Okay, bad analogy for liberal arts majors, but physicists, you should understand. Thus, the content and form of the painting work together and build on each other, much like the electric and magnetic fields in an electromagnetic wave. But moreover, I see the painting as a play on time itself, the philosophical entity behind time, rather than its outer appearance. The obvious explanation is of course that memory becomes confused, uncertain, nonsensical over time. The objects of the first group are futile in the picture the objects in the latter group are hopeful (for a lack of a better word, which I cannot think of).Īlso interesting is why the title is “The Persistence of Memory” when it seems to deal with time. the clocks and rectangular objects on the left, and things of natural design, i.e. There is a contrast between things of human design, i.e. In this painting, time, represented by the deformed clocks, is no longer a straight issue: it bends, curves, and is hung in meaningless places.

Dalí realized that we had lived too long in a world in which time was an absolute definer, a Newtonian clockwork that controlled us with two rigid, always-moving hands. Not necessarily against time-rather, of time. What is so special about this work? My opinion: This painting epitomizes the human struggle with time. It is highly detailed and uncomfortably realistic for such a strange picture. Unlike many of the other large, abstract works being produced at the time, The Persistence of Memory is quite small, not much bigger than an ordinary piece of paper. In this work, Dali depicts languid, melting clocks draped over an arid, desert landscape. (On the other hand, I’m not even going to try to run a real artistic analysis of the painting I think that would be missing the big picture.) The Persistence of Memory (1931) is Salvador Dali’s most famous painting. Philosophy is extremely important to me, and I see a lot of it in this work. But within the last couple years I’ve experienced a shift, not necessarily away from the sciences, but towards a real fascination with the humanities and arts. When I first saw it, in an art class back in elementary school, I thought it was stupid and just like all other paintings. The image you see above is one of the iconic symbols of the 20th century. The Persistence of Memory, 1931, Salvador Dalí Translated to La persistncia de la memria in Catalan, this oil on canvas is one of the most recognizable artworks coming from the Surrealism movement and can easily be summarized in two words: melting clocks.

But without further ado, here is Dalí’s famous time painting. Painted in 1931, The Persistence of Memory is the most celebrated Surrealist painting created by Salvador Dal. This is a very unusual type of post for me as I’m normally the math/science person, not the artistic one.

The persistence of memory meaning ism