view or perceive reality. It was no new concept; it could be traced back to Leonardo da Vinci and his practice of staring at stains on walls, clouds, streams, etc. and seeing different figures in them (Stangos, 138). Anyone who looks at a cloud and sees something other than just a cloud uses this technique. Dali however gave this method a different twist. Dali linked his paranoiac-critical method, the ability to look at any object and see another, with paranoia, which was characterized then by chronic delusions and hallucinations. Dali himself was not paranoid but was able to place himself in paranoid states. In one of his more famous statements he said, “The only difference between myself and a madman is that I am not mad.” He was able to look at reality and dream of new ideas and paint them, which he called his “hand-painted dream photographs.” (The Persistence of Memory, 163)Through his paranoiac-critical method, Dali was able to look at everyday objects and attach a subjective meaning based on his obsessions, phobias and conflicts. The result was a new, imaginative visual presentation of reality. By the forties, however, Dali began his move from Surrealism into what he called his sculptures of the Venus de Milo found throughout the work and the face of his wife floating in the upper , another recurring theme is the dog found beneath the veil that is formed by the surface of the lake. This painting is full of double images, the sculptures becoming the toreador, the dog in the lake, the blood on the bull’s back becoming the flies, and the rock face serving as the banderillas that pierced the bull. This work is full of Dali and he himself referred to it as “All Dali in one Painting.” Another work I wish to speak of is an earlier one, which was mentioned previously, The Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire. This painting, similar to The Hallucinogenic Toreador, displays a...
