Jean-Paul Morel's Archival Investigation into Camille Claudel's Confinement

Jean-Paul Morel's book 'Camille Claudel' (Éditions les Impressions nouvelles) reconstructs the sculptor's final decades through meticulous archival research. Rather than focusing on her artworks, Morel uses letters, medical reports, and testimonies to document Claudel's descent into paranoia and isolation. The study reveals how her family—particularly her mother and brother Paul—orchestrated her internment, her obsessive persecution complex toward Rodin after their breakup, and her fraught relationships with patrons and critics. Morel also exposes the harsh realities of early 20th-century French psychiatric hospitals, where individuals could be confined indefinitely at a family's request. The book aims to correct romanticized narratives about Claudel's life by presenting documentary evidence of her thirty-year confinement.