The world of surreal it’s intense. No one cares about sleeping during the day and creating at night. Dalí is precisely a torment made a person… He doesn’t sleep, he doesn’t eat, he just creates. He advances with feet of steel in his study. Love to PicassoHe loves Gala, he loves money, but he loves his work more. Dalí was one of those who forged modernity as we know it, he questioned the way in which it was lived and he plunged into his unconscious to think about topics as abstract as universal: love, oblivion and of course time. In Supercurious we will explore the meaning and interpretation of The Persistence of Memory of the great Spanish artist, Salvador Dalí.
The meaning of The Persistence of Memory
dali created The Persistence of Memory in 1931. And although it is one of the famous paintings in the history of art, it is very small in dimension (we are talking about 24 x 33 cm).
The meaning or interpretation of The Persistence of Memory It is not entirely clear, many experts have talked about its composition and what it can mean, but we have to keep in mind that they are only hypotheses.
However, one of the most relevant interpretations of The Persistence of Memory lies in the schedules that each of the clocks have, since Dalí is building a notion of relative time. What does this mean? Let’s break this down in parts.
The Persistence of Memory it is a complete enigma, like the life of Dalí. That is why we know that everything in this picture tells us something.. In the general theme of the painting we are told about time, it is made explicit with the representation of the clocks that indicate certain hours, but it can also be seen in the landscape of the painting. On the one hand, we see that the clocks are half melted and on the other we find a barren and lifeless landscape.
Memory, a brief analysis of Dalí’s painting
As you can well suppose, within the meaning of The Persistence of Memory, memory is a key point. We have an arid and simple bottom, a sea without movement and a small rock formation. Objects that appear to be hard become inexplicably limp in this dreamscape.
Those limp watches are so smooth they almost melt in the light, in fact, represent “the camembert of time” an overripe cheese. And it is that in this work the classic surrealist ambition is reflected: systematize confusion and question reality.
Salvador Dalí’s theory about what is soft and what is hard finds its maximum expression in the structures of watches. Here the artist alludes to one of the great obsessions of the 20th century: The space and time.
We know that clocks represent time, a changing, stopped and different one. But how is memory reflected? Memory is the softness of watchesas time passes memory is getting weaker.
In The Persistence of Memory everything is fleeting, the only thing that lasts is the painting, because the time that he painted is not the same that we see. Dalí wanted to show everything that is in the unconscious of modern people and he uses his own delirium to make it come true.
Some fun facts about The Persistence of Memory
Besides the possible meaning of The Persistence of Memory, there are several curiosities of this painting that you should know. Dalí is a genius, we already know that. What not all of us know is that this painter He made his most famous work at the early age of 28 years. His artistic career took off thanks to it. But the idea of clocks was not new to Dalí, since he had already painted another work with melted clocks a year earlier.
Many theorists speak of Dalí’s inspiration to create this work. Some say that the meaning of The Persistence of Memory it’s not just the shape of the melted camembert cheese. Dalí based his work on two important theories of the 20th century.
1. Einstein’s theory of relativity
The first is Albert Einstein’s theory of relativitywhich when it was disseminated caused a great deal of commotion due to the idea of the nonexistence of absolute time. Salvador Dalí made it very clear in his work.
2. Sigmund Freud’s theory of the unconscious
The second theory on which it is based is Sigmund Freud’s theory of the unconscious. The psychoanalyst firmly believed that his patients were victims of repressed flashbacks and memories. His role was, therefore, to help them access this encrypted information and to be able to solve the most internal and unexpressed problems.
Dalí, for his part, interprets The Persistence of Memory as a dream from which one cannot escape. A song to the acceptance of our interior without having to fear it. He convinces us that Dreams are sometimes more real than reality itself.
As a legacy, Dalí left us one of his great reflections. We need memory to understand time and time to have memory.. If you want to delve deeper into his thoughts, we encourage you to consult the great Salvador Dali quotes.
Tell us, what do you think is the meaning and interpretation of The Persistence of Memory? We read you! If you liked reading this article, we invite you to learn about the story of Salvador Dalí and Gala, you will surely love them.