Barbara Bloom  (Los Angeles, EUA, 1951)
The Reign of Narcissism
Stuttgart, London, Zürich: Kunsthalle Zürich, The Serpentine Gallery, Wurttembergischer Kunstverein, 1990
244 p.
20.5 x 14 cm.
brochura, offset
2.200  ex.

A compendium to and illuminating the many details of the widely traveled installation of the same title. This book guides us through the “set” of a 19th century museum room where all aspects of what we see are covered with traces of the artist’s likeness. (Self) portraits which take the form of vanity mirrors, watermark porcelain tea cups, chocolates, cameos, designs for her tombstone commemorative stamps showing the hospital where the artist was born, even period chairs upholstered with a cloth pattern of the artist’s dental X-rays. The texts delve us into the worlds of Hegel on The Greek Profile, Virginia Woolf’s The Lady in the Looking Glass, Ovid‘s myths of Echo and Narcissus, Bruce Chatwin’s Utz, and Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray. The overall effect of this elegant, subtle and ironic work is ultimately quite eerie. With text in English and German.