Pierced Jade Scholar's Screen, China (19th Century) (EMPIRE LINES x Freud Museum Interview)

For EMPIRE LINES’ 40th episode, Professor Craig Clunas dials in from London’s Freud Museum to tell me about curating their latest exhibition, Freud and China, and shrinking the international networks of psychoanalysis. Smuggled out of Nazi-occupied Austria before World War II, Sigmund Freud's Chinese jade screen was amongst his most prized antiquities. Much like his chow dogs and cherry blossom trees, these modern objects were taken as historic, decorative and academic goods, exposing European ideas about Asia in the 19th century. Practicing from the multi-ethnic Habsburg Empire, Freud became a global celebrity as the founder of psychoanalysis, a mental health therapy which went international during his lifetime, But how much did Freud really think about China, and how did these objects help him curate his academic environment? Curator Craig Clunas uses this jade screen as a window into everything from Edward Said's Orientalism, the two-way flows in thought between Freud and Asia, and contemporary efforts to broaden and decolonise art history. Freud and China runs at the Freud Museum in London until 26 June 2022. PRESENTER: Craig Clunas, Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of Oxford, and curator of Freud and China. ART: Pierced Jade Scholar's Screen, China (19th Century). IMAGE: 'Pierced Jade Scholar's Screen'. SOUNDS: Bernd Burnson. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES at: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines