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 subsequently to another picture, called Slave Market with Disappearing Bust of Voltaire, painted 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 sceptical French philosophy of the eighteenth century and its consequences. Dalí's double image of the Bust of Voltaire by Houdon has been used many times in various works and publications to illustrate the time-space concept. Dalí did a gouac
