The painting "The Persistence of Memory", 1931.
The most famous and most discussed painting by Salvador Dali among artists. The painting has been in the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 1934.
This picture depicts a clock as a symbol of the human experience of time, memory. Here they are shown in large distortions, which our memories sometimes are. Dali did not forget himself, he is also present in the form of a sleeping head, which appears in his other paintings. During this period, Dali constantly displayed the image of a deserted coast, by which he expressed the emptiness within himself.
This void was filled when he saw a piece of Kemember cheese. "... Deciding to write a clock, I wrote them soft.
It was one evening, I was tired, I had a migraine - an extremely rare ailment for me. 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" melted 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.
The painting has become a symbol of the modern concept of the relativity of time. A year after the exhibition in the Paris gallery of Pierre Colet, the painting was bought by the New York Museum of Modern Art.
In the picture, the artist expressed the relativity of time and emphasized the amazing property of human memory, which allows us to be transported again to those days that have long been left in the past.
HIDDEN SYMBOLS
Soft clock on the table
A symbol of non-linear, subjective time, arbitrarily flowing and unevenly filling space. The three clocks in the picture are past, present and future.
Blurred object with eyelashes.
This is a self-portrait of a sleeping Dali. The world in the picture is his dream, the death of the objective world, the triumph of the unconscious. “The relationship between sleep, love and death is obvious,” the artist wrote in his autobiography. “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.” According to Dali, sleep frees the subconscious, so the artist's head blurs like a clam - this is evidence of his defenselessness.
Solid watch, lying on the left side of the dial down. Symbol of objective time.
Ants are a symbol of decay and decay. According to Nina Getashvili, a professor at the Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, “a childish impression of a wounded bat infested with ants.
Fly. According to Nina Getashvili, “the artist called them fairies of the Mediterranean. In The Diary of a Genius, Dali wrote: "They carried inspiration to the Greek philosophers who spent their lives under the sun, covered in flies."
Olive.
For the artist, this is a symbol of ancient wisdom, which, unfortunately, has already sunk into oblivion (therefore, the tree is depicted dry).
Cape Creus.
This cape on the Catalan coast of the Mediterranean Sea, near the city of Figueres, where Dali was born. The artist often depicted him in paintings. “Here,” he wrote, “the most important principle of my theory of paranoid metamorphoses (the flow of one delusional image into another. - Approx. ed.) is embodied in rock granite... new - you just need to slightly change the angle of view.
The sea for Dali symbolized immortality and eternity. The artist considered it an ideal space for traveling, where time does not flow at an objective speed, but in accordance with the internal rhythms of the traveler's consciousness.
Egg.
According to Nina Getashvili, the World Egg in Dali's work symbolizes life. The artist borrowed his image from the Orphics - ancient Greek mystics. According to Orphic mythology, the first androgynous deity Phanes was born from the World Egg, who created people, and heaven and earth were formed from the two halves of its shell.
Mirror lying horizontally to the left. It is a symbol of variability and inconstancy, obediently reflecting both the subjective and objective world.
S. Dali. Persistence of memory, 1931.
The most famous and most discussed painting by Salvador Dali among artists. The painting has been in the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 1934.
This picture depicts a clock as a symbol of the human experience of time, memory. Here they are shown in large distortions, which our memories sometimes are. Dali did not forget himself, he is also present in the form of a sleeping head, which appears in his other paintings. During this period, Dali constantly displayed the image of a deserted coast, by which he expressed the emptiness within himself.
This void was filled when he saw a piece of Kemember cheese. "... Deciding to write a clock, I wrote them soft. It was one evening, I was tired, I had a migraine - an extremely rare ailment for me. 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" melted 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.
The painting has become a symbol of the modern concept of the relativity of time. A year after the exhibition in the Paris gallery of Pierre Colet, the painting was bought by the New York Museum of Modern Art.
In the picture, the artist expressed the relativity of time and emphasized the amazing property of human memory, which allows us to be transported again to those days that have long been left in the past.
HIDDEN SYMBOLS
Soft clock on the table
A symbol of non-linear, subjective time, arbitrarily flowing and unevenly filling space. The three clocks in the picture are past, present and future.
Blurred object with eyelashes.
This is a self-portrait of a sleeping Dali. The world in the picture is his dream, the death of the objective world, the triumph of the unconscious. “The relationship between sleep, love and death is obvious,” the artist wrote in his autobiography. “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.” According to Dali, sleep frees the subconscious, so the artist's head blurs like a clam - this is evidence of his defenselessness.
Solid watch, lying on the left side of the dial down. Symbol of objective time.
Ants are a symbol of decay and decay. According to Nina Getashvili, a professor at the Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, “a childish impression of a wounded bat infested with ants.
Fly. According to Nina Getashvili, “the artist called them fairies of the Mediterranean. In The Diary of a Genius, Dali wrote: "They carried inspiration to the Greek philosophers who spent their lives under the sun, covered in flies."
Olive.
For the artist, this is a symbol of ancient wisdom, which, unfortunately, has already sunk into oblivion (therefore, the tree is depicted dry).
Cape Creus.
This cape on the Catalan coast of the Mediterranean Sea, near the city of Figueres, where Dali was born. The artist often depicted him in paintings. “Here,” he wrote, “the most important principle of my theory of paranoid metamorphoses (the flow of one delusional image into another. - Approx. ed.) is embodied in rock granite... new ones - you just need to slightly change the angle of view.
The sea for Dali symbolized immortality and eternity. The artist considered it an ideal space for traveling, where time does not flow at an objective speed, but in accordance with the internal rhythms of the traveler's consciousness.
Egg.
According to Nina Getashvili, the World Egg in Dali's work symbolizes life. The artist borrowed his image from the Orphics - ancient Greek mystics. According to Orphic mythology, the first androgynous deity Phanes was born from the World Egg, who created people, and heaven and earth were formed from the two halves of its shell.
Mirror lying horizontally to the left. It is a symbol of variability and inconstancy, obediently reflecting both the subjective and objective world.
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Reviews
One has to regret that Salvador Dali did not paint, but only painted objects for a photograph, although he gives this explanation why he did just that in his "Diary of a Genius", but this work can hardly be considered successful, it costs exactly as much as she expended mental effort. A large dark, simply painted over field creates an undesirable effect of being unoccupied, and even a lying head does not give impetus to comprehend the essence of the idea. Using dreams in his work, as he did, is a good thing, but does not always lead to brilliant results.
My attitude towards creativity was ambiguous. At one time I visited his homeland in the city of Figueres in Spain. There is a large museum there, which he himself created, many of his works. This made an impression on me. Later, I read his biography, reviewed his works and wrote several articles about his work.
I don’t like this kind of painting, but it’s interesting. So I just perceive his work as a special phenomenon in painting.
It must be assumed that he, like any artist, has different works: those that are flagship and just ordinary ones. If by the first we judge the pinnacle of skill, then the others are essentially routine work and you can’t do without it. Perhaps a dozen of Dali's works are exactly those with which you can enter the top ten most-most in the world in the section of surrealism. To many, he is an example and inspirer of this direction.
What amazes me in his work is not skill, but fantasy. Some of the paintings are simply repulsive, but it’s interesting to figure out what he wanted to say. There is one composition with lips in the museum, something similar to theatrical scenery. You can also look at the museum at this link and some work. By the way, he is buried in this museum.
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.
Surrealism is the complete freedom of a human being and his right to dream. I am not a surrealist, I am surrealism, - S. Dali.
The formation of Dali's artistic skill took place in the era of early modernity, when his contemporaries largely represented such new artistic movements as expressionism and cubism.
In 1929, the young artist joined the Surrealists. This year marked an important turn in his life as Salvador Dali met Gala. She became his mistress, wife, muse, model and main inspiration.
Since he was a brilliant draftsman and colorist, Dali drew much inspiration from the old masters. But he used extravagant forms and inventive ways to compose an entirely new, modern and innovative style of art. His paintings are notable for their use of double images, ironic scenes, optical illusions, dreamlike landscapes and deep symbolism.
Throughout his creative life, Dali was never limited to one direction. He worked with oils and watercolors, created drawings and sculptures, films and photographs. Even the variety of forms of execution was not alien to the artist, including the creation of jewelry and other works of applied art. As a screenwriter, Dali collaborated with the famous director Luis Buñuel, who made the films The Golden Age and The Andalusian Dog. They displayed unrealistic scenes, reminiscent of the revived paintings of a surrealist.
The prolific and extremely gifted master left a huge legacy for future generations of artists and art lovers. Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation launched an online project Catalog Raisonné of Salvador Dali for a complete scientific cataloging of the paintings created by Salvador Dali between 1910 and 1983. The catalog consists of five sections divided according to the timeline. It was conceived not only to provide comprehensive information about the artist's work, but also to determine the authorship of works, since Salvador Dali is one of the most forged painters.
These 17 examples of his surrealistic paintings testify to the fantastic talent, imagination and skill of the eccentric Salvador Dali.
1. "Ghost of Vermeer of Delft, which can be used as a table", 1934
This small painting with a rather long original title embodies Dali's admiration for the great 17th century Flemish master, Jan Vermeer. Vermeer's self-portrait is executed taking into account Dali's surrealistic vision.
2. "The Great Masturbator", 1929
The painting depicts the internal struggle of feelings caused by the attitude towards sexual intercourse. This perception of the artist arose as an awakened childhood memory when he saw a book left by his father, open to a page depicting genitals affected by venereal diseases.
3. "Giraffe on fire", 1937
The artist completed this work before moving to the USA in 1940. Although the master claimed that the painting was apolitical, it, like many others, reflects the deep and unsettling feelings of unease and horror that Dali must have experienced during the turbulent period between the two world wars. A certain part reflects his internal struggle regarding the Spanish Civil War, and also refers to Freud's method of psychological analysis.
4. "The Face of War", 1940
The agony of war is also reflected in the work of Dali. He believed that his painting should contain omens of war, which we see in a deadly head stuffed with skulls.
5. "Sleep", 1937
It depicts one of the surreal phenomena - a dream. This is a fragile, unstable reality in the world of the subconscious.
6. Appearance of a face and a bowl of fruit on the seashore, 1938
This fantastic painting is especially interesting, since the author uses double images in it, endowing the image itself with a multi-level meaning. Metamorphoses, amazing juxtapositions of objects and hidden elements characterize Dali's surrealist paintings.
7. The Persistence of Memory, 1931
This is perhaps the most recognizable surrealistic painting by Salvador Dali, which embodies softness and hardness, symbolizes the relativity of space and time. To a large extent, it relies on Einstein's theory of relativity, although Dali said that the idea for the picture was born at the sight of Camembert cheese melted in the sun.
8. The Three Sphinxes of Bikini Island, 1947
This surreal depiction of Bikini Atoll evokes the memory of the war. Three symbolic sphinxes occupy different planes: a human head, a split tree and a mushroom of a nuclear explosion, speaking of the horrors of war. The painting explores the relationship between three subjects.
9. "Galatea with spheres", 1952
The portrait of Dali's wife is presented through an array of spherical shapes. Gala is like a portrait of the Madonna. The artist, inspired by science, elevated Galatea above the tangible world to the upper etheric layers.
10. Melted Clock, 1954
Another depiction of a time-measuring object has been given an ethereal softness that is not typical of a hard pocket watch.
11. “My naked wife, contemplating her own flesh, which has turned into a staircase, into three vertebrae of a column, into the sky and into architecture”, 1945
Gala from the back. This remarkable image has become one of the most eclectic works of Dali, where classic and surrealism, calm and strangeness are combined.
12. "Soft design with boiled beans", 1936
The second name of the picture is “Premonition of the Civil War”. It depicts the alleged horrors of the Spanish Civil War, as the artist painted it six months before the conflict began. This was one of Salvador Dali's forebodings.
13. "The Birth of Liquid Desires", 1931-32
We see one example of a paranoid-critical approach to art. Images of father and possibly mother are mixed with a grotesque, unreal image of a hermaphrodite in the middle. The picture is filled with symbolism.
14. "The Riddle of Desire: My mother, my mother, my mother", 1929
This work, created on Freudian principles, became an example of Dali's relationship with his mother, whose distorted body appears in the Dalinian desert.
15. Untitled - Fresco painting design for Helena Rubinstein, 1942
The image was created for the interior decoration of the premises by order of Helena Rubinstein. This is a frankly surreal picture from the world of fantasy and dreams. The artist was inspired by classical mythology.
16. "Sodom self-satisfaction of an innocent maiden", 1954
The painting depicts a female figure and an abstract background. The artist explores the issue of repressed sexuality, which follows from the title of the work and the phallic forms that often appear in Dali's work.
17. Geopolitical Child Watching the Birth of the New Man, 1943
The artist expressed his skepticism by painting this painting while in the United States. The shape of the ball seems to be a symbolic incubator of the "new" man, the man of the "new world".
