Salvador Dali and his surreal paintings. Salvador Dali The constancy of memory (soft clock): description, meaning, history of creation Melting time with a soft clock

Inspired by Einstein's theory of relativity, Salvador Dali depicted this world-famous melting clock. They remind us of the transience of our existence and sometimes give rise to deep reflection. It is not for nothing that the painting “The Persistence of Memory” is still actively discussed in creative circles.

Modern designers have brought this idea to life and we are pleased to present you an original element for the interior - Salvador Dali's melting elements. Based on this idea, a melting bottle in the shape of a watch was also created. With us you can choose any model (the selection option is available in the field above the price).

Salvador Dali's watch is made in unusual shape. It seems that they are spreading across the surface. In addition, the shape of the watch allows it to be placed in the most unexpected place- at the edge of the surface. This makes them even more realistic.

This decorative solution is a must-have for all art fans and connoisseurs of Dali’s works. Also, a melting watch will be an excellent gift for a birthday or other memorable event.

The original design blends seamlessly with modern technologies. The quartz mechanism of a watch is the key to its durability. With this watch you will never be late for an important meeting.

A melting clock can complement your bedroom or take place of honor in the office. Wherever you place them, they will certainly attract attention and delight others.

Peculiarities

• Perfectly balanced and held on the corner of any piece of furniture;
• Quartz movement;
• Created based on the work of Salvador Dali.

Characteristics

• Power: 1 AAA battery (not included);
• Clock dimensions: 18 x 13 cm;
• Material: PVC.

Painting "The Persistence of Memory" 1931.

The most famous and most discussed painting by Salvador Dali among artists. The painting is in the Museum contemporary art V New York since 1934.

This painting depicts a clock as a symbol of the human experience of time and memory. Here they are shown in great distortions, as 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 deserted shore, with this he expressed the emptiness within himself.

This emptiness was filled when he saw a piece of Camember cheese. “...When I decided to write a watch, I painted it 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 a lot delicious cheese, then I was left alone, sitting with my elbows on the table, thinking about how “super soft” processed cheese is.

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.

The painting has become a symbol of the modern concept of the relativity of time. A year after its exhibition at the Pierre Colet Gallery in Paris, the painting was purchased by the New York Museum of Modern Art.

In the painting, the artist expressed the relativity of time and emphasized amazing property human memory, which allows us to be transported again to those days that are long in the past.

HIDDEN SYMBOLS

Soft clock on the table

A symbol of nonlinear, subjective time, flowing arbitrarily and unevenly filling space. The three clocks in the picture are the past, present and future.

Blurry object with eyelashes.

This is a self-portrait of Dali sleeping. 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. “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.” According to Dali, sleep frees the subconscious, so the artist’s head blurs like a clam - this is evidence of his defenselessness.

A solid watch lies on the left with the dial facing down. Symbol of objective time.

Ants are a symbol of rotting and decomposition. According to Nina Getashvili, professor Russian Academy painting, sculpture and architecture, “children’s impression of bat wounded animal 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 brought inspiration to the Greek philosophers who spent their lives under the sun, covered with flies.”

Olive.
For the artist, this is a symbol of ancient wisdom, which, unfortunately, has already sunk into oblivion (which is why the tree is depicted dry).

Cape Creus.
This cape on the Catalan coast 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. - Ed.) is embodied in the rocky granite... These are frozen clouds, reared by an explosion in all their countless guises, ever new and new ones - you just need to change your point of view a little.”

For Dali, the sea symbolized immortality and eternity. The artist considered it an ideal space for travel, where time flows not 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 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.

Mirror lying horizontally on the left. This is a symbol of changeability and impermanence, obediently reflecting both the subjective and objective world.

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) - one of the most famous paintings 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) - probably the most famous work Dali. 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 executed his paintings in a manner unique to him, sharpened life questions through an original and contrasting combination of the real and the fantastic.

One of the most famous paintings, known by several names, the most common is “Memory Persistence”, but is also known as “Soft Clock”, “Memory Hardness” or “Memory Persistence”.

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. Within two or three hours Salvador Dali hung a melted pocket watch in 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.”

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, obsolete and lacking of great importance now an attribute.

In any case, the painting “The Constancy of Time” is one of famous works the art of Salvador Dali, who, 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. True meaning The painting “The Constancy of Time” is no longer recognizable to us. 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.

S. Dali. The constancy 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 painting depicts a clock as a symbol of the human experience of time and memory. Here they are shown in great distortions, as 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 depicted the image of a deserted shore, thereby expressing the emptiness within himself.

This emptiness was filled when he saw a piece of Camember cheese. "... Having decided to write the hours, I painted 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 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.

The painting has become a symbol of the modern concept of the relativity of time. A year after its exhibition at the Pierre Colet Gallery in Paris, the painting was purchased by the New York Museum of Modern Art.

In the painting, 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 in the past.

HIDDEN SYMBOLS

Soft clock on the table

A symbol of nonlinear, subjective time, flowing arbitrarily and unevenly filling space. The three clocks in the picture are the past, present and future.

Blurry object with eyelashes.

This is a self-portrait of Dali sleeping. 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. “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.” According to Dali, sleep frees the subconscious, so the artist’s head blurs like a mollusk - this is evidence of his defenselessness.

A solid watch lies on the left with the dial facing down. Symbol of objective time.

Ants are a symbol of rotting and decomposition. According to Nina Getashvili, a professor at the Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, “a child’s 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 brought inspiration to the Greek philosophers who spent their lives under the sun, covered with flies.”

Olive.
For the artist, this is a symbol of ancient wisdom, which, unfortunately, has already sunk into oblivion (which is why the tree is depicted dry).

Cape Creus.
This cape is 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. - Ed.) is embodied in rocky granite... These are frozen clouds, reared by an explosion in all their countless guises, ever new and new ones - you just need to change your point of view a little.”

For Dali, the sea symbolized immortality and eternity. The artist considered it an ideal space for travel, where time flows not 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 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.

Mirror lying horizontally on the left. This is a symbol of changeability and impermanence, obediently reflecting both the subjective and objective world.

Http://maxpark.com/community/6782/content/1275232

Reviews

We have to regret that Salvador Dali did not paint, but only painted objects to look like photographs, although he gives this explanation of why he did just that in his “Diary of a Genius,” but this work It can hardly be considered successful; it costs exactly as much as the mental effort spent on it. A large, dark, simply painted field creates an undesirable effect of being unoccupied, and even a lying head does not give an impetus to comprehend the essence of the idea. Using dreams in your work, as he did, is a good thing, but it does not always lead to brilliant results.

I have an ambiguous attitude towards creativity. At one time I visited his homeland in the city of Figueres in Spain. There is a large museum there that he created himself, with many of his works. It made an impression on me. Later I read his biography, reviewed his works and wrote several articles about his work.
This kind of painting is not to my liking, but it is interesting. So I simply perceive his work as a special phenomenon in painting.

We must assume that he, like any artist, has various works: those that are flagship and just ordinary. If by the first we judge the pinnacle of mastery, then the others are essentially routine work and you can’t do without it. There are probably a dozen works by Dali that can be included in the top ten best works in the world in the section of surrealism. For many, he is an example and inspiration in this direction.

What amazes me in his works is not his skill, but his imagination. Some of the paintings are simply repulsive, but it’s interesting to understand what he wanted to say. In the museum there is one composition with lips, 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.