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Disappearing Bust of Voltaire

Artwork Details

Title
Disappearing Bust of Voltaire

Maker
Salvador Dalí
Date Made
1941
Place Made
Bowling Green, Virginia, United States
Materials
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
Image: 18 1/4 in x 21 3/4 in
Accession ID Number
2007.9
Credit Line
Collection of The Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, FL (USA); Gift of A. Reynolds & Eleanor Morse 2007.9
Location
ON VIEW
Copyright
In the USA ©Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc. St. Petersburg, FL 2023 / Worldwide rights ©Salvador Dalí. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí (Artists Rights Society), 2023.
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Supplemental material

Description

This astonishing painting demonstrates the technical skill Dalí had achieved by 1940 in creating paranoiac-critical images. This double-image painting presents both a face and a scene of a slave market. Dalí visualized this apparition within a bust of Voltaire by the French sculptor Houdon. Dalí transforms the bust through the chance arrangement of two 17th century Dutch merchants in a marketplace. The bust's outline is formed by the opening in the wall behind the merchants. Their faces form the bust's eyes, and their collars compose his nose and cheeks.

The paranoiac-critical method is the principle underlying Dalí’s popular “double-image” paintings. In this context, it refers to the artist’s ability to perceive different images within a given configuration. In 1971 the magazine Scientific American used a similar painting to illustrate how human perception comprehends double images, arguing that each image can be seen independently, but they can never be seen simultaneously.

Exhibition History:
1941, New York, Julien Levy Gallery, “Salvador Dalí”
1941, Chicago, The Arts Club of Chicago, “Salvador Dali”
1941, Los Angeles, Dalzell Hatfield Galleries, “Salvador Dalí”
1965, New York, Gallery of Modern Art, “Salvador Dalí, 1910-1965”
1997, Ft. Lauderdale, Ft. Lauderdale Museum of Art, "Treasures from the Salvador Dalí Museum"
1998, Pittsburgh, Andy Warhol Museum of Art, “Dali at the Warhol”
1999, Fukuoka, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, "Dali Exhibition 1999"
1999, Shinjuku(Tokyo), Mitsukoshi Museum of Art, "Dali Exhibition 1999"
2000, Hartford, Connecticut, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, “Dalí's Optical Illusions”
2000, Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, “Dalí's Optical Illusions”
2000, Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, “Dalí's Optical Illusions”
2005, St. Petersburg, Salvador Dali Museum, "Pollock to Pop: America's Brush with Dali"
2006, Tokyo, Ueno Royal Museum, “Dalí Centennial Retrospective”
2012, Paris, Centre Pompidou, “Dali: Retrospective”
2013, Madrid, Museo Nacional Reina Sofia, “Dalí. Todas las sugestiones poéticas y todas las posibilidades plásticas”
2014, Sao Paulo, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, "Salvador Dali"
2014, Rio de Janeiro, Centro Cultura Banco do Brasil, "Salvador Dali"
2019, Nashville, Frist Art Museum, "Monsters and Myth: Surrealism and War in the 1930s and 1940s (Trans-Atlantic Surrealism in the 1930s and 1940s)"
2021, Seoul, Dongdaemun Design Plaza, "Salvador Dali: Imagination and Reality"

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