Persistence of Memory Description

Salvatore Dali's house, Port Lligat, is near Cadaques on Spain's Costa Brava.

"The Persistence of Memory," painted in 1931 by Salvador Dali, is an oil on canvas artwork in the permanent collection of the New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida considers it "one of the most celebrated and recognized paintings of the 20th century." Its impact on contemporary culture outstrips its surprisingly diminutive (9-1/2-by-13-inch) size and elements of the image are familiar, through advertising, movies and modern design.

The Picture

Graphic artists borrow Dali's use of a distorted watch dial to comment on time.

The key images of the picture are three melting pocket watches, draped over a bare, dead branch, the edge of a cube and a mysterious fleshy object. These impossible watches are painted on a hard-edged dream landscape set on a wide, empty beach. Dali himself described the watches as over ripe, "the camembert of time." Cliffs in the distance, according to the MoMa catalog description, are meant to be the coast of Catalonia, Dali's home. Dali himself described the fleshy creature in the center of the painting as an approximation of his own face. It is ridden by a melting watch draped over it like a saddle. A forth, undistorted, pocket watch, is covered by a swarm of ants.

The Style

The colors and landscape of the Costa Brava influenced Dali.

"The Persistence of Memory" has become a surrealist icon. But what exactly does that mean? Dali himself has called the painting one of his "hand-painted dream photographs." He described his painting technique as mastering "the usual paralyzing tricks of eye-fooling," and said he aimed to "materialize the images of my concrete irrationality with the most imperialist fury of precision." The hard-edged, tactile textures and definition of the objects in the painting seems to belong in the world of representational art. The contrast with their unreality satisfied Dali's stated objective, to "systematize confusion and thus to help discredit completely the world of reality."

The Meaning

Dali's dreamlike imagery has become part of the contemporary art vernacular.

Dali himself repeatedly compared "The Persistence of Memory" to a dream, and the images have been interpreted to signify the fluidity of a dream. Catalog notes from the MoMA collection suggest that the melting clocks denote a landscape where time loses all meaning. "Clocking in with Salvador Dali," an essay published by the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, says the painting both encourages and defies analysis. That may well be the point for in "What is Modern Painting?" a 1943 essay in the MoMA archives, the watches are described as “irrational, fantastic, paradoxical, disquieting, baffling, alarming, hypnogogic, nonsensical and mad—but to the surrealist these adjectives are the highest praise.”

Dali in the Movies

Eyes, another of Dali's recurring symbols, feature in the dream sequence of "Spellbound."

In a BBC One program broadcast in April 2010, Alfred Hitchcock explained that he chose Dali to design the dream sequence in his film "Spellbound" because he believed Dali's dream imagery was closer to actual dreams than the blurry, soft focus dreams of cinema cliché. He described Dali's paintings as "Solid, sharp...with long perspectives and black shadows." These qualities are evident in "The Persistence of Memory." Though the dream Dali designed for the Hitchcock film lacks the famous melting clocks, the fluid yet solid forms of the painting can be easily seen.

Dali and Freud

Sigmund Freud was interested in studying how Dali's paintings were composed.

When Dali painted "The Persistence of Memory," Freudian theory was a new, fashionable influence on surrealist painters. According to Dr. Martínez-Herrera, writing in the "American Journal of Psychiatry," Dali's interest in Freud related to his interest in concealed relationships, revealed and interpreted through dreams. Freud himself was dismissive of the surrealists. In a letter, he described those who chose him as "their patron saint" as "incurable nut cases." But, after meeting Dali in 1938, he was impressed. He wrote, "The young Spaniard...with his candid, fanatical eyes and unquestionable technical skill has made me reconsider my opinion."

References

• MoMA: Explore the Collection - Salvador Dali
• Salvador Dali Museum: Education - Teacher Guide
• Salvador Dali Museum: Education, Documents - Clocking In with Salvadore Dali
• BBC One Programs: Modern Masters
• The American Journal of Psychiatry: Dalí (1904–1989): Psychoanalysis and Pictorial Surrealism

Resources

• Dada and Surrealism: Salvador Dali Biography
• The Dali Museum: Dali Biography