The concept of a still life placed in front of an architectural structure through which one glimpses a fragment of the landscape is one that Dalí has made use of frequently to show to advantage the bust of Voltaire by the sculptor Houdon, which disappears to give place to a group of people. This work was done in the United States at Arcachon in 1940, in which we find again the compotier of The Endless Enigma and Gala, who "by her patient love protected me from the ironic world crawling with slaves." Dalí means by this that he attributes to Gala's gaze the magic power of annihilating the image of Voltaire in order to protect him from any vestige of the skeptical French philosophy of the eighteen century and its consequences. Scientific American magazine in the December 1971 issue used a detail from the Slave Market with Disappearing Bust of Voltaire to demonstrate the physical structure of the perception system of sight in which the optical neurons reverse the images. While painting this picture, Dalí related in Dalí de Gala: "I kept reciting without ever stopping the poem of Joan Salvat Papasseit, 'Love and War, the Salt of the Earth.'" Salvat Papasseit was a Catalonian anarchist whom Dalí greatly admired. In Barcelona he was accused of having become an extreme rightist because the only thing he did was to apologize for the war at a time when everybody else had become pacifists.
This work exemplifies the caliber of paintings that Dalí was creating during this period. It is a perfect example of an instantaneous paranoiac-critical transformation. Dalí had long been experimenting with the idea of double imagery, and this work so perfectly exemplifies it that it was used by the cover of Scientific American in 1971 to illustrate the concept.
This work lets us experience Dalí's paranoiac-critical transformations in a unique and personal way. Any change in head position, or time itself, is expressed as a switch between the shifting images of the Dutch traders or the bust of French philosopher Voltaire.
The shirtless slave girl in the foreground is surmised to be Gala herself, overseeing the transaction. The faces, collars, and midriffs of the two Dutch merchants become the eyes, nose, and chin of the bust of Voltaire. Although the brain is unable to focus on both images simultaneously, they are blended together perfectly, and in such a way as to suggest a more subtle level of interaction.
The landscape of Catalonia makes another appearance here, and parts of it are made into a more subtle double image on the left side of the painting. Notice the gently downward sloping hill, nearest the building on the right, and how it also becomes a pear sitting in a fruit dish propped up on the table at which Gala is sitting. This is particularly interesting, since like many other double images, it incorporates parts of both background and foreground. Additionally, a plum sitting to the left of the pear also becomes the buttocks of one of the men who is standing there watching the scene.