I can highly recommend the Gestapo to everyone

Abstract

On the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the death of the founder of psychoanalysis - Sigmund Freud and the Play on the Burden of Representation, a curated installation by Joseph Kosuth at the Museum of Contemporary Art Vienna.

The artist's book draws attention to the fallibility of print. Publications quoting ‘Ich kann die Gestapo jedermann auf das beste empfehlen’ refer to the few words that Freud purportedly wrote after his signature in order to be granted an exit visa. Although this account was proved incorrect fifty years later, the mythical narrative, perpetuated by the Internet's aggrandizing, convincingly emerges as historical truth.

Citations implicating five biographies are presented with tipped-in plates of Freud’s unoccupied home in Vienna, obscuring his personal artefacts relocated in London.

With kind permission of the Freud Museum London and the Sigmund Freud Museum Vienna.

Published in January 2015. Edition of one hundred and fifty, signed and numbered (28 x 31cm). Printed at FEBurman on an HP Indigo press, foil blocked at Benwells Ltd and hand-bound by the artist.