Narcissus1.0282

Narcissus1.0282_Dali

Tate Modern, London
OGCMA s.v. "Narcissus"
Classical Sources:
Ovid, Metamorphoses, 3.339-510
Pausanias, 9.31.6-9

Salvador Dalí, "The Metamorphosis of Narcissus," what the artist called "handpainted color photography", 1937. Tate Gallery, London (presently on loan to the Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid)

Surrealist painting of a nude figure reflected in water, juxtaposed with giant hands holding an egg-flower.

"In this painting Dalí comments on the self-destructive potential, the essentially narcissistic nature, of psychoanalysis. (Expressing his usual wit, he brought this painting to show Freud, when [they] met...) The figure on the left stares inward at itself... To the right, the figure of the hand (the psychoanalyst?) ... recapitulates the figure on the left. Immobilized in stone, the egg burst forth in flower, reborn in the act of self-analysis. But it does so alone, apart from the dance of humanity that has receded to the background." Harris & Platzner Plate 16

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300 - 1990's, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.