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Rupak Devkota
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Visual Analysis: Salvador Dali the Persistence of Memory
In the 20th century, the Spanish artist Salvador Dali remained one of the best known for his perplexing, outlandish and weird surrealist art. ‘The Persistence of Memory' (1931) is ranked among his most famous works and regarded by many to be a masterpiece in surrealist art. It was first displayed in 1932 at the Julien Levy gallery and has remained on display in the ‘Museum of Modern' Art in New York since 1934 CITATION MoM15 \l 1033 (MoMA). The work is widely recognized within the artistic community and has frequently been referenced in popular culture, often referred to as the ‘The Melting Watches' and ‘Melting Clocks.' The paper will attempt to present an analysis of this surrealist work of art and attempt to arrive at the meaning behind its symbolism through a visual and semiotic analysis through multiple perspectives.
Observing the Persistence of Memory, one can see the light blue horizon fading downwards to yellow from blue across the painting’s top quarter. A body of water sits under the skyline that seems to be part of a lake. The water connects along the skyline until it touches the mountains situated at the right, in front of which sits a small pebble. On the left of the body of water, a rectangular shaped, elevated platform can be seen with dark brown edges in front of which lies another small pebble. Further in front lies a tree which seems lifeless missing all its branches and leaves, save for one, and has a hollow top. A single branch can be seen holding a pocket that is silver in color and appears to be melting at the branch’s end, the remaining part shows the dial from 3 to 9, while one hand of the watch points at 6, the other is apparently missing CITATION Dal06 \l 1033 (Dali). The tree rests above a cube that is shaped like a rectangular desk at the bottom left whose closer edge is off the canvas. There are two more watches resting on the desk, one of which looks like a melted gold watch that hangs halfway through the desk while its hands rest at five and seven. A fly is resting atop the clock that casts a minute shadow. The other watch is bronze and seems to have been covered by a swarm of insects. It, however, is not melting. The ground is colored in dark brown and almost black in some areas. A white object rests on the ground atop of which is a melted silver clock while the object rests on some object buried between one of its edges. The white object has a certain nose like appearance but has no limbs or other human-like characteristics.
A visual interpretation of the painting reveals that life is something that is full of choices and is very fast paced and thus produces outcomes that we do not find to be favorable, yet we still manage to move on. The clocks indicate that there is more meaning hidden behind the painting. The silver watch that rests on the tree symbolizes a time that has passed only recently, whereas the golden watch is representative of life's best years that are escaping slowly from oneself. The bronze watch, in contrast, it symbolizes a time that the artist wanted to forget and move on from. The clock atop the white object represents the place where the artist resides currently and is trying to live through. On the two opposite sides of the painting, the two pebbles may be symbolizing separation of a person from his or her lover. The mountains are cracked which symbolize that hardships and barriers faced by one before they are able to reach a stable phase of life, while blue platform that is raised represents the path to a better life, while the dead tree symbolizes that nothing lasts forever. The shadow of the fly might be symbolizing the artist wanting to escape reality.
Surrealist artists often try to represent visually how dreaming may look like, in their art. The genre may seem to be disjointed and lacking sense, but when observed closely, it allows one to reflect how the different events, places, objects and people that come together in our dreams could look like to the observant. Therefore to interpret the meaning of the painting, it is helpful to interpret it from the perspective of the artist being in a state of dream. In that case, the melting clocks might be representing the irregular time passage we experience in a dream. They are melting because they do not carry significance in the state of dream. From this perspective, the artist may be hinting at illustrating to the observers how irrelevant and useless time is when one is in a state of dream, while in real life we are striving hard to complete our work on time, or reach our desired destination within time. Time is the central character of his painting CITATION McC07 \l 1033 (McCall). There is also a debate within artists whether the clocks represent pocket watches or wall clocks since the former were popular accessories at the time when the painting was drawn. The surrealists would often mock what would normally be taken as very serious by those in the working class or the middle class, which seems to have included time, something they valued a lot in their lives CITATION Kim05 \l 1033 (Grant). The other thing important in surrealist art are sarcasm, jokes, satire, and humor. There is a hint of sarcasm in the way the clocks are painted, which in the dream world are losing their power and melting out. The ants which are eating the bronze clock seem to be symbolizing the non-permanent nature of the way we keep a record of time, which, as the artist points out, is in a state of decay.
Other ways of interpreting the painting through a visual analysis are the autobiographical account. From this perspective, the land on which the tree, desk, and clocks are resting seems to be infertile and barren. This may be representative of the different landscapes that may have existed in the surroundings of where Dali lived. It could also be reflecting Dali’s childhood memories of the surroundings he had grown up in. The land seems to be uninhabited and abandoned which reflects that the artist has not accessed his childhood memories for a long time. In this perspective, the molten silver clock on the tree could be representing the laundry which would be hanged upon trees for drying. Moreover, from the autobiographical perspective, the clocks could symbolize the artist’s adolescence meting or fading away because a lot of time has passed since that time and the time at which he drew the painting.
To conclude, Dali’s famous work ‘the Persistence of Memory’ with its famous melting watches can symbolize a range of different meanings depending on the perspective which we wish to adopt while conducting an analysis. Nevertheless, it remains one of the most iconic and recognizable works of surrealist art of the century. While it may not be possible to arrive at the true meaning of what the artist implied when drawing the painting, it is quite evident that there are different artistic, historical and autobiographical meanings embedded and hidden within the art, and may just as well be representing them all.
Works Cited
BIBLIOGRAPHY Dali, Salvador. The Persistence of Memory 1931. Shorewood Reproductions, 2006. Image.
Grant, Kim. Surrealism and the Visual Arts: Theory and Reception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
McCall, Vaughn W. "The persistence or the disintegration of memory: Cognitive side effects of electroconvulsive therapy." Journal of ECT 23.2 (2007): 59-60.
MoMA. Salvador Dalí: The Persistence of Memory 1931. 2015. 31 January 2019. <https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79018>.
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