Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

Archive

Volume 6 Number 3, December 2005

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Paranoiac-criticism, Salvador Dalí, Archibald and Superposition in Interpreting Double Images

by

Michael Betancourt

            The Surrealist Movement officially began with André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto (1924). Originally this avant-garde movement was concerned with Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theories as a way to create literature, primarily poetry, by unlocking the “marvelous.” This initial phase of Surrealism was more concerned with literature than with art. The primary debate of this early period centered on whether visual art could even be Surrealist. As the 1920s progressed, the original group of Surrealist poets expanded to include the fine arts, such as painting, sculpture, photography, and a number of films were produced towards the end of the decade. By the end of the decade, the answer was clearly “yes.” [I1] 

            In 1929, Salvador Dalí joined the Surrealist Movement; he would be expelled almost a decade later. However, Dalí, especially in the United States, is intimately connected to popular ideas of what Surrealism is and makes something “surrealistic.” He derived his theory in equal parts from art history and the art of paranoid schizophrenics,[i] specifically those patients whose art exhibits multiple, composite images within a single painting. It is this early theorization of a painterly Surrealism that differs from the Surrealist poets. He called this theory the “paranoiac-critical method”: it was derived from his reading and study of the psychology of paranoia, particularly the art produced by paranoid schizophrenics.

            Art historian Dawn Ades, in her discussion of Dalí’s deployment of optical illusions in his work, notes that while these types of imagery are well known, they remain atypical of Modernist approaches to art, and are the result of unknown processes[I2] . Thus, the multiple image is an area open to theorization:

Surrealism was a significant part of a more general movement not only in psychoanalysis but also in psychology and physics itself that questioned the empirical foundations of knowledge and sought to understand the concealed mechanisms that condition reality. [...] But the role of memory, or association and of cultural patterning in what we see, or the eruption of hypnagagic images as we fall asleep, or the delusional readings of the world in paranoia—and here we are squarely in the terrain appropriated by Dalí—remain largely unexplained. [...] Modernism in art is concerned with the abstract, the formal, the conceptual, and the pure material object. Surrealism alone has systematically sought the interface between internal and external realities, illusion and vision, perception and thought.[ii]

Ades’ recognition of the parallels between Surrealism, psychology, and quantum physics suggests that in the 1920s and 30s, a general paradigm shift was underway toward an understanding of reality as explicitly different from what our senses present as being. [I3] An examination of linkages between these fields is therefore logical. This paper proposes a theoretical model for understanding certain perceptual phenomena called “multiple images”, drawing upon both Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method and David Bohm’s later theorization in quantum physics. Contemporary work by mathematician John Holland in complex adaptive systems (cas[I4] ), a method for mathematically modeling how an organism (singly or as a group) fits itself to its environment, provides a model for links between the quantum physics description of reality and the interpretative procedures Dalí calls “paranoiac-critical”: the perception of multiple images.

            ‘Multiple images’ are a particular type of optical illusion where the contents of the image are ambiguous, allowing a series of discrete, unique visual interpretations of what the image displays.

            Understanding the paranoiac-critical method requires an examination of the works of Dalí and the Mannerist painter Arcimboldo [I5] (figs. 1, 2), an earlier artist whose paintings of composite heads influenced all the Surrealists, including Salvador Dalí. In the various Surrealist Dictionaries Arcimboldo is identified as a Surrealist artist before Surrealism existed. The examination of multiple images must also consider the parallels between those images and other types of optical illusions, and outline both schizophrenia and John Holland’s concepts of ‘rules’ and the “bucket-brigade”—two key parts of his cas model.

            Common to all multiple images is the specific type of visual paradox built around ambiguous visual content in the specific image. While Salvador Dalí was technically only a member of the Surrealist Movement for a short period early in his career, his late work “rethinks” the issues suggested in his paranoiac-critical theory in ways that reveal an inherent difference with Surrealism. These differences imply the possibility of a general theoretical model for visual phenomena.

            The separation of Dalí from the other Surrealists is implicit from his membership in the Surrealist Group. His joining the moment was always problematic because his work as a painter (arguments about appropriate subject matter) and as a theorist (a different conception of Surrealist automatisme—the term employed by the Surrealists for autonomous mental processes they would try to document in their work by using the clinical tools of psychology such as “automatic writing” or word association) challenged the forms of engagement with psychoanalysis used by his fellow Surrealists. The more common approach to Surrealism followed by Breton et al. was a presentational model where the artifacts produced may or may not describe mental function. The form automatisme took with Breton and the other Surrealist poets was based around word association and (supposedly) undirected stream of consciousness writing. The results of this procedure were evocative, but also extremely hermetic and personally idiosyncratic, a description of a singular process: the poet’s.

            In contrast to the literary, word association-oriented approach to automatisme, Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method is experiential instead of presentational. Because the paranoiac-critical method creates images that, in principle, are viewable by anyone, the images he creates allow an examination of autonomous visual interpretative processes. These images present a particular kind of ambiguity about their contents. His theory of multiple images provides points of connection with the paradoxical indeterminacy known in physics as quantum superposition—the coexistence of two independent, incompatible values, where the collapse of the superposition into one state or the other is equally probable.[I6]  Superposition is a good conceptual tool for describing the coexistence of multiple images since their sudden shift from one image to another, completely different one mirrors the sudden quantum “jumps” that superposition describes.

            Salvador Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method proposes a systematic way of creating double images. These pictures are a special form of paradox, one whose natural form is experiential instead of logical; all double images propose a perceptual paradox that “contains” two or more simultaneously discrete images visible to human consciousness. This parallels quantum superposition, and like other optical illusions, may be indirect evidence for superposition in the biology of the brain.[iii] [I7] The defining feature of all double and multiple images is the viewer’s perceptions oscillating between a set of potentials; it is also the most obvious characteristic of paranoiac-critical imagery.

            Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method claims this oscillation mimics the associative process typical of schizophrenic paranoia. He believes these visions are potential for all viewers. These ideas form the foundation of his theory Surrealist automatisme:

Standing altogether apart from the influence of the sensory phenomena with which hallucination may be considered more or less concerned, the paranoiac activity always employs materials admitting of control and recognition. It is enough that the delirium of interpretation should have linked together the implications of the images of the different pictures covering a wall for the real existence of this link to be no longer deniable. Paranoia uses the external world in order to assert its dominating idea and has the disturbing characteristic of making others accept this idea’s reality. The reality of the external world is used for illustration and proof, and so comes to serve the reality of the mind.[iv]

Dalí is interested in the synthetic aspects of paranoid schizophrenia. He adapts from this disease the paranoid’s ability to combine disparate and otherwise unrelated materials through an illogical associative process based on resemblance. Paranoids “bend reality” to their obsession—by assembling and demonstrating a link that is not otherwise necessarily present. The “delirium of interpretation” is this linking together by the “paranoid” mind; these connections form the basis of Dalí’s theoretical procedure. A combination of multiple interpretations—the separate images—superimposed over one another is crucial to understanding how his “paranoid critical methodology” works. As Dalí observes, it is not the actual sensory experience that concerns him but the “internal” interpretations of experience by the observer; this interest places his work in the realm of experiments with cognitive science as much as in avant-garde art. The paranoiac-critical methodology is a systematic framework for producing the same mental state in ‘normal’ viewers as found in paranoids. The paranoiac-critical paintings allow normal individuals to see the process of their own vision.

            In the same way, optical illusions reveal multiple images and demonstrate limits to the viewer’s interpretative expertise: optical illusions are a type of visual paradox, just as Dalí’s paintings are. The difference between the psychotic and the ‘normal’ individual lies in the individual’s ability to resolve these paradoxes. The pathological mind cannot escape the contradiction central to any paradox. The “movement” of these paradoxes in the individual’s vision is the mind shifting between different possible interpretations, unable to resolve the content of the picture. Dalí argues the oscillation these images exhibit is equivalent to a psychosis:

The way which it has been possible to obtain a double image is clearly paranoiac. By double image it is meant such a representation of an object that it is also, without the slightest physical or anatomical change, the representation of another entirely different object, the second representation being equally devoid of any deformation or abnormality betraying arrangement.[v]

This theory finds a powerful illustration in  Invisible Sleeping Woman, Horse, Lion (1930) (fig. 3), one of the earliest canvases he produced utilizing this concept. The precise content is ambiguous, but constrained, as the title proposes. In looking at this painting, the viewer can see a procession of distinct, yet coexisting, images—the sequence of “invisibles” in the title. Each different interpretation exploits the ambiguous potential of the pictorial elements; this oscillation of immanent content requires the viewer’s internal interpretations to be inconsistent with external reality. These shifts suggest perception undergoes a continuous self-check or feedback, producing the transformations Dalí proposes as “paranoiac-critical.” This visual superposition of imagery is one that individuals can experience.

            Dalí is correct both in his identification of this superposition as equivalent to a psychosis, specifically a form of schizophrenia, and in his claim that everyone is potentially capable of seeing the shifts that identify the multiple image as such; as a result, the individual is able to experience a superposition in the reality that is experienced everyday. Dalí’s foundation for his theory is correct. Schizophrenia is a pathological exaggeration of ‘normal’ mental function.’  In the original description of schizophrenia as a mental disease in 1912, Eugen Bleuler concluded that its basis was a pathological ambivalence that exaggerates typical situations into an irresolvable conflict. In quantum physics, this conflict is called “superposition.”  Bleuler’s definition of this “ambivalence” is a mental paradox that the dysfunctional mind cannot resolve:

(1) Ambitendency, which sets free with every tendency a counter-tendency.

(2) Ambivalency, which gives to the same idea two contrary feeling tones and invests the same thought simultaneously with a positive and a negative character.[vi]

Pathological ambivalence suggests the development of an irresolvable inconsistency that forces the mind to adopt other solutions than what ‘normal’ minds would employ. This possibility is consistent with Bleuler’s observations of schizophrenia as a disease defined by symptoms with no apparent psychological cause.[vii] ‘Normal’ thinking is ‘normal’ simply because it is the most common successful adaptation to the environment. The schizophrenic has “lost” this adaptive ability, making novel situations in experience problematic. Instead, the schizophrenic adopts less-than-successful or inappropriate responses to new situations. These “invented” responses mimic the creative response in every way but one: the creative response is under the artists’ conscious control and is chosen; the schizophrenic response is neither chosen nor consciously controlled. Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method creates a situation where the viewer can choose to experience the multiple images’ shifting—this element is the key difference between his version of Surrealism and that of other Surrealists.

            The paranoiac-critical method exploits low-level inconsistencies in the visual interpretations of the world. The ambiguity of interpretation begins with “how” the optical illusion is seen. It is determined by an autonomous (internal) interpretative decision about the relationship between different parts of the image. Representational imagery is contingent upon the combination of elements in preconscious processing of the image. It is the process of creating relationships that determines what is seen. In  Invisible Sleeping Woman, Horse, Lion (1930) (fig. 3), the decision that a series of wavy lines are a woman’s hair directs the interpretation towards the sleeping woman, while a different decision creates the horse, or the lion from the same pattern of lines. At the same time, these “parts” can decompose from the main subjects into a series of standing figures, both male and female, whose identity is distinct from the composite. The relationships between these components are unstable. In the blink of an eye, they can shift and become one of the other “images” of this painting. All of these interpretations coexist as potential images, each serving as an example of how the component parts could be combined. As additional sets of relationships emerge, the oscillation from one image to another becomes more complex. Invisible Sleeping Woman, Horse, Lion demonstrates that the relationship between abstraction and representation is largely a matter of the observer’s interaction with the picture.   

            Dalí’s observations about the relationship between these cognitive superpositions and ‘normal’ thinking and experience are implicit in psychoanalyst Mark Garrison’s discussion of schizophrenia. Garrison argues that when treating schizophrenics, psychologists should keep in mind the many points of correlation between the thought processes employed in this pathology and those that function in poetically inflected language and art.  He reiterates a point made by the Surrealists: that the difference between pathology and ‘normal’ is a matter of degree, not of type.[viii]

            As with Bleuler, Garrison’s account of schizophrenic thinking places ambiguity  in a central position. Garrison views the indeterminate character of the ambiguous as the cause of schizophrenia, a direct parallel to the visual transformations of Dalí’s paranoiac-critical theory. The difference between a pathological and ‘normal’ thought process arises from how the ambiguity is “handled” by the interpreting mind. In schizophrenia, ambiguity polarizes into ambivalence (superposition), blocking ‘normal’ solutions.

            However, Garrison’s retheorization of schizophrenia proposes a model for understanding how the mind “solves” the problems posed by superposition through “opposition”—the autonomous generation of negated interpretations. In ‘normal’ minds, opposition changes ambiguity into either/or propositions, allowing the mind to make a decision. This concept is identical to the process of John Holland’s complex adaptive systems’ process of creating ‘rules.’  Holland believes calls the way subsequent interpretations strengthen earlier ones by reusing them as their basis and support the “bucket-brigade.” An early interpretation is much stronger than a later one, but shifts in initial beliefs result in radically different outcomes. This model provides an account of the function of Salvador Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method. Changes in initial interpretations of relationships between the component parts of an image are what cause Dalí’s visual shifts. These transformations are evidence for a superposition resolving into a particular outcome.[ix] This resolution to the paradox causes the world to fall into recognizable order. Garrison’s “opposition” makes sense of the world in ‘normal’ minds:

Opposition solves not only ambivalence but also indecision, forcing an either/or decision or no decision at all. Ambivalence occludes multiple alternatives, ambiguity, and multiple meanings (polyvalence), forcing a dominating tension of opposites. Ambivalence—pathologized—both shrinks the world into oppositions and prevents (blocks) movement through it.[x]

Faced with an array of equal potentials, the ambivalent nature of human perceptions force an interpretative decision—even if that decision is later demonstrated incorrect through trial and error. Without making that choice, there can be no evolution towards successful interpretations. These successes derive from testing past experience against immanent reality: thus, this model describes a process of change, evolution and adaptation. Both ‘normal’ and ‘schizoid’ minds employ the same method, but the difference between one and the other results from how the ambivalent nature of reality (adaptation to inconsistency and superposition) is resolved.

            Thinking in terms of oppositions has an evolutionary advantage since it enables action without certainty. Such ability is a characteristic of the testing employed by John Holland’s complex adaptive systems models where different interpretations or ‘rules’ compete:

The ‘rules’ can be viewed as hypotheses that are undergoing testing and confirmation. On this view, the object is to provide contradictions rather than to avoid them. That is, the rules amount to alternative, competing hypotheses. When one hypothesis fails, competing rules are waiting in the wings to be tried. … This credit-assignment procedure, which I call a bucket brigade algorithm, strengthens rules that belong to chains of action terminating in rewards. This process amounts to a progressive confirmation of hypotheses concerned with stage setting and sub goals.[xi]

Holland’s “rewards” are the physically measurable results of successful interactions caused by the predictive capabilities of correct hypotheses about the environment. The ‘rule’ and its interpretation “work.” Any action that can be taken is learned through years of practice. This process of learning is the “bucket brigade.” It is what happens when “the right choice” creates the desired outcome. In the multiple images this “right choice” in how to see the picture is indeterminate, thus it oscillates.

             The ability to encounter a consistent sensory world can clearly be modeled by cas’ model for approaching learned behavior. Physicist David Bohm’s view of experience and interpretation expands this observation:

Thought is a material process whose content is the total response of memory, including feelings, muscular reactions and even physical sensations, that merge with and flow out of the whole response. … All these are one process of response of memory to each actual situation, which response in turn leads to a further contribution to memory, thus conditioning the next thought.[xii]

The result of Bohm’s description playing out in actuality is Feedback. Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method implies this rechecking of immediate experience as the foundation for the shifts in interpretation. Feedback provides a check on the progress of Holland’s bucket-brigade, allowing it to “reset” and start over in its strengthening of interpretations. As a model for interpretation, this framework allows both flexibility and varying degrees of probability in the interpretation of visual phenomena, generating a range of possible approaches. It is a procedure where regardless of the starting conditions, the process is a dynamic interchange between observation, memory, and activity, It is also capable of the sudden reordering and shifts in perception that are the basis of Dalí’s method. Perceptions develop and are necessarily changed in response to changes in reality. Less successful interpretations are necessarily refined to become more successful.

Interpretation is thus a procedure of continuous refinement that cannot ever reach epistemological certainty: thus, Bohm argues that every interpretation should be regarded as compromised by the historical circumstances of its formulation. His interpretation implies that while reality does exist, the individual’s internal model of the world is an abstraction that provides the necessary information for survival within that unknowable reality. Bohm continues his discussion by dividing  interpretations between those internal to the mind and those originating in sense encounter:

It is clearly extremely important that no part of what originates in the response of memory be missed or left out of awareness. That is to say, the primary ‘mistake’ that can be made in this field is not the [1] positive one of wrongly assigning what originates in thought to a reality independent of thought. Rather it is the [2] negative one of overlooking or failing to be aware that a certain movement originates in thought, thus implicitly treating that movement as originating in non-thought.[xiii]

Interpretations of type [2] would be those ideas which are reified, those imaginary things an interpreting mind treats as if they exist in the environment. The confusion Bohm describes is an interpretative error—either confusing an interpretation for reality or confusing the model for what it seeks to describe. The ability to make this distinction is one of the key differences between ‘normal’ and pathological thought processes described by Bleuler and Garrison.

            Multiple images specifically create a superposition in interpretations because observations of them in reality are unstable. The nature of these images mislead the individual’s sense perceptions so the feedback used to “check” perceptions forces a shift in what the perceived image is. These shifts that define the multiple image.

            The theoretical overlap between Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method, schizophrenia, and superposition can be generalized to be a broad model for visual interpretation. This extension requires some clarification of the interpretative problematics of multiple images. The optical illusion called a “Necker Cube” (fig. 4) simplifies the complex movement of internal decisions seen in Dalí’s painting. The orientation of this cube emerges from how it is placed in a virtual “space.” Which ‘face’ of the cube is ‘up’ sets the context; this decision is made almost unconsciously. In deciding the orientation of the cube, the viewer makes the same representational decision as in Dalí’s painting; this choice shapes the interpretation. The nature of these double images forces the viewer to accept two (or more) incompatible alternatives, bringing the decisions about the representation into consciousness. Dalí calls this choice of context “desire”:

I challenge materialists to examine the kind of mental attack which such an image may produce. I challenge them to inquire into the more complex problem, which of these images had the highest probability of existence if the intervention of desire is taken into account; and also the problem, even graver and more general, whether the series of these representations has a limit, or whether, as we have every reason to think, such a limit does not exist, or exists as a function of each individual’s paranoiac capacity.[xiv]

“Desire” determines how perception changes sense-data into vision by constraining the interpretation of that experience to organize what is seen in a specific fashion; thus the process is “rational” even though the shifting through associations is not. “Paranoiac capacity” refers to each viewer’s natural ability to invent the potential transformations of double images. This encounter is a mental experience, not a physical change in the painting. The intellectual response makes an image cohere. Because it is a process of interpretation, the limit Dalí proposes will necessarily vary from individual to individual, depending on each person’s specific experiences, memories, and propensity for the progression of different interpretations from the same perceptual stimulus. Holland’s cas model suggests this ability to see multiple images is a skill that can be learned and improved with practice.

            All double images exploit the uncertainty in human interpretations of the world around; the shifts they exhibit reveal the biological basis of perception. This form of image suggests how perceptions have developed to generate the dynamic reality the individual apparently inhabits but is unable to directly perceive. In examining optical illusions (as with other kinds of paradoxes), the viewer becomes aware of the limits of interpretative expertise.

            What is visible in Invisible Sleeping Woman, Horse, Lion (fig. 3) provides a structure for multiple interpretations in much the same way that the collections of discrete objects in the work of the Mannerist Arcimboldo (figs. 1, 2) form “composite heads.” The semiotician Roland Barthes has examined Arcimboldo’s pictures, and his observations can describe any painting of this type. While Barthes’ theory is linguistic instead of perceptual, his observations about the process of seeing apply to both theories:

Distance and proximity are promoters of meaning. Everything proceeds from spacing out or staggering of articulations. Meaning is born from a combination of non-signifying elements (phonemes, lines); but it is not sufficient to combine these elements to a first degree in order to exhaust the creation of meaning: what has been combined forms aggregates which can combine again among themselves a second, a third time.[xv]

Barthes treats the various parts of the image as “signs” manipulated by the artist. His metaphor—language—is useful in talking about multiple images because language is not limited to a singular potential. It is the openness of double images that allows Barthes’ metaphor. Nevertheless, Dalí and Barthes recognize that the transformations occurring in multiple images require a basic uncertainty in perception.[xvi] The interpretation of visual information must be much less stable than it appears. Several incompatible interpretations must simultaneously exist “in” a picture. The shifts are indirect evidence of how interpretations of sense-data continually hides some form of superposition in the environment. In multiple images, this innate multiplicity becomes actual, instead of remaining potential.

            Dalí’s theory is not completely incompatible with Barthes. The difference between their theories is that for Roland Barthes, human interpretations of all visual phenomena are a form of language. Although his assumption does not pertain to Dalí, Barthes’ model also recognizes desire as the “device” of image revelation:

It is the human subject that is asked to move. … It implies a relativization of the space of meaning: including the reader’s gaze within the very structure of the canvas … shifts from a Newtonian painting based on the fixity of objects represented to an Einsteinian art according to which the observer’s movement participates in the work’s status.[xvii]

Barthes’ “Einsteinian art” is closer to a quantum mechanical view of reality since the observer “interacts” through the interpretation to shape the result. This interaction of observer and subject determines the meaning of what is seen. This is Barthes’ concept of “distance”, and it parallels Dalí’s own commentary on the “function of each individual’s paranoiac capacity.” Without inconsistency in interpreted observations and a feedback process “checking” those observations, these apparent transformations would be impossible. Double images are visual contradictions; they are paradoxes experienced instead of logically deduced.

            Even though Barthes is not discussing Dalí’s work, Arcimboldo’s double images are one of Dalí’s acknowledged sources for the paranoiac-critical image. The individual parts of these heads are separate units in themselves, having their own details completely distinct from the image generated by their arrangement. The separate parts are also wholes. In double images, each “whole” is separated so the individual identity is distinct from their combination. Each “whole” is seen as a procession of images; these shifts are directly analogous to the collapse of quantum superposition into specific states..[xviii] However, these “positions” are not final, implying that even though the perceptions present the viewer with apparently stable, discrete understandings of the environment, its apparent stability is an illusion maintained moment-to-moment. It can abruptly change. Multiple images create changes in comprehension whose biological origins may be in the ability to identify camouflage and simulated objects in the natural world. Reflected in these oscillations is a mind actively engaged in placing itself in an environment through a process of evaluation and re-evaluation of immediate sense-data.

            Paranoid schizophrenics interpret everything in the world according to their delirium, bending reality to meet their specific needs; this is Dalí’s concept of ‘desire’ at its pathological source. “Desire” however, does more than determine what image appears first in Salvador Dalí’s theory. It is the controlling factor directing the procession of images consciously and unconsciously.  “Desire” is the decisions the individual makes about how the parts cohere. This Surrealist concept is automatisme in action. The images seen are derived from the viewer’s own psychological needs and wants. Where Dalí writes about a psychological “need,” Barthes calls the same decision “distance”:

It is by an effort of distance, by changing the level of perception, that I receive another message, a hyper-metropic apparatus which, like a decoding grid, allows me suddenly to perceive the total meaning, the “real” meaning. Thus Arcimboldo imposes a system of substitution … and, in the same way a system of transposition.[xix]

The conscious choice of the observer in how to look at a composite head by Arcimboldo determines what portion of that image appears as a component—for example, a “nose”—and what the relationship between those components may be—the formation of a face or the “disintegration” into other forms. When interpretation focuses on the details as units complete in themselves, it creates a radically different picture, independent of the head.

The shift from one ‘level’ to another is no different that the movement between the separate ‘images’ of Dalí’s work. Dissolution into the copulating bodies of  Invisible Sleeping Woman, Horse, Lion corresponds to this separation of larger wholes from smaller, but complete, parts in Arcimboldo’s heads. The “level” Barthes describes is literal: how the totality of details in a painting are understood to relate to one another allows the perception of different images. The simplest example of this type of visualization is demonstrated by another optical illusion called “Counterchange Faces” (fig. 5).

A single line bisects a square in such a way that it describes two separate, but linked, volumes. The decision about what is “volume” and what is “space” determines which of the two potential faces-in-profile is seen. The transposition of ‘volume’ and ‘space’ in the image generates different—but equally valid—understandings of the picture. Dalí calls this shifting interpretation “paranoiac-critical.” It is a movement between necessarily contradictory understandings of an image where neither version can be called “correct” or “incorrect.” In this regard, it is identical to the Necker Cube and other double images.

            Salvador Dalí’s The Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire (1940) (fig. 6) is considerably more complex than the “counterchange faces” but proceeds through the same interpretative procedure. It is a more specific example of the double image in Dalí’s work. Where Invisible Sleeping Woman, Horse, Lion leaves little room for other imagery not connected to the multiple image, The Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire presents a double image within a stable environment. The paranoiac-critical component has become one feature of a larger picture. As with Barthes’ description of Arcimboldo’s composite heads, this picture presents multiple images within a limited set of relationships: the parts and the whole are separate, identifiable objects that can be understood as totally distinct representations, independent of one another.

The bust of Voltaire is composed from a base and a pair of women standing together. The location of these details within the composition as a whole creates their dual role: a bust of Voltaire appears in one set of “details,” while a pair of women standing beneath an arch appears in another. The shift between these images is the formal focus of Dalí’s work:

The truly paranoiac-critical moment comes when the calcified images begin to liquefy and a stream of associations flows forth.[xx]

This “burst” of associations proceeds “laterally,” each obscuring the previous interpretation as it will be obscured by the next. Whatever meaning the viewer finds for this canvas must include the de/composition of Voltaire and the two women in the slave market. Meaning appears through the idea of the sequence itself much more than within any singular image from that sequence—thus it corresponds to a schizophrenic movement of association contained within otherwise ‘normal’ perception.

            The unfettered associations rendered visible by the paranoiac-critical methodology differ from the Surrealist idea of automatisme in one crucial way: in automatisme, the “dreaming” happens in the mind of the artist, is documented by the artwork, and presented to an audience.[xxi] However, in Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method and the art it produces, the audience is actively creating the sequence of images, rather than passively receiving them. Dalí’s method is a participatory Surrealism instead of a presentational one.[I8] 

            There is no distinction made between artist and audience in Dalí’s theory. Typical automatisme is a private activity contained and controlled by the poet writing separately from the audience reading. In a paranoiac-critical image, the audience will inevitably repeat some aspects of the process the artist used to generate these images. Dalí views this process as a type of painting where the content remains virtual until someone looks:

The new images which paranoiac thought may suddenly release will not merely spring from the unconscious; the force of their paranoiac power will itself be at the service of the unconscious.[xxii]

Andre Breton’s definition of Surrealism as the unrestrained recording and presentation of “pure psychic automatisme” posits a passive audience where the consciousness on display is an artifact. The paranoiac-critical method takes the passive recording of literary Surrealism and reverses it, creating an active, participatory automatisme that any viewer can see. [I9] Instead of documenting this phenomenon, these paintings provoke an encounter with psychosis while not actually having it; thus, it is a controlled psychosis; in paranoiac-criticism, the act of looking becomes an experience shared by artist and audience alike, demonstrating how the unconscious mind’s low-level interpretations of the painting. Whenever one of these pictures “shifts,” it is automatisme in action: the audience in Dalí’s system participates in the Surrealist “game” as players instead of observers of other’s “play.” His popularity and close linkage to the vulgar concepts of “surrealistic” may be due to this more inclusive and accessible version of automatisme. The ability to see these images is shared by everyone to some degree. In Dalí’s theorization and through his art, Surrealism becomes accessible to non-Surrealists. Studying them teaches a different, more flexible, approach to visual phenomena.

            The paranoiac-critical methodology exploits the viewer’s natural ability to visually interpret the world around him/her. Generating optical illusions—paradoxes—is the point of this process. These pictures, like Arcimboldo’s composite portraits, allow a viewer to choose how the image is seen—what “level” of perception is of interest. This adaptive process is specific to visual perception that relies on and demonstrates superposition as an active presence in perceptions that remains inaccessible to the viewer under normal circumstances.

            Salvador Dalí’s paranoiac-critical paintings belong to an early stage of his development. His later works force a greater awareness of the role of perception in the apparent subject and form of painting. The “distance” that both he and Barthes imply as lying between different interpretations becomes a physical feature of his late painting. In Ear with Madonna (1958) (fig. 7), or Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Rothko) (1976) (fig. 8), the vagaries of eyesight play a central role in the visible content of the painting. Optical distortion is the formal content of these works. They exploit the resolution of the human eye to create their effects: physical proximity alters the interpretation of image content. In describing Ear with Madonna, Dalí observes:

Quasi-gray picture which, closely seen, is an abstract one; seen from six feet it is the Sistine Madonna of Raphael; and seen from forty-five feet it is the ear of an angel measuring five feet.[xxiii]

Both images—the “Madonna” and the “ear”—are implicit, coexisting on one canvas. The image of the Madonna is a network of lines and shadows with a moiré pattern. The ear is depicted by the shape of the moiré pattern superimposed over the Madonna. The shift from one to the other results from changes in real, physical proximity—the scale of the image as determined by distance between viewer and painting; as the size of the image decreases, the moiré pattern of white dots become a substantial form, and the Madonna disappears. [I10] The interpretative paradox of Dalí’s earlier paranoiac-critical images presents the inconsistency in mental interpretation. In these later paintings, it becomes literally physical space. This space is Barthes’ metaphor of ‘distance’ rendered visible. Apparent scale creates the interpretative effect as the appearance of the canvas drastically changes as the observer approaches. Physical location affects the ability to see one image or another. What Barthes metaphorically describes as the motion of interpretation in understanding multiple images is dramatized by these paintings.

            The role of movement, vision, and the interpretations of the environment become obvious through these encounters. The viewer‘s decisions about what is seen are contingent upon earlier and later interpretations. Dale’s late paintings reveal the underlying uncertainties in those perceptions. It is clear from all his double images that human understanding of the world collapses superpositions in a consistent fashion; visual paradoxes make this collapse unstable: the images change one moment to the next. The double images suggest the inconsistencies of interpretation are physically latent in the individual’s senses and that the observer’s encounter with the environment necessitates reevaluations and reinterpretations of that environment. This procedure of reassessment suggests that the senses themselves may be the reason viewers do not normally “see” superposition. It is only under special circumstances—as in schizophrenia, optical illusions, or art—that humanity experiences the presence of superposition.

            The paranoiac-critical method uses innate abilities that are a side effect of perceptual process but, as psychologist Anton Ehrenzweig noted in his study of art, this ability to see shifts in multiple images, although innate, can remain undeveloped or potential in certain kinds of rigid personalities.[xxiv] Dalí’s theory demands a flexible mind in order to see these shifting images. The formation of coherent images, in sequence, appear because each ‘set’ of understandings is equally valid. (Seeing the image=successful interpretation.) This concept is Holland’s “bucket brigade” in action.

            Our senses’ apparent consistency has obvious evolutionary advantages. However, when this consistency ceases functioning in ‘normal’ ways, it becomes pathology. The paranoid schizophrenic associative process is the reference point for Salvador Dalí precisely because it is contagious: paranoid beliefs can be experienced by other people who are not paranoid, thus allowing others to “see” in the same fashion. That this methodology shares common features with optical illusions is inevitable since both types of experience proceed from the same visual inconsistency: placing superposition in a central role in the multiple image and suggesting that consciousness and intelligence are linked to the processes managing superposition in the individual’s perceptions.

            This paper proposed a preliminary theoretical model capable of producing the interpretative expertise necessary for the mind’s construction of the consistent reality that is encountered. Because it is an initial proposal of such a model, it is necessarily limited by the scope of its presentation. The identification of a visual superposition—the multiple image, as described by Dalí in the paranoiac-critical methodology—provides a locus for further study. That the salient points of this model can be generalized to all forms of visual interpretation, and potentially beyond, is implicit in this argument. Instead of representing a point of interpretative failure, superposition can identify those places where the individual can examine the procedures and processes of interpretation. Schizophrenia, multiple images, and other forms of paradox should thus occupy a central position in the examination of interpretative phenomena instead of being regarded as points of failure and conflicts to be resolved. Dalí’s insistence that the paranoiac-critical method is a more accurate way to encounter the world around us may be more than simply avant-garde rhetoric.

[low resolution copies of the Figure images follow]

Figure 1. The Librarian. This is a typical composite portrait by Arcimboldo where the collection of objects combine to create the impression of human form.

Figure 2. Two views of The Vegetable Cook. Arcimboldo’s painting was designed to be exhibited with two orientations, depending on the choice of the viewer. In one, the painting shows a still life of a bowl of vegetables, in the other a portrait head.

Figure 3. Invisible Sleeping Woman, Horse, Lion. Dalí’s painting presents a series of component parts, erotically engaged, whose positions in the image create a series of alternative paintings.

Figure 4. The Necker Cube. This optical illusion was discovered in the nineteenth century by French chemist August Necker who observed that salt crystals when seen under a microscope presented an indeterminate cubic form.

Figure 5. Counter-Change Faces. Optical illusion of two kissing profiles that oscillate between what is called “positive” and “negative” space in graphic design.

Figure 6. Slave Market with Disappearing bust of Voltaire. The three centrally located figures in seventeenth century Dutch clothes also comprise the face, with the archway outlining the top of the head for the “invisible” bust of Voltaire.

Figure 7. Ear with Madonna. As viewing distance increases, the Madonna and child disappear, leaving the ear. At an intermediate position, it is possible to see an oscillation between Madonna and ear.

Figure 8. Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Rothko). Along the wall, to the left of Gala’s legs is a small picture of Lincoln that is repeated as the overall image. This painting uses a pixilated image, generated by computer as the basis for the Lincoln head.