Doppelbild // Double Image

Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire, 1940

Source:  The Dali Museum


Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire is an oil painting by Spanish Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí, from 1940. The painting depicts a slave market, while a woman at a booth watches the people. A variety of people, dressed in a 17th century fashion, seem to make up the face of Voltaire, while the face seems to be positioned on an object to form a bust of Voltaire. Voltaire was a French rationalist writer and philosopher known for his opposition to slavery.

Dalí describes his work on the painting
"to make the abnormal look normal and the normal look abnormal."
He used the technique of the "double image", where one form contains two or more images.

Source: Wikipedia





Source:  The Dali Museum


In his autobiography, The Secret Life, Dalí compares the perception of these double images with camouflage; 
“The invisible image of Voltaire may be compared in every respect to the mimesis of the leaf-insect rendered invisible by the resemblance and the confusion established between the Figure and the Background.”

Source:  The Dali Museum




10 Salvador Dalí Double Image Paintings (selected by Claude.ai):

1. The Hallucinogenic Toreador (1968-1970) Venus de Milo statues (repeated 28 times) form the face and torso of a toreador/bullfighter; her breasts become his nose, her face transforms into his eye, their long skirts make up his white shirt and red scarf Chill Out Point

2. Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire (1940)

3. Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach (1938)

  • Human face ↔ Fruit bowl on pedestal
  • Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
  • Wikipedia

4. Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (1976)

  • Near: Gala from behind; Far: Abraham Lincoln portrait
  • Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres
  • Dalí Foundation

5. Portrait of My Dead Brother (1963) Near: dark and light cherries (often pairwise as twins); Far: face of young man (Dalí's brother); crow/vulture in forehead serves as hair Amazon

6. Mae West's Face Which May Be Used as a Surrealist Apartment (1934-35)

  • Hollywood actress's face ↔ Interior room: lips = sofa, eyes = framed pictures
  • Art Institute of Chicago
  • Wikiart

7. The Invisible Man (1929-1933)

  • Multiple overlapping images creating hidden figure
  • Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
  • Wikiart

8. Swans Reflecting Elephants (1937)

  • Swans and trees reflected in water form elephants
  • Private collection
  • Wikipedia

9. The Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937)

  • Crouching figure ↔ Hand holding egg
  • Tate Modern, London
  • Tate

10. Femme-Cheval (Woman-Horse, 1933)

  • Woman ↔ Horse (simultaneously both)
  • Private collection
  • Referenced in Dalí's essay "L'Ane pourri" (1930)

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