor who symbolizes in his eyes the Greek statuary.

O : What about the authenticity of the objects of the collections ? We know that Freud was very concerned with this and, when in doubt, he resorted to an appraisal by the Vienna museum.

BG : Some objects have been appraised, but not all of them and of course it was found that Freud did not identify some fakes. Rodin does not really care about this question ; for him, only an artist can recognize the authenticity of a work of art through its beauty. The archeologist was of no help to him to admire an antique work of art and he rejected straightaway all the discoveries that could put back in question his vision of the antique art. Rodin refused for example to believe that the Greek marble statues were polychromes. The white marble or scarcely gilded unveiled its subtle effects solely under the interplay of shadows and lights. In fact, his only true criterion is an aesthetic criterion. And then we know, according to his manuscripts and according to photographs from that time, that he was "playing" with the objects, adjusting their shapes or using fabrics to hide the imperfect parts of the statues.

O : Maybe we can say a word about the two visual testimonies that we have concerning the apartment of Freud, which you will show in the exhibition : the photos taken by the young photographer Engelman of the apartment and the film shot in 1938 in the home of Marie Bonaparte, who is married to the Prince of Greece.

BG : In fact, these photos were taken just before the departure of Freud in conditions at once technically difficult and dramatic since the Nazis, who had accepted the departure of Freud, were watching his house, purportedly to ensure that no other object than those indexed were taken away. Engelman must therefore work without lighting. His life being threatened, Freud was not able to take these pictures with him. They were finally rediscovered only after the war, in the home of Anna Freud, where eventually they were sent. The man to whom Engelman had entrusted them, Augustus Aichhorn, had died in the mean time. We will project these photos on one of the walls of the exhibition hall and we will show excerpts of films showing Freud with Marie Bonaparte at the time when he stopped over in Paris in 1938, on his way to exile in London. Pictures of Rodin surrounded by his antiques in Meudon will compliment the evocation of Freud in his environment.

O : Among the major works that will be exhibited, one has a special importance concerning the relationship between Freud and antiques : it is the bas-relief of "Gradiva", the one where she is striding.

BG : Indeed, we will display the original work, from the Museum of the Vatican in Rome, and the replica that was hung in the consultation room of Freud. We will also display the book of Jensen annotated by Freud, the first edition printed in Vienna by Hugo Heller in 1907, as well as the translation performed by Marie Bonaparte and published in Paris in 1931. Lastly, we will have an engraving from Félicien Rops about the temptation of St Antoine, on which Freud comments in his text. Facing it, we will present another engraving from Félicien Rops “The Ordeal” that belongs to the collection of Rodin. It is Jung who shows the book of Jensen to Freud. After reading it, Freud writes his commentary during the summer of 1907, then goes to Rome in September and he buys the casting for his office. The book is published at the end of 1907 in Vienna but will not be translated into French by Marie Bonaparte until 1930.

O : What are the other important works that will be shown ?

BG : We had to make choices, since it was not possible to completely strip the Freud museum of London, which has generously lent us these objects. We will have some of the statues that were located on the desk of Freud, as well as the statuette of Athena that Freud cherished a lot. In addition, we will see a Greek vase representing Oedipus and the Sphinx. Freud sometimes used the objects of his collection in his work. He did not hesitate to use them to illustrate a matter or an interpretation. That way we will show at the same time the similarities and the dissimilarities between the two collections. The works that could have been with one and the other, the ones on the contrary that could not have been found in one or the other. I also chose to show works "aesthetically beautiful" and then there is my personal choice too. On top of that, we present a number of books from the library of Freud.

O : What will you show from the collection of Rodin ?

BG : There is something specific about Rodin, which is the importance that he gives to the part of an antique as time transmitted it to us, that is to say with the wear of time, the fracture and the cropping that fragmentation produces. In that respect, the fragment is a different artistic object than the initial object. Rodin himself does what was inconceivable at the time but familiar to us, he fashions personages without heads, and conceives the famous "non-finito" in the manners of Michelangelo and antiquity - the statue seems to emerge from the base without discontinuity - a production very distinct from the replicas produced “in antique style” during the 19th century. He also builds assemblies, where he makes a unique work from preexisting objects originating from his collection of antique as well as from the huge number of plaster casts sitting in his workshop. Rodin uses these antique objects as a proof - arguably, of course, since the object was originally whole - of the quality of his work. In conclusion, we have to say that we cannot truly give all the keys, solve all the questions raised by a collection. A part of the mystery remains.

O : Rodin is known to have often been accused of being slow to execute the works he was commissioned. Isn’t that a way to delay for the longest time possible a final delivery to the public ? Because this delivery has the consequence to stop his act of creation, to let go of its life, the life that he tries to seize in his work. Although, as we have seen, the wear of time on a work of art is in the eyes of Rodin a manner for it to continue to live.

BG : For Rodin, there is no longer any difference between the dead and the living. There is a time warp between the dead and the living. He talks like Freud with the objects, he touches them and when he strokes the marble of an antique statue, he exclaims : "This is true flesh ! [One would believe it has been molded by kisses and caresses. [One would almost expect, while groping this trunk to feel its heat" (Augustus Rodin, The Art : Discussions with Paul Gsell, Paris, Bernard Grasset, 1986, pp. 60-61). He has an extremely sensual relationship with marble.

Rodin was first a model maker but he was quickly making castings in plaster that he was reworking many times. Every statue of plaster could be reproduced in several copies and on each he could try again some additions in an apparently endless process. Therefore, he did not work on a statue but on multiple statues or monuments in a proliferating and bulimic process. This can also be found in his numerous drawings. The importance of quantities for Rodin is evident here, but also maybe with Freud whose literary and epistolary activities were abundant.

O : May we conclude with one word about those that you call “the transporters” ?

BG : These transporters are guides throughout the exhibition that immerse the visitor in the literary and artistic Europe of the beginning of the 20th century and situate the two personages in historical context : Rainer Married Rilke, Marie Bonaparte, Lou Andréas Salomé, Hugo Heller, Romain Rolland and Stefan Zweig frequented the circles of Rodin and Freud, maintained more or less deep relations with them and sometimes played a role in the construction of their collections. They drew, each in their own manner, a portrait of the sculptor and psychoanalyst. These personages will be evoked with manuscripts and books, as witnesses of their relationships. The exposition ‘Passion at work’is an invitation to rediscover these two exceptional creators through the prism of their most intimate passion.

Laurent LE VAGUERÈSE

Bibliography (a complete bibliography can be found at the end of the catalog of the exhibition) :

Ernest Jones : « La vie et l'œuvre de Sigmund Freud » Bibliothèque de Psychanalyse. PUF.1970

Peter Gay « Freud. Une vie. » Collection Pluriel. Hachette. 1991

Sigmund Freud « Délire et rêves dans la « gradiva » de Jensen » Collection Idée. Gallimard 1949

Sigmund Freud « La naissance de la psychanalyse » Bibliothèque de Psychanalyse PUF.1973

Sigmund Freud « Notre cœur tend vers le sud » Correspondance de voyage, 1895-1923. Préface d'Élisabeth Roudinesco. Fayard 2005.

Sigmund Freud : « Lieux, visages, objets. Éditions Complexe/Éditions Gallimard.1979

Edmund Engelmann « La maison de Freud. Bergasse 19 Vienne. » Photographies. Seuil.1976

Jean-Pierre Bourgeron « Marie Bonaparte et la psychanalyse à travers ses lettres à René Laforgue et les images de son temps. Champion-Slatkine1993.

Henri Rey-Flaud : "L'enfant qui s'est arrêté au seuil du langage. Comprendre l'autisme. Aubier 2008. La psychanalyse prise au mot.

Donald Meltzer et alii « explorations dans le monde de l'autisme » Paris, Payot, 1984.

Jacques Derrida « Mal d'archives » Paris, Galilée 1995.

Auguste Rodin, L'Art : Entretiens avec Paul Gsell, Paris, Bernard Grasset, 1986.

« La vie passionnée de Rodin » Jeanne Fayard Maisonneuve et Larose. Archimbaud 1989

i Cité par P. Gay in « La maison de Freud. Bergasse 19 Vienne. Photographies d'Edmund Engelmann. Seuil.1976

ii « La vie passionnée de Rodin » Jeanne Fayard Maisonneuve et Larose. Archimbaud 1989 p28

iii ibid p.86

iv Henri Rey-Flaud : "L'enfant qui s'est arrêté au seuil du langage. Comprendre l'autisme. Aubier 2008. La psychanalyse prise au mot.

v Meltzer Donald et alii « explorations dans le monde de l'autisme » Paris, Paayot, 1984.

vi Jacques Derrida : « Mal d'archives » p 144-145, Paris, Galilée 1995.

Laurent Le Vaguerèse