Mark Wallinger at the Freud Museum review – mirror mirror on the ceiling

Freud Museum, London
The British artist transforms Sigmund Freud’s study into a Dalí-inspired hall of mirrors for a meta-surrealist look at art, psychoanalysis and self-obsession

Related: Full Marks: Mark Wallinger's ID runs rampant in his new show

When Salvador Dalí visited Sigmund Freud in London in 1938, he showed the father of psychoanalysis his Metamorphosis of Narcissus. It is a painting about reflection. In the Greek myth of Narcissus, as told in Ovid’s Latin poem the Metamorphoses, beautiful, young Narcissus falls in love with his own image, and simply can’t stop gazing at his reflection in a pool of water. Dalí plays optical tricks to multiply the obsessive self-regard of Narcissus, as a head becomes an egg, becomes a stone, in a world of infinite reflection.

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