Highlighting the experience of women and their relationship to those who confined, cared for and listened to them.
Suffolk Bunny by Sarah Lucas © Sadie Coles HQ and Freud Museum London
With work by Alice Anderson, Louise Bourgeois, Helen Chadwick, Tracey Emin, Anna Furse, Susan Hiller, Sarah Lucas and Francis Upritchard.
“What does a woman want?”
Sigmund Freud’s famous question was originally put to Princess Marie Bonaparte, patient, friend and analyst, the moving force behind Freud’s flight from Nazi Vienna to his final home in London, now the Freud Museum.
© Jane Fradgley with kind permission of Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity
How did the mind doctors of the 1900s view their female patients? What did they make of their variously diagnosed nerves, melancholy, mania, obsession, self-mutilation, tics, possession, hysteria, desire and rebellion? Why in the early 20th century was psychoanalysis liberating for so many female authors and artists? Does gender determine the way we express or are allowed to express mental distress? Some of the questions explored in Mad, Bad and Sad.
Through intimate and revealing portraits, shown alongside original historical documents, the exhibition traces key moments in the history of ‘female maladies’ and counterpoints them with women’s boldly inventive art today.
Inspired by Lisa Appignanesi’s acclaimed book, Mad, Bad and Sad also demonstrates how women today conduct their own explorations of mind and imagination in challenging works of art.
The Women
Mary Lamb, Theroigne de Méricourt, Alice James, Anna O (Bertha Pappenheim), Dora (Ida Bauer); Augustine, Elizabeth Severn, Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman), HD (Hilda Doolittle), Princess Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud, Dorothy Burlingham, Zelda Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, Marilyn Monroe, Sylvia Plath and Anna Kavan.
Untitled 2012 © Isa Genzken Courtesy Hauser & Wirth, London and Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne
The Mind Doctors
Philipe Pinel, Jean Etienne Esquirol, Jean Martin Charcot, Alexander Morison, William James, Havelock Ellis, Josef Breuer, Sigmund Freud, Lou Andreas Salome, Sandor Ferenczi, Hanns Sachs, Princess Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud, Dorothy Burlingham, Melanie Klein, Ruth Beuscher and Marianne Kris.
The Artists
Alice Anderson, Louise Bourgeois, Helen Chadwick, Tracey Emin, Elliott Erwitt, Jane Fradgley, Anna Furse, Isa Genzken, Susan Hiller, Joanna Kane, Sarah Lucas, Lydia Lys, Amie Siegel and Francis Upritchard, plus Richard Dadd and Salvador Dali.
Related Resources
Four star review > One Stop Arts
‘A powerful exhibition’ ‘Incredibly rich’ > Apollo Magazine
‘An extraordinary exhibition’ > Camden New Journal
The Freud Museum would like to thank the Museum Dr Guislain, Ghent, Belgium, for their support in the making of the exhibition.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a season of performances, talks, films and events. Click here for further information, or download the exhibition and events brochure here >