The Persistence of Memory, Dalí
- Oil on linen canvas
- 100% hand-painted
- Painting reproduction
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| Author: | Salvador Dalí |
|---|---|
| Type: | Painting |
| Style: | Surrealism |
| Medium | Oil |
| Support: | Canvas |
| Year: | 1931 |
| Located: | MoMA museum, New York. |
It is also known as "The Soft Watches." Painted in 1931. This is the artist's most representative painting.
It shows a desert with 4 clocks, of which 3 are squashed by the effects of time and heat, it seems.
The fourth clock, of which only the back is visible, is not deformed but is being attacked by ants. The symbolism of the work appears to be complex, although in reality, it is not that much. Dalí explains that he was inspired by melted cheese, and it was pretty much a coincidence that the clocks became the protagonists of the work.
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Why is this painting famous?
The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí became an icon of modern art because it managed to condense, in a seemingly simple image, the entire surrealist imaginary. Its soft watches, melting like wax under the sun, challenge the rigidity of time and rational logic, inviting a visual experience close to dreaming and to Freudian psychology.The work, small in format but of enormous symbolic power, gained immediate notoriety because it proposed a radically different vision of reality, where the everyday is deformed to reveal the unconscious. The contrast between the almost photographic precision of the landscape and the absurd plasticity of the objects made the painting a universal metaphor of the relativity of time and one of the most recognizable images of the 20th century.
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