The secret meaning of the painting "The Persistence of Memory" by Salvador Dali. “The Persistence of Memory” Salvador Dali wrote at the peak of his passion for Freud’s theories. Salvador’s soft watch gave meaning

Salvador Dali can rightfully be called the greatest surrealist. Streams of consciousness, dreams and reality were reflected in all his works. “The Persistence of Memory” is one of the smallest (24x33 cm), but most discussed paintings. This canvas stands out for its deep subtext and many encrypted symbols. It is also the artist’s most copied work.

Salvador Dali himself said that he created the dials in the painting in two hours. His wife Gala went to the cinema with friends, and the artist stayed at home, citing a headache. Alone, he looked around the room. Then Dali’s attention was attracted by the Camembert cheese that he and Gala had recently eaten. It slowly melted in the sun.

Suddenly an idea occurred to the master, and he went to his workshop, where the landscape of the outskirts of Port Ligat was already painted on canvas. Salvador Dali spread his palette and began to create. By the time my wife arrived home, the painting was ready.

There are many allusions and metaphors hidden on the small canvas. Art historians are happy to decipher all the mysteries of “The Persistence of Memory.”

The three clocks represent the present, past and future. Their “melting” form is a symbol of subjective time, unevenly filling space. Another clock with ants swarming on it - this is linear time, which consumes itself. Salvador Dali admitted more than once that as a child he was deeply impressed by the sight of ants swarming on a dead bat.

A certain spread object with eyelashes is a self-portrait of Dali. The artist associated the deserted shore with loneliness, and the dried tree with ancient wisdom. On the left in the picture you can see the mirror surface. It can reflect both reality and the world of dreams.

After 20 years, Dali’s view of the world changed. He created a painting called “Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory.” In concept, it had something in common with “The Persistence of Memory,” but the new era of technological progress left its mark on the author’s worldview. The dials gradually disintegrate, and the space is divided into ordered blocks and flooded with water.

In 1931 he painted a picture "The Constancy of Time" , which is often abbreviated to simply "Clock". The painting has an unusual, strange, outlandish plot, like all the works of this artist, and is truly a masterpiece of the work of Salvador Dali. What meaning did the artist put into “The Constancy of Time” and what could all these melting clocks depicted in the picture mean?

The meaning of the painting “The Constancy of Time” by surrealist artist Salvador Dali is not easy to understand. The painting depicts four clocks positioned prominently against a desert landscape. Although it is a little strange, watches do not have the usual shapes that we are used to seeing them. Here they are not flat, but bend to the shape of the objects on which they lie. An association arises as if they are melting. It becomes clear that this is a painting made in the style of classical surrealism, which raises some questions in the viewer, such as, for example: “why are the clocks melting”, “why are there clocks in the desert” and “where are all the people”?

Paintings of the surreal genre, presenting themselves to the viewer in their best artistic presentation, have as their goal to convey to him the dreams of the artist. Taking a look at any picture of this genre, it may seem that its author is a schizophrenic who has combined in it the incompatible, where places, people, objects, landscapes intertwine with each other in combinations and combinations that defy logic. When pondering the meaning of the painting “The Constancy of Time,” the first thing that comes to mind is that Dali captured his dream on it.

If “The Constancy of Time” depicts a dream, then the melting clock, which has lost its shape, denotes the elusiveness of time spent in a dream. After all, when we wake up, we are not surprised that we went to bed in the evening, and it is already morning and we are not surprised that it is no longer evening. When we are awake, we feel the passage of time, and when we sleep, we attribute this time to another reality. There are many interpretations of the painting “The Persistence of Memory”. If we look at art through the prism of dreams, then distorted clocks have no power in the world of dreams, which is why they melt.

In the painting “The Constancy of Time,” the author wants to say how useless, meaningless and arbitrary our perception of time is in a state of sleep. While we are awake, we are constantly worried, nervous, in a hurry and fussing, trying to do as many things as possible. Many art historians argue about what kind of clock it is: wall or pocket, which were a very fashionable accessory in the 20s and 30s, the era of surrealism, the peak of their creativity. The surrealists ridiculed many things, objects belonging to the middle class, whose representatives attached too much importance to them and took them too seriously. In our case, this is a clock - a thing that simply shows what time it is.

Many art historians believe that Dali painted this painting on the topic of Albert Einstein's theory of probability, which was hotly and excitedly discussed in the thirties. Einstein put forward a theory that shook the belief that time is an unchangeable quantity. With this melting clock, Dali shows us that clocks, both wall and pocket, have become primitive, outdated and now an attribute of little importance.

In any case, the painting “The Constancy of Time” is one of the most famous works of art by Salvador Dali, which, in truth, became an icon of surrealism of the twentieth century. We guess, interpret, analyze, imagine what meaning the author himself could have put into this picture? Each simple viewer or professional art critic has his own perception of this painting. There are so many assumptions. We will no longer know the true meaning of the painting “The Constancy of Time”. Dali said that his paintings carry various semantic themes: social, artistic, historical and autobiographical. It can be assumed that "The Constancy of Time" is a combination of these.

Surrealist artist, Spaniard Salvador Dali became one of the most mysterious painters of the twentieth century. Known for its outlandish and controversial subject matter, his painting "The Persistence of Memory" (1931), is recognized as the greatest masterpiece of surrealism. But what essence did the genius veil on this canvas? The picture has many interpretations and they are completely different.

The meaning behind the brushstrokes is not easy to grasp. The painting depicts four clocks and a desert landscape in the background. The guardians of time, despite everything, emerge from their usual form, which looks a little ominous. And, apparently, they intend to melt “to the end.” The “cute” plot makes you think. Why do the hours spread? Why are they in the desert and where are the people lost? The meaning of this picture seems inadequate and illogical, but the almost photographic execution hints to us otherwise.

Perhaps Dali depicted the dream state so often discussed by the surrealists. After all, only in a dream, unrelated people, places and objects are able to gather into a single whole, because only in a dream, seconds and minutes become devalued. If so, then the deformed clock symbolizes the uncertainty of the passage of time at night. During the day we are able to track and control time, but when we sleep, it plays by different rules. If you look at it from this angle, it looks plausible. In a dream, the clock is powerless, we do not feel time, which means that the clock can only melt away from its own uselessness.

Some art historians believe that the deformed clock may symbolize Einstein's theory of relativity, which was new and revolutionary in the 30s. With its help, Einstein proposed a new idea about time as a more complex category, not subject to calculation on a dial. Through this lens, it begins to seem that the distorted clocks symbolize the incompetence of their pocket and wall-mounted counterparts in a post-Einstein world.

Jokes, humor, sarcasm and play on words were an integral part of the surrealists' work. It is possible that this same sarcasm touched “The Persistence of Memory.” After all, spreading hours can mean anything, but not constancy. Ants eating the dial of a red clock perhaps represent the human habit of wasting time thoughtlessly and haphazardly.

A desolate, barren landscape... Many art experts believe that Dali depicted the coastline of the beach in his hometown. The intended, autobiographical meaning refers to memories from Salvador's childhood memory. An uninhabited, abandoned coast, dead since Dali left it. With the distorted clock, Dali probably hinted that his childhood was a thing of the past.

"The Persistence of Memory"- a true icon of twentieth-century surrealism. Its true meaning remains a mystery to us to this day, and this is unlikely to change. It is believed that here Dali collected a whole amalgam of ideas and shades of a historical, autobiographical, artistic and political nature.

Plot

Dali, like a true 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, a familiar clock, the sea, a rocky landscape, a dried 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 nonlinear, subjective time, flowing arbitrarily and unevenly filling space.

Dali came up with the molten watch while thinking about Camembert.

A solid clock infested with ants is linear time that eats itself. The image of insects as a symbol of rot and decomposition haunted Dali since childhood, when he saw insects swarming on the carcass of a bat.

But Dali called flies the fairies of the Mediterranean: “They brought 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 blurred object with eyelashes. “A dream is death, or at least it is an exception 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) had sunk into oblivion.

The deserted shore is the cry of the artist’s soul, who through this image speaks of his emptiness, loneliness and melancholy. “Here (at Cape Creus in Catalonia - editor's note),” he wrote, “the most important principle of my theory of paranoid metamorphoses is embodied in rocky granite... These are frozen clouds, reared by an explosion in all their countless guises, more and more new - only change your perspective a little."

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

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

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

Context

According to the 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 some very tasty cheese, then I was left alone, sitting with my elbows on the table, thinking about how “super soft” the processed cheese was. I got up and went into the workshop to take a look at my work as usual. The picture that I was going to paint represented the landscape of the outskirts of Port Lligat, the rocks, as if illuminated by 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 wonderful image, but I couldn’t find it. I went to turn off the light, and when I came out, I literally “saw” the solution: two pairs of soft watches, one hanging pitifully from an olive branch. Despite the migraine, I prepared my palette and got to work. Two hours later, when Gala returned from the cinema, the film, which was to become one of the most famous, was finished.”

Gala: no one will be able to forget this soft watch after seeing it at least once

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

"Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory"

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

By creating all this diversity, Dali also invented himself - from his mustache to his hysterical behavior. He saw how many talented people were overlooked. Therefore, the artist regularly reminded himself of himself in the most eccentric manner possible.

Dali on the roof of his house in Spain

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

Salvador Dali - The Persistence of Memory (Spanish: La persistencia de la memoria).

Year of creation: 1931

Canvas, handmade tapestry.

Original size: 24 × 33 cm

Museum of Modern Art, New York

« The Persistence of Memory"(Spanish: La persistencia de la memoria, 1931) is one of the most famous paintings by the artist Salvador Dali. Has been in the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 1934.

Also known as " Soft watch», « Memory hardness" or " Memory durability».

This small painting (24x33 cm) is probably Dali's most famous work. The softness of the hanging and dripping clock is an image that could be described as “it extends into the realm of the unconscious, enlivening the universal human experience of time and memory.” Dali himself is present here in the form of a sleeping head, which has already appeared in “The Mourning Game” and other paintings. In accordance with his method, the artist explained the origin of the plot by reflecting on the nature of Camembert cheese; the landscape with Port Ligat was already ready, so painting the picture was a matter of two hours. Returning from the cinema, where she went that evening, Gala quite correctly predicted that no one, once they saw The Persistence of Memory, would forget it. The painting was painted as a result of the associations that Dali had with the sight of processed cheese, as evidenced by his own quote.

Description of the painting by Salvador Dali “The Persistence of Memory”

The greatest representative of surrealism in painting, Salvador Dali, truly skillfully combined mystery and evidence. This amazing Spanish artist created his paintings in a manner unique to him, sharpening life’s issues with the help of an original and opposite combination of the real and the fantastic.

One of the most famous paintings, known under several names, is most often found - “The Persistence of Memory”, but is also known as “Soft Hours”, “Hardness of Memory” or “Persistence of Memory”.

This is a very small picture of time flowing arbitrarily and unevenly filling space. The artist himself explained that the emergence of this plot is connected with associations when thinking about the nature of processed cheese.

It all starts with a landscape; it takes up little space on the canvas. In the distance one can see the desert and the sea coast, perhaps this is a reflection of the artist’s inner emptiness. There are also three clocks in the picture, but they are flowing. This is a temporary space through which the flow of life flows, but it can change.

Most of the artist’s paintings, their ideas, content, subtext, became known from notes in the diaries of Salvador Dali. But what is the artist’s own opinion about this painting has not been revealed, not a single line. There are many opinions about what the artist wanted to convey to us. There are also some so controversial that these sagging watches speak of Dali's fears, perhaps of some male problems. But, despite all these assumptions, the painting is extremely popular due to the originality of the surrealist movement.

Most often, when the word surrealism is mentioned, Dali is meant, and his painting “The Persistence of Memory” comes to mind. Now this work is in New York, you can see it at the Museum of Modern Art.

The idea for the work came to Dali on a hot summer day. He lay at home with a headache, and Gala went shopping. After eating, Dali noticed that the cheese melted from the heat and became fluid. This somehow coincided with what Dali had in his soul. The artist had a desire to paint a landscape with a melting clock. He returned to the unfinished painting he was working on at the time, which depicted a tree on a platform with mountains in the background. Over the course of two or three hours, Salvador Dali hung a melted pocket watch on the painting, which made the painting what it is today.

Salvador Dali
The Persistence of Memory 1931

History of creation

It was in the summer of 1931 in Paris, when Dali was preparing for a personal exhibition. After seeing Gala with friends at the cinema, “I,” Dali writes in his memoirs, “returned to the table (we finished the dinner with excellent Camembert) and became immersed in thoughts about the spreading pulp. Cheese appeared in my mind's eye. I got up and, as usual, headed to the studio to look at the picture I was painting before going to bed. It was the landscape of Port Lligat in the transparent, sad sunset light. In the foreground is the bare carcass of an olive tree with a broken branch.

I felt that in this picture I managed to create an atmosphere consonant with some important image - but which one? I have not the foggiest idea. I needed a wonderful image, but I couldn’t find it. I went to turn off the light, and when I came out, I literally saw the solution: two pairs of soft watches, they hang pitifully from an olive branch. Despite the migraine, I prepared my palette and got to work. Two hours later, by the time Gala returned, the most famous of my paintings was finished.”