Even if you don't know who painted The Persistence of Memory, you've definitely seen it. Soft watches, dry wood, sandy brown colors are recognizable attributes of the surrealist Salvador Dali’s painting. Date of creation - 1931, painted in oil on handmade canvas. Small size - 24x33 cm. Storage location - Museum contemporary art, NY.

Dali's work is imbued with a challenge to conventional logic and the natural order of things. The artist suffered from borderline mental disorders and attacks of paranoid delusions, which was reflected in all of his works. “The Persistence of Memory” is no exception. The painting has become a symbol of changeability, the fragility of time, contains hidden meaning, which letters, notes, and the surrealist’s autobiography help to interpret.

Dali treated the canvas with special reverence and invested personal meaning. This attitude towards a miniature work, completed in literally two hours, is an important factor that contributed to its popularity. The laconic Dali, after creating his “Soft Clocks,” spoke about them quite often, recalled the history of their creation in his autobiography, and explained the meaning of the elements in correspondence and notes. Thanks to this painting, art historians who collected references were able to conduct a more in-depth analysis of the remaining works of the famous surrealist.

Description of the picture

The image of melting dials is familiar to everyone, but detailed description Not everyone will remember Salvador Dali’s painting “The Persistence of Memory”, and they won’t even take a closer look at some important elements. In this composition, every element, color scheme, and general atmosphere matter.

Painted picture brown paints with the addition of blue. Transports you to the hot coast - a solid rocky cape is located in the background, by the sea. Near the cape you can see an egg. Closer to the middle ground there is a mirror turned upside down with its smooth surface facing up.

In the middle ground is a withered olive tree, from a broken branch of which hangs a flexible watch dial. Nearby is the image of the author - a creature blurred like a mollusk with a closed eye and eyelashes. On top of the element is another flexible clock.

The third soft dial hangs from the corner of the surface on which the dry tree grows. In front of him is the only solid clock in the entire composition. They are turned with the dial down, on the surface of the back there are numerous ants forming the shape of a chronometer. The painting leaves a lot of empty spaces that do not require filling with additional artistic details.

The same image was taken as the basis for the painting “The Decay of the Persistence of Memory,” painted in 1952-54. The surrealist supplemented it with other elements - another flexible dial, fish, branches, big amount water. This picture continues, complements, and contrasts with the first.

History of creation

The history of the creation of Salvador Dali’s painting “The Persistence of Memory” is as non-trivial as the entire biography of the surrealist. In the summer of 1931, Dali was in Paris, preparing to open a personal exhibition of his works. Waiting for Gala, my friend, to return from the cinema common-law wife, which had a huge influence on his work, the artist at the table was thinking about melting cheese. That evening, part of their dinner was Camembert cheese, which melted under the heat. The surrealist, suffering from a headache, visited his studio before going to bed, where he worked on a beach landscape bathed in sunset light. On foreground The canvas already depicted the skeleton of a dry olive tree.

The atmosphere of the painting in Dali’s mind turned out to be in tune with others important images. That evening he imagined himself hanging from a broken tree branch. soft watch. Work on the painting continued immediately, despite the evening migraine. It took two hours. When Gala returned, the most famous work by the Spanish artist was completely completed.

The artist’s wife argued that once you see the canvas, you won’t be able to forget the image. Its creation was inspired by the variable shape of the cheese and the theory of creating paranoid symbols, which Dali associated with the view of Cape Creus. This cape wandered from one surrealist work to another, symbolizing the inviolability of personal theory.

Later, the artist reworked the idea into a new canvas, called “Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory.” There is water hanging on a branch here, and the elements are disintegrating. Even dials that are constant in their flexibility slowly melt, and the world is divided into mathematically clear, precise blocks.

Secret meaning

For understanding secret meaning canvas “The Persistence of Memory”, you will need to take a closer look at each attribute of the image separately.

They symbolize nonlinear time, filling space with a contradictory flow. For Dali, the connection between time and space was obvious; he did not consider this idea revolutionary. Soft dials are also associated with the ideas of the ancient philosopher Heraclitus about measuring time by the flow of thought. Dali thought about the Greek thinker and his ideas when creating the picture, as he admitted in a letter to physicist Ilya Prigogine.

There are three fluid dials shown. This is a symbol of the past, present and future, mixed into a single space, indicating an obvious relationship.

Solid watch

A symbol of the constancy of the passage of time, contrasted with soft watches. Covered with ants, which the artist associates with decay, death, and decay. Ants create the shape of a chronometer, obey the structure, without ceasing to symbolize decay. The artist was haunted by ants from his childhood memories and delusional fantasies; they were obsessively present everywhere. Dali argued that linear time devours itself; he could not do without ants in this concept.

Blurry face with eyelashes

A surreal self-portrait of the author, immersed in the viscous world of dreams and the human unconscious. The blurry eye with eyelashes is closed - the artist is sleeping. He is defenseless, in the unconscious nothing fetters him. The shape resembles a mollusk without a hard skeleton. Salvador said that he himself was defenseless, like an oyster without a shell. His protective shell was Gala, who had died earlier. The artist called the dream the death of reality, so the world of the picture becomes more pessimistic from this.

Olive tree

A dry tree with a broken branch is an olive tree. A symbol of antiquity, also again reminiscent of the ideas of Heraclitus. The dryness of the tree, the absence of foliage and olives, suggests that the age of ancient wisdom has passed and been forgotten, sunk into oblivion.

Other elements

The painting also contains the World Egg, symbolizing life. The image is borrowed from ancient Greek mystics and Orphic mythology. The sea is immortality, eternity, best space for any travel in the real and imaginary worlds. Cape Creus on the Catalan coast, not far from the author’s home, is the embodiment of Dali’s theory about the flow of delusional images into other delusional images. The fly on the nearest dial is the Mediterranean fairy who inspired ancient philosophers. The horizontal mirror behind is the impermanence of the subjective and objective worlds.

Color spectrum

Brown sand tones prevail, creating a hot atmosphere. They are contrasted with cold blue shades, softening the pessimistic mood of the composition. The color scheme sets you in a melancholy mood and becomes the basis for the feeling of sadness that remains after viewing the picture.

General composition

The analysis of the painting “The Persistence of Memory” should be completed by considering general composition. Dali is precise in detail, leaving a sufficient amount empty space, not filled with objects. This allows you to concentrate on the mood of the canvas, find your own meaning, and interpret it personally, without “dissecting” every smallest element.

The size of the canvas is small, which indicates the personal meaning of the composition for the artist. The entire composition allows you to immerse yourself in the author’s inner world and better understand his experiences. The Persistence of Memory, also known as the Soft Clock, does not require logical analysis. When analyzing this masterpiece of world art in the genre of surrealism, it is necessary to include associative thinking, mindflow.

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

Salvador Dali “The Persistence of Memory” (“Soft Hours”, “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 of the City of New York.

The work of the great Spaniard Salvador Dali, like his life, always arouses genuine interest. His paintings, which are largely incomprehensible, attract attention with their originality and extravagance. Some remain forever fascinated in search of “special meaning,” while others speak with undisguised disgust about the artist’s mental illness. But neither one nor the other can deny genius.

Now we are in the Museum of Modern Art of the City of New York in front of the painting by the great Dali “The Persistence of Memory”. Let's look at it.

The plot of the film unfolds against the backdrop of a deserted surreal landscape. In the distance we see the sea, bordered by golden mountains in the upper right corner of the picture. The viewer's main attention is drawn to the bluish pocket watch, which slowly melts in the sun. Some of them flow down a strange creature that lies on the lifeless ground in the center of the composition. In this creature one can recognize a shapeless human figure, melancholy with his eyes closed and his tongue hanging out. In the left corner of the picture in the foreground there is a table. There are two more clocks on this table - one of them is dripping from the edge of the table, the other, orange, rusty in color, retaining its original shape, is covered with ants. On the far edge of the table rises a dry, broken tree, from whose branches the last bluish hours are flowing.

Yes, Dali's paintings are an attack on the normal psyche. What is the history of the painting? The work was created in 1931. Legend has it that while waiting for Gala, the artist’s wife, to return home, Dali painted a picture of a deserted beach and rocks, and the image of softening time was born to him when he saw a piece of Camembert cheese. The color of the bluish clock was supposedly chosen by the artist like this. On the facade of the house in Port Ligat, where Dalí lived, there are 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 Galerie Pierre Collet, 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 more confusing - the plots of the paintings of the great Dali themselves or attempts to interpret them. I suggest looking at how different people interpreted the painting.

The outstanding art historian Federico Zeri (F. Zeri) wrote in his research that Salvador Dali “in the language of allusions and symbols designated conscious and active memory in the form of a mechanical watch and ants scurrying around in them, and the unconscious - in the form of a soft clock that shows the indefinite time. "The Persistence of Memory" thus depicts the oscillations between the ups and downs of 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 watch, 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 decomposition, symbolized here by the bustle of insatiable ants.” According to Swinglehurst, "The Persistence of Memory" became a symbol of the modern concept of the relativity of time. Another researcher of the genius’s work, Gilles Neret, in his book “Dali,” spoke very succinctly about “The Persistence of Memory”: “The famous “soft clock” 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 overtones. Famous writer 20th century George Orwell wrote that Salvador Dali “is equipped with such a complete and excellent set of perversions that anyone can envy him.” Due to this interesting conclusions is done by our contemporary, adherent of classical psychoanalysis, Igor Poperechny. Was it really only the “metaphor of time flexibility” that was put on display for everyone to see? 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 of is present in all the works of the great Spaniard. During the analysis of the entire work of the Genius, certain groups of symbols were identified, which, when appropriately arranged 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 o’clock.

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 his mother and the incestuous desire for her.

Living 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 sleep. A hint at Sopor ants became ubiquitous and were fed to people in this condition in ancient Moroccan medicine. According to Igor Poperechny, in many of Dali’s paintings he depicts his mother with symbols: in the form of domestic animals, birds, as well as mountains, rocks or stones. In the painting 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 self-portrait of Dali...

The soft clock in the picture shows the same time - 6 o'clock. Judging by the bright colors of the landscape, it 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 is there a fly sitting on the 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 painting records the time when Dali’s face experiences perverse pleasure, indulging in “moral decay.”

These are some points of view on the hidden meaning of Dali's painting. You just have to decide which interpretation 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 dripping clock is one of the most unusual images ever used in painting. What did Dali want to say by this? Did you even want to? We can only guess. We only have to acknowledge Dali’s victory, won with the words: “Surrealism is me!”

This concludes the tour. Please ask questions.

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 a carcass 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 a lot delicious 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 much talented people, which were not noticed. 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.

Artist: Salvador Dali

Painting: 1931
Canvas, handmade tapestry
Size: 24 × 33 cm

Description of the painting “The Persistence of Memory” by S. Dali

Artist: Salvador Dali
Title of the painting: “The Persistence of Memory”
Painting: 1931
Canvas, handmade tapestry
Size: 24 × 33 cm

They say and write all sorts of things about Salvador Dali. For example, that he was paranoid, had no connections with real women before 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 the genius (it’s quite problematic to simply call Dali an artist, and it’s not worth it).

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

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

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 trio lived under one roof (a direct parallel with the Briks and Mayakovsky), shared bed and sex among three, and it seemed that this situation was quite satisfactory for both the men and Gala. Yes, this woman loved hoaxes, as well as sexual experiments, but nevertheless, artists and surrealist writers listened to her, which was very rare. Gala needed geniuses, one of whom was Salvador Dali. The couple lived together for 53 years, and the artist stated that he loved her more than his mother, money and Picasso.

Whether this is true or not, we will not know, but the following is known about the painting “Space of Memory,” for which Dyakonova inspired the writer. The landscape of 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 canvas, she predicted that anyone 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 - the nature of processed Camembert cheese, combined with the teachings of Heraclitus on the measurement of 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 inner world artist. visible in the distance blue water, and in the foreground there is a dry tree. This, in principle, is all that is clear at first glance. The remaining images in Dali’s work are deeply symbolic and should only be considered in this context.

Three soft blue clocks calmly hanging on tree branches, a man and a cube are symbols of time, which flows nonlinearly and randomly. It fills subjective space in the same way. The number of hours signifies the past, present and future related to 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 blurred subject with eyelashes refers you to the fears of the artist himself. As you know, he took subjects for his paintings in a dream, which he called the death of the objective world. According to the principles of psychoanalysis and the beliefs of Dali, sleep releases what people hide deep within themselves. And therefore the mollusc-shaped object is a self-portrait of Salvador Dali, who is sleeping. He compared himself to a hermit oyster and said that Gala managed to protect her from the whole world.

The solid clock in the picture symbolizes objective time, which goes 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 flows and changes the head, that is, memory is capable of changing events.

The ants in the painting are a symbol of decay associated with the artist’s own childhood. He saw the corpse of a bat infested with these insects, and since then their presence has become the fixed idea of ​​all creativity. Ants crawl on solid clocks, like hour and minute hands, thus real time kills itself.

Dali called flies “Mediterranean fairies” and considered them to be the insects that inspired the Greek philosophers in their treatises. Ancient Hellas directly related to the olive tree, a symbol of the wisdom of antiquity, which no longer exists. For this reason, the olive tree is depicted dry.

The painting also depicts Cape Creus, which was located not far from hometown Dali. The surrealist himself considered him the source of his philosophy of paranoid metamorphoses. On the canvas it takes the form of a hazy blue 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 humanity. From it emerged the bisexual Phanes, who created people, and the halves of the shell gave them heaven and earth.

Another image in the background of the picture is a mirror lying horizontally. It is called a symbol of changeability and impermanence, which unites the subjective and objective worlds.

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

...Modern physicists are increasingly declaring that time is one of the dimensions of space, that is, the world that surrounds us consists not of three dimensions, but of four. Somewhere at the level of our subconscious, a person forms an intuitive idea of ​​​​the 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 a phenomenon that no one had been able to reveal and recreate before him.

Year of writing: 1931, size: 33 cm x 24 cm.

The painting The Persistence of Memory was painted by the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali and is one of his most famous works. It is currently in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thanks to the huge number of fans of this painting and followers of the painter, this painting is very popular and nowadays, it is often mentioned in modern popular culture.

“The blindness of people who always do the same thing is amazing. I’m surprised why the bank employee doesn’t eat the check, I’m surprised that other artists, before me, didn’t think of painting “soft watches”...,” wrote Salvador Dali.

"The Persistence of Memory" is a surreal painting. Surrealism was a cultural movement that occurred in the 1920s. Surreal artworks introduce an element of surprise, unexpected comparisons and irreverent humor. Sometimes, it is art that is a free expression of the artist's current imagination that can be difficult to interpret, and The Persistence of Memory is no exception. Here the artist depicts hard objects as soft.

The painting shows a slowly melting pocket watch separated from its chains, the sea and a deserted beach in a bay surrounded by rocks in the background (the artist was inspired by the cliffs of Cape Creus). Part of the picture is illuminated sunlight, and part is shrouded in shadow. If you look closely, you can also see small stones.

“Landscape is a state of mind,” said Dali.

Dali often used the philosophy of hard and soft in his paintings. According to some experts, melting clocks indicate the fluidity of time, solid stones represent the reality of life, and the sea represents the vastness of the earth. In the painting there is also an orange-red clock covered with ants, presumably symbolizing the agony of waiting. A strange figure in the center also attracts attention, resembling a melting head with a large nose, a protruding tongue and a closed eye with long eyelashes. Her neck seems to disappear into the shadows. Some interpret it as a joke, the head of a man staring and frozen in a trance, the future viewer of this painting, others believe that this is the head of Dali himself, during a migraine attack. Some also say that the head has this shape because it is free from all prejudices, or simply dead, or the artist believed that death is freedom, because he said: “Freedom - if you define its aesthetic category - is the embodiment of formlessness, it amorphousness,” “Death fascinates me with eternity.”

There are a lot different versions analysis of “Memory Persistence”. Critic and art historian Dawn Ades wrote that "the soft clock is an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time." When Dali was asked if it was true that this was an allusion to Einstein's theory of relativity, he replied rather flippantly that it was just a surreal vision of Camembert cheese melting in the sun.

Also, experts say that the meaning of the work may have been influenced by Freud's ideas, since the painting was painted during the years when Dali was interested in Freud's work.

“When I write, I myself don’t understand what meaning is contained in my painting. But don't think that it is meaningless! It’s just that it’s so deep and complex, casual and whimsical that it eludes logical standard perception,” said Dali.

The painting has attracted the attention of art lovers for many decades. During this time, the film received a lot of criticism and praise. For those who like the surreal style of art, this is a masterpiece. For others, it's just rubbish or, in best case scenario, picture of a madman. Be that as it may, this is one of the works of art that will not be erased from people’s memory for a long time and will provoke new arguments and interpretations.