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Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire
Date: 1940
Material Used: Oil on canvas
Size: 18 1/4 x 25 3/4 inches
This work is one of Dali's most effective double image paintings. Without the slightest change in the details, the composition flips back and forth between two contradictory yet fully developed images.
On the left, Dali's wife Gala leans on a red velvet tablecloth, gazing at a sculpted bust of the French philosopher Voltaire. Before her very eyes (and ours), Voltaire's face dissolves into a group of figures. Looking closely, one can see a couple dressed in old-fashioned clothing with large white collars. They are merchants standing in a slave market, and their figures create the illusion of a sculpture of Voltaire's head and shoulders.
The outline of Voltaire's head is formed by the arch-like opening in the ruined wall. The merchants' heads form his eyes; their white collars form his upper cheeks and nose; the dark part of their clothing forms the shadows cast by his nose and cheeks; and the white ruffled sleeves of the figure on the right form Voltaire's chin.
According to Dali, "Voltaire possessed a peculiar kind of thought that was the most refined, most rational, most sterile, and misguided not only in France but in the entire world." He felt that Voltaire's philosophy of rational thought enslaved the mind to the ordinary and stripped life of its mysteries.
Dali maintained that, "Through her patient love, Gala protects me from the ironic and swarming world of slaves. Gala in my life destroys the image of Voltaire and every possible vestige of skepticism."
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