The melting clock laid on top symbolizes the passing time experienced in a dream. Looking closely as the details, we see the abstract form has one closed eye with curvy eyelashes, as it falls into a dream state.

Order custom essay The Persistence of Memoryīeside, the figure in the middle of the painting can be recognized as a human figure in a dream state that Dali uses to represent himself, as the artwork became a self-portrait, maybe. In the foreground, there is an orange clock at the bottom left of the painting, which is covered in ants. It shows a typical Dalinian landscape with his beloved Cape Creus (a peninsula and a headland located at Mediterranean) in the background. This is the place where he grew up, and also indeed the association with his painting The Persistence of Memory. In addition, there are some interesting subjects appearing in this painting such as the craggy rocks of Catalonia spreading out further away. According to the Wikipedia website, one famous art history professor named Dawn Ades wrote, “The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order. They are literally meant to show the irrelevance of time. The melting watches are one symbol that is commonly associated with Salvador Dali's Surrealism. These soft melting watches convey Dali’s primary philosophy about the “softness” and the “hardness”. Dali came up with an idea about the melting watches as the main subject. He took his pencil and slid under a bit of Camembert cheese, which was softer by the heating of summer weather, and started drawing. In one hot August afternoon in 1931, as Dali was having lunch on his work bench, suddenly an idea of paranoiac hallucinations came to his mind. One interesting idea is about the melting watches that inspire randomly. This famous artwork is called “Dali ‘s hand painted dream photographs”, and it is simultaneously read as a painting depicting landscape, still life, and self-portrait.Īs I find curious in this abstract, I use many researches in reference book and Internet in order to look for the meaning of this picture so far. Completed in 1931, The Persistence of Memory became one of his well-known paintings. When he grew up, Dali still spent his time to painting the Catalonia’s landscape elaborately.

The landscapes associated with his childhood have become an inspiration for his paintings. Looking at the picture The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali, people can see an abstract aesthetic deep within.

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