In this article I invite you to learn interesting facts about the work of art known as The Persistence of Memory, made by the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí in 1931, when he was only 28 years old and that caught the attention of the public that is currently on display at the New York Museum known as MoMA. Read on and learn more!
The Persistence of Memory
It is a painting made by the painter of Spanish origin Salvador Dalí, in the year 1931, the painting measures 24 x 33 centimeters. It is a surrealist work that is also known as The soft clocks o The melted clocks.
Salvador Dalí's small work was exhibited at the Pierre Colle Gallery in Paris. As one of the first individual exhibitions of him. Between June 03 to June 15 of the year 1931. The work caused a stir among the public that the following year The Persistence of Memory it was already in an exhibition in New York exactly at the Julien Levy Gallery.
Currently the frame The Persistence of Memory, is on permanent display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York better known as the MoMA Museum. The work arrived at the museum in the year 1934. Although in the year 1954 the painter Salvador Dalí returned to being a revision of the painting which he called The disintegration of the persistence of memory. Work that is in the Salvador Dalí Museum in Saint Petersburg, Florida.
Work description
The painting made by the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí, was made at home in less than five hours, since the work has small dimensions, although it is said that the painting was made on a day when the famous surrealist painter did not want to go out with his wife and friends to the movies and decided to stay home to paint the work.
It is reported that the frame The Persistence of Memory It is a very simple marine landscape typical of Daliano's Cadaqués. Where it represents Cape Creus and the steep coast at the bottom of the painting.
the melted clocks
At the top left of the box The Persistence of Memory the painter Salvador Dalí made a block that can be made of cardboard that seems to be woven by hand. Which has as a table function. In which there are two clocks, one is melting, this represents for the surrealist painter that time is passing differently for people.
Contrary to common watches that are worn daily and accurately mark the hour, minute and second. The clocks that represents the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí in the work The Persistence of Memory they are going to suggest that pointers mark a distorted notion of seconds.
Therefore, when the clocks are melting, they provoke a great surprise in the public, who, when observing the work, incite them to reflect on the clock and the function they have in the painting.
The clock that is full of ants
In the paint The Persistence of Memory there is a clock that is not melting, but it is overturned and there are many ants on it. The surrealist painter does not like ants since for him they were a symbol of putrefaction in the works he made. In this way the ants were an object that he despised under his realistic gaze.
At the end of the XNUMXth century and the beginning of the XNUMXth century, art specialists claimed that photography was going to take the place of painting in art, since photography could take scenes from nature where painting could not. That is why they came to affirm that painting was in decline.
But what the avant-garde painters did with painting was to deform objects and take them out of context. In order to have new ways of representing them in works of art and to be able to attract the attention of the public. This resource used by surrealist painters was a very creative contribution to art.
The anthropomorphic figure
in the center of the work The Persistence of Memory The surrealist painter Salvador Dalí painted an anthropomorphic figure that is at the same time very strange since it simulates having a soft head and the neck of this figure fades into the darkness, it seems to have a large nose and a tongue protrudes from it. In addition, the figure is asleep since its eye is closed and it has long eyelashes.
Above the anthropomorphic figure is another clock that is melting or seems to be slipping away. Although all the elements that make up The Persistence of Memory they are set on what seems to be a deserted beach, where the sea and the sky seem to merge.
Analysis of the painter on the work
In the small work of the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí known as The Persistence of Memory a simple landscape is observed that in the background of the work the sea is seen merging with the sky. On the right side there is a cliff that many associate with a landscape of the Costa Brava. That was very common in the works of the painter.
There is also a wooden block that acts as a table where there are two clocks and a tree where a clock hangs that seems to melt. While in the axis of the painting there is a very strange anthropomorphic figure that many say is part of the face of the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí.
In the work it can be seen that each clock has its own characteristic. Since of the two watches that are on the table, one is a pocket watch, unlike the other watches, this one has many ants on it. Many associate the watch with eroticism because, being carried in the pockets, they are very close to the genitals.
Both clocks have animals, one ants and the other has a fly, which means that these animals abound in what is rotten and in decline in the case of the work are the clocks.
The clock hanging on the branch of the tree is the most curved of all and one of the hands points to six o'clock because the other hand cannot be seen. The last clock, which would be the fourth, is located on the anthropomorphic figure that many specialists say is part of the painter's face.
The painter Salvador Dalí paints it with the purpose of representing his immortality in painting, since in other paintings by the author he does it and it is a very common element in his surrealist works of art.
The clocks giving different hours mean that they represent different realities for the public. In this way, the relativity of time is made present before the eyes of the spectator. In this way, the painter informs us that time has left its mark on the four clocks that appear in the work of The Persistence of Memory of the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí. But the clocks are still striking the time.
This is why many of the surrealist works of the painter Salvador Dalí, especially The Persistence of Memory it is very loaded with symbolism and has few conventional representations of reality. Since they try to capture in the viewer's subconscious that the time in memory is not going to be the same time that the clock shows.
Meaning of the work
Giving a subjective vision to the work painted by Salvador Dalí and known as The Persistence of Memory makes the work travel through temporality and the different implications it has. That is to say that the portraits and drawings exhibited there are kept in the memory of the viewer or in the work of art.
It is in this way that the surrealist painter pays homage to the unconscious, which has its own way of telling what happens to the person in his life and in the end flees from the reality of what he must face.
For which the painter Salvador Dalí makes use of the unconscious as a fundamental matter in his work. Since he represents his works in many ways about time where it will never be the same for people, so many are governed by a clock that tells the time right at every moment.
If you found this article important The Persistence of Memory I invite you to visit the following links: