Painting is the art of expressing the invisible through the visible.

Eugene Fromentin.

Painting, and in particular its "podcast" surrealism, is not a genre understood by everyone. Those who do not understand throw loud words of criticism, and those who understand are ready to give millions for paintings of this genre. Here is the picture, the first and most famous of the surrealists, “Flowing Time” has “two camps” of opinions. Some shout that the picture is unworthy of all the glory that it has, while others are ready to look at the picture for hours and get aesthetic pleasure ...

The picture of the surrealist carries a very deep meaning. And this meaning develops into a problem - aimlessly flowing time.

In the 20th century in which Dali lived, this problem already existed, already ate people. Many did absolutely nothing useful for them and for society. They burned their lives. And in the 21st century, it acquires even greater strength and tragedy. Teenagers do not read, sit at computers and various gadgets aimlessly and without benefit to themselves. On the contrary: to your own detriment. And even if Dali did not assume the significance of his painting in the 21st century, it made a splash and this is a fact.

Now the "leaking time" has become the object of disputes and conflicts. Many deny all significance, deny the very meaning and deny surrealism as art itself. They argue whether Dali had any idea about the problems of the 21st century when he painted a picture in the 20th?

But nevertheless, "flowing time" is considered one of the most expensive and famous paintings by the artist Salvador Dali.

It seems to me that in and in the 20th century there were problems that weighed heavily on the shoulders of the painter. And opening a new genre of painting, with a cry displayed on canvas, he tried to convey to people: “do not waste precious time!”. And his call was accepted not as an instructive "story", but as a masterpiece of the genre of surrealism. The meaning is lost in the money that swirls around the flowing time. And this circle is closed. The picture, which, according to the author's assumption, was supposed to teach people not to waste time, became a paradox: it itself began to waste people's time and money in vain. Why does a person need a picture in his house, hanging aimlessly? Why spend a lot of money on it? I do not think that Salvador painted a masterpiece for the sake of money, because when the goal is money, nothing comes out.

“Leaking Time” has been teaching for several generations not to miss, not to waste precious seconds of life just like that. Many appreciate the painting, namely the prestige: they gave Salvador an interest in the surrealism, but do not notice the scream and the meaning embedded in the canvas.

And now, when it is so important to show people that time is more valuable than diamonds, the picture is more relevant and instructive than ever. But only money revolves around her. It's unfortunate.

In my opinion, schools should have painting lessons. Not just drawing, but painting and the meaning of painting. Show children famous paintings by famous artists and reveal to them the meaning of their creations. For the work of artists, who paint in the same way that poets and writers write their works, should not become the goal of prestige and money. I don't think SUCH pictures are drawn for this. Minimalism - yes, stupidity, for which big money is paid. And surrealism in some exhibits. But such paintings as "flowing time", "Malevich's square" and others should not gather dust on someone's walls, but be in museums the center of everyone's attention and reflection. Here you can argue about the Black Square by Kazimir Malevich for days, what did he mean, and in the painting by Salvador Dali from year to year he finds more and more new interpretations. That's what painting and art in general are for. IMHO, as the Japanese would say.

The constancy of the memory of Salvador Dali, or, as is customary among the people, soft watches - this is perhaps the most poppy picture of the master. Only those who are in an information vacuum in some village without sewerage have not heard about it.

Well, let's start our "history of one picture", perhaps, with its description, so beloved by the adherents of hippo painting. For those who don’t understand what I mean, talking about hippo painting is a carbon monoxide video, especially for those who have ever talked with an art historian. There is on YouTube, Google to help. But back to our sheep Salvadors.

The same painting "The Persistence of Memory", another name is "Soft Clock". The genre of the picture is surrealism, your captain is obviously always ready to serve. Located in the New York Museum of Modern Art. Oil. Year of creation 1931. Size - 100 by 330 cm.

More about Salvadorych and his paintings

The constancy of the memory of Salvador Dali, a description of the painting.

The painting depicts the lifeless landscape of the notorious Port Lligat, where Salvador spent a significant part of his life. In the foreground, in the left corner, there is a piece of something solid, on which, in fact, a couple of soft clocks are located. One of the soft clocks is flowing down from a hard thing (either a rock, or hardened earth, or the devil knows what), the other clocks are located on a branch of a corpse of an olive that has long since died in the bose. That red incomprehensible bullshit in the left corner is a solid pocket watch being devoured by ants.

In the middle of the composition, one can see an amorphous mass with eyelashes, in which, nevertheless, one can easily see a self-portrait of Salvador Dali. A similar image is present in so many of Salvadorych's paintings that it is rather difficult not to recognize him (for example, in) Soft Dali is wrapped in soft watches like a blanket and, apparently, sleeps and sees sweet dreams.

In the background, the sea settled, coastal cliffs and again a piece of some hard blue unknown garbage.

Salvador Dali Persistence of memory, analysis of the picture and the meaning of images.

Personally, my opinion is that the picture symbolizes exactly what is stated in its title - the constancy of memory, while time is fleeting and quickly “melts” and “flows” like a soft watch or is devoured like a hard one. As they say, sometimes a banana is just a banana.

All that can be said with some degree of certainty is that Salvador painted the picture while Gala went to the cinema to have fun, and he stayed at home due to a migraine attack. The idea for the painting came to him some time after eating soft Camembert cheese and thinking about its "super softness". All this is from the words of Dali and therefore is closest to the truth. Although the master was still that balabol and mystifier, and his words should be filtered through a fine-fine sieve.

Deep Meaning Syndrome

This is all below - the creation of gloomy geniuses from the Internet and I don’t know how to relate to this. I did not find documentary evidence and statements by El Salvador on this matter, so do not take it at face value. But some assumptions are beautiful and have a place to be.

When creating the painting, Salvador may have been inspired by the common ancient saying “Everything flows, everything changes,” which is attributed to Heraclitus. Claims to a certain degree of reliability, since Dali was familiar with the philosophy of the ancient thinker firsthand. Salvadorych even has a piece of jewelry (a necklace, if I'm not mistaken) called Heraclitus' Fountain.

There is an opinion that the three clocks in the picture are the past, present and future. It is unlikely that Salvador really intended it that way, but the idea is beautiful.

Hard clocks, perhaps, are time in the physical sense, and soft clocks are subjective time that we perceive. More like the truth.

The dead olive is supposedly a symbol of ancient wisdom that has sunk into oblivion. This, of course, is interesting, but given that at the beginning Dali simply painted a landscape, and the idea to inscribe all these surreal images came to him much later, it seems very doubtful.

The sea in the picture is supposedly a symbol of immortality and eternity. It’s also beautiful, but I doubt it, because, again, the landscape was painted earlier and did not contain any deep and surreal ideas.

Among lovers of the search for deep meaning, there was an assumption that the picture of the Persistence of Memory was created under the influence of Uncle Albert's ideas about the theory of relativity. In response to this, Dali replied in his interview that, in fact, he was not inspired by the theory of relativity, but by "the surreal feeling of Camembert cheese melting in the sun." So it goes.

By the way, Camembert is a very suitable nyamka with a delicate texture and a slightly mushroom flavor. Although Dorblu is much tastier, as for me.

What does the sleeping Dali himself in the middle, wrapped in a watch, mean - I have no idea, to be honest. Did you want to show your unity with time, with memory? Or the connection of time with sleep and death? Shrouded in the darkness of history.

“The fact that I myself do not know anything about their meaning at the moment of drawing my pictures does not at all mean that these images are devoid of any meaning.” Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali "The Persistence of Memory" ("Soft Watch", "The Hardness of Memory", "The Persistence of Memory", "The Persistence of Memory")

Year of creation 1931 Oil on canvas, 24*33 cm The painting is in the Museum of Modern Art in the city of New York.

The work of the great Spaniard Salvador Dali, like his life, always arouses genuine interest. His paintings, largely incomprehensible, attract attention with originality and extravagance. Someone forever remains enchanted in search of "special meaning", and someone with undisguised disgust speaks of the artist's mental illness. But neither one nor the other can deny genius.

Now we are at the Museum of Modern Art in the city of New York in front of the great Dali's painting "The Persistence of Memory". Let's take a look at it.

The plot of the picture takes place against the backdrop of a desert surreal landscape. In the distance we see the sea, in the upper right corner of the picture bordering on the golden mountains. The main attention of the viewer is riveted to a bluish pocket watch, which slowly melts in the sun. Some of them flow down over a strange creature that lies on the lifeless earth in the center of the composition. In this creature, one can recognize a shapeless human figure, shivering with closed eyes and protruding tongue. In the left corner of the picture in the foreground is a table. Two more clocks lie on this table - one of them flows down from the edge of the table, the other, rusty orange, retaining its original shape, is covered with ants. On the far edge of the table rises a dry broken tree, from the branch of which the last bluish clock flows.

Yes, Dali's paintings are an attack on a normal psyche. What is the history of the painting? The work was created in 1931. The legend says that, while waiting for Gala, the artist's wife, to return home, Dali painted a picture with a deserted beach and rocks, and the image of softening time was born to him at the sight of a piece of Camembert cheese. The color of the bluish clock was allegedly chosen by the artist, as follows. On the facade of the house in Port Ligat, where Dali lived, there is a broken sundial. They are still pale blue, although the paint is gradually fading - exactly the same color as in the painting "The Persistence of Memory".

The painting was first exhibited in Paris, at the Pierre Collet Gallery, in 1931, where it was purchased for $250. In 1933, the painting was sold to Stanley Resor, who in 1934 donated the work to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Let's try to figure out, as far as possible, whether there is some hidden meaning in this work. It is not known what looks like more confusion - the very plots of the paintings of the great Dali or attempts to interpret them. I propose to look at how different people interpreted the picture.

The outstanding art historian Federico Dzeri (F. Zeri) wrote in his research that Salvador Dali “in the language of allusions and symbols, he designated conscious and active memory in the form of a mechanical clock and ants fussing in them, and the unconscious in the form of a soft clock that shows an indefinite time. The Persistence of Memory thus depicts the fluctuations between ups and downs in the waking and sleeping states.

Edmund Swinglehurst (E. Swinglehurst) in the book “Salvador Dali. Exploring the irrational” also tries to analyze “The Persistence of Memory”: “Next to the soft clock, Dali depicted a hard pocket watch covered with ants, as a sign that time can move in different ways: either flow smoothly or be corroded by corruption, which, according to Dali , meant decay, symbolized here by the bustle of insatiable ants. According to Swingleharst, "The Persistence of Memory" has become a symbol of the modern concept of the relativity of time. Another researcher of the genius, Gilles Neret, in his book Dali, spoke very succinctly about the Persistence of Memory: “The famous “soft watch” is inspired by the image of Camembert cheese melting in the sun.”

However, it is known that almost every work of Salvador Dali has a pronounced sexual connotation. The famous 20th-century writer George Orwell wrote that Salvador Dali "is equipped with such a complete and excellent set of perversions that anyone can envy him." In this regard, interesting conclusions are drawn by our contemporary, an adherent of classical psychoanalysis, Igor Poperechny. Was it really only the "metaphor of the flexibility of time" that was put on public display? It is full of uncertainty and lack of intrigue, which is extremely unusual for Dali.

In his work “The Mind Games of Salvador Dali”, Igor Poperechny came to the conclusion that the “set of perversions” that Orwell spoke about is present in all the works of the great Spaniard. In the course of the analysis of the entire work of the Genius, certain groups of symbols were identified, which, with an appropriate arrangement in the picture, determine its semantic content. There are several such symbols in The Persistence of Memory. These are spreading watches and a face “flattened” with pleasure, ants and flies depicted on dials that show strictly 6 hours.

Analyzing each of the groups of symbols, their location in the paintings, taking into account the traditions of the meanings of the symbols, the researcher came to the conclusion that the secret of Salvador Dali lies in the denial of the death of the mother and the incestuous desire for her.

Being in an illusion artificially created by himself, Salvador Dali lived for 68 years after the death of his mother in anticipation of a miracle - her appearance in this world. One of the main ideas of numerous paintings of the genius was the idea of ​​the mother being in a lethargic dream. A hint of lethargic sleep was the omnipresent ants, which in ancient Moroccan medicine fed people in this state. According to Igor Poperechny, in many canvases Dali depicts the mother with symbols: in the form of pets, birds, as well as mountains, rocks or stones. In the picture that we are now studying, at first you may not notice a small rock on which a shapeless creature is spreading, which is a kind of Dali's self-portrait ...

The soft clock in the picture shows the same time - 6 hours. Judging by the bright colors of the landscape, this is morning, because in Catalonia, Dali's homeland, night does not come at 6 o'clock. What worries a man at six in the morning? After what morning sensations did Dali wake up “completely broken”, as Dali himself mentioned in his book “The Diary of a Genius”? Why does a fly sit on a soft watch, in Dali's symbolism - a sign of vice and spiritual decay?

Based on all this, the researcher comes to the conclusion that the picture captures the time when Dali’s face experiences vicious pleasure, indulging in “moral decay”.

These are some points of view on the hidden meaning of the Dali painting. It remains for you to decide which of the interpretations you like best.

Salvador Dali's painting "The Persistence of Memory" is perhaps the most famous of the artist's works. The softness of a hanging and flowing clock is one of the most unusual images ever used in painting. What did Dali mean by this? And did you really want to? We can only guess. One has only to recognize Dali's victory, won with the words: "Surrealism is me!"

This is where the tour comes to an end. Please ask questions.

Artist: Salvador Dali

Picture painted: 1931
Canvas, handmade tapestry
Size: 24×33 cm

Description of the painting "The Persistence of Memory" S. Dali

Artist: Salvador Dali
Name of the painting: "The Persistence of Memory"
Picture painted: 1931
Canvas, handmade tapestry
Size: 24×33 cm

Everything is said and written about Salvador Dali. For example, that he was paranoid, had no connections with real women before the Gala, and that his paintings are incomprehensible. In principle, all this is true, but every fact or fiction from his biography is directly related to the work of a genius (it’s rather problematic to call Dali an artist, and it’s not worth it).

Dali was delirious in his sleep and transferred all this to the canvas. Add to this his confused thoughts, his passion for psychoanalysis, and you get in total pictures that amaze the mind. One of them is “Memory Persistence”, which is also called “Soft Hours”, “Memory Hardness” and “Memory Persistence”.

The history of the appearance of this canvas is directly related to the biography of the artist. Until 1929, there were no hobbies in his life for women, not counting unrealistic drawings or those that came to Dali in a dream. And then came the Russian emigrant Elena Dyakonova, better known as Gala.

At first, she was known as the wife of the writer Paul Eluard and the mistress of the sculptor Max Ernst, both at the same time. The whole trinity lived under one roof (a direct parallel with Brik and Mayakovsky), shared the bed and sex for three, and it seemed that this situation suited both the men and Gala. Yes, this woman loved hoaxes, as well as sexual experiments, but nevertheless, surrealist artists and writers listened to her, which was very rare. Gala needed geniuses, one of which was Salvador Dali. The couple lived together for 53 years, and the artist stated that he loved her more than her mother, money and Picasso.

Like it or not, we will not know, but the following is known about the painting “Memory Space”, to which Dyakonova inspired the writer. The landscape with Port Ligat was almost painted, but something was missing. Gala went to the cinema that evening, and Salvador sat down at the easel. Within two hours, this picture was born. When the artist's muse saw the painting, she predicted that those who saw it at least once would never forget it.

At an exhibition in New York, the outrageous artist explained the idea of ​​the painting in his own way - by the nature of melted Camembert cheese, combined with the teachings of Heraclitus on measuring time by the flow of thought.

The main part of the picture is the bright red landscape of Port Ligat, the place where he lived. The shore is deserted and explains the emptiness of the artist's inner world. Blue water can be seen in the distance, and a dry tree is in the foreground. This, in principle, and all that is clear at first glance. The rest of the images on Dali's creation are deeply symbolic and should be considered only in this context.

Three soft blue clocks, quietly hanging on the branches of a tree, a man and a cube, are symbols of time, which flows non-linearly and arbitrarily. It fills subjective space in the same way. The number of hours means the past, present and future associated with the theory of relativity. Dali himself said that he painted a soft clock, because he did not consider the connection between time and space to be something outstanding and "it was the same as any other."

The blurry subject with eyelashes refers you to the fears of the artist himself. As you know, he took subjects for paintings in a dream, which he called the death of the objective world. According to the basics of psychoanalysis and Dali's beliefs, sleep releases what people hide deep within themselves. And therefore, the mollusk-like object is a self-portrait of Salvador Dali, who is sleeping. He compared himself to a hermit oyster and said that Gala managed to save her from the whole world.

The solid clock in the picture symbolizes the objective time that is against us, because it lies face down.

It is noteworthy that the time recorded on each clock is different - that is, each pendulum corresponds to an event that remains in human memory. However, the clock is running and changing the head, that is, memory is able to change events.

The ants in the painting are a symbol of decay associated with the childhood of the artist himself. He saw the corpse of a bat infested with these insects, and since then their presence has become the fix idea of ​​all creativity. Ants crawl over the hard clock like hour and minute hands, so real time kills itself.

Dali called flies "Mediterranean fairies" and considered the insects that inspired Greek philosophers to write their treatises. Ancient Hellas is directly connected with the olive, a symbol of the wisdom of antiquity, which no longer exists. For this reason, the olive is depicted dry.

The painting also depicts Cape Creus, which was located near Dali's hometown. The surrealist himself considered him the source of his philosophy of paranoid metamorphosis. On the canvas, it has the form of a blue haze of the sky in the distance and brown rocks.

The sea, according to the artist, is an eternal symbol of infinity, an ideal plane for travel. Time there flows slowly and objectively, obeying its inner life.

In the background, near the rocks, there is an egg. This is a symbol of life, borrowed from the ancient Greek representatives of the mystical school. They interpret the World Egg as the progenitor of mankind. From it appeared the androgynous Phanes, who created people, and the halves of the shell gave them heaven and earth.

Another image in the background of the painting is a mirror lying horizontally. It is called a symbol of variability and impermanence, which combines the subjective and objective worlds.

The extravagance and irresistibility of Dali is that his true masterpieces are not paintings, but the meaning hidden in them. The artist defended the right to creative freedom, to the connection between art and philosophy, history and other sciences.

… Modern physicists are increasingly saying that time is one of the dimensions of space, that is, the world that surrounds us does not consist of three dimensions, but of four. Somewhere at the level of our subconscious, a person forms an intuitive idea of ​​a sense of time, but it is difficult to imagine it. Salvador Dali is one of the few people who succeeded, because he was able to interpret the phenomenon that before him could not be revealed and recreated by anyone.

Plot

Dali, like a real surrealist, immerses us in the world of dreams with his painting. Fussy, chaotic, mystical and at the same time seeming understandable and real.

On the one hand, the familiar clock, the sea, the rocky landscape, the withered tree. On the other hand, their appearance and proximity to other, poorly identifiable objects leaves one perplexed.

There are three clocks in the picture: past, present and future. The artist followed the ideas of Heraclitus, who believed that time is measured by the flow of thought. A soft clock is a symbol of non-linear, subjective time, arbitrarily flowing and unevenly filling space.

Dali's molten watch was invented while thinking about Camembert

A hard clock infested with ants is linear time that devours itself. The image of insects as a symbol of decay and decay haunted Dali since childhood, when he saw how insects swarm on the carcass of a bat.

But Dali called the flies the fairies of the Mediterranean: "They carried inspiration to the Greek philosophers who spent their lives under the sun, covered in flies."

The artist depicted himself sleeping in the form of a blurry object with eyelashes. “Sleep is death, or at least it is an exclusion from reality, or, even better, it is the death of reality itself, which dies in the same way during the act of love.”

Salvador Dali

The tree is depicted dry, because, as Dali believed, ancient wisdom (of which this tree is a symbol) has sunk into oblivion.

The deserted shore is the cry of the soul of the artist, who through this image speaks of his emptiness, loneliness and longing. “Here (at Cape Creus in Catalonia - ed.), - he wrote, - the most important principle of my theory of paranoid metamorphoses is embodied in rock granite ... These are frozen clouds reared by an explosion in all their countless guises, more and more - there is only slightly change the angle of view.

At the same time, the sea is a symbol of immortality and eternity. According to Dali, the sea is ideal for traveling, where time flows in accordance with the internal rhythms of consciousness.

Dali took the image of an egg as a symbol of life from the ancient mystics. The latter believed that the first bisexual deity Phanes was born from the World Egg, which created people, and heaven and earth were formed from the two halves of its shell.

A mirror lies horizontally on the left. It reflects everything you want: both the real world and dreams. For Dali, the mirror is a symbol of impermanence.

Context

According to a legend invented by Dali himself, he created the image of a flowing clock in just two hours: “We were supposed to go to the cinema with friends, but at the last moment I decided to stay at home. Gala will go with them, and I will go to bed early. We ate very tasty cheese, then I was left alone, sitting leaning on the table and thinking about how “super soft” processed cheese is. I got up and went to the studio to take a look at my work as usual. The picture I was going to paint was a landscape of the outskirts of Port Lligat, rocks, as if illuminated by a dim evening light. In the foreground, I sketched the chopped off trunk of a leafless olive tree. This landscape is the basis for a canvas with some idea, but what? I needed a marvelous image, but I did not find it. I went to turn off the light, and when I got out, I literally “saw” the solution: two pairs of soft clocks, one hanging plaintively from an olive branch. Despite the migraine, I prepared my palette and set to work. Two hours later, when Gala returned from the cinema, the picture, which was to become one of the most famous, was completed.

Gala: no one will be able to forget these soft clocks after seeing them at least once

After 20 years, the picture was built into a new concept - "Disintegration of Memory Persistence". The iconic image is surrounded by nuclear mysticism. Soft dials quietly disintegrate, the world is divided into clear blocks, the space is under water. The 1950s, with post-war reflection and technical progress, obviously plowed Dali.

"The Disintegration of Memory Persistence"

Dali is buried in such a way that anyone can walk on his grave

Creating all this diversity, Dali also invented himself - from mustaches to hysterical behavior. He saw how many talented people who were not noticed. Therefore, the artist regularly reminded himself of himself in the most eccentric possible manner.

Dali on the roof of his house in Spain

Even Dali's death was turned into a performance: according to his will, he had to be buried so that people could walk on the grave. Which was done after his death in 1989. Today, Dali's body is buried in the floor in one of the rooms of his house in Figueres.