In 1919, Sigmund Freud theorized the concept of the uncanny—the making strange of the familiar by the addition of the unfamiliar. He speculated about the various doublings or mirrorings of the self that occur in the psyche and opened the door to a great range of narrative possibilities.

Art is, from a certain vantage, a proliferation of duplications, emendations, and appropriations, but much of that depends on the goals—and, of course, the cunning—of the creator. Such notions were at the heart of “The Double: Identity and Difference in Art Since 1900” at the recently reopened East Building of