S. Dali. The constancy 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 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, 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 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 forms, 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 works 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.
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Reviews
We have to regret that Salvador Dali did not paint, but only painted objects to look like photographs, although he gives this explanation 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.
“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 by the search for “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, to the right top corner paintings bordering golden mountains. The viewer's main attention is drawn to the bluish pocket watch, which slowly melts in the sun. Some of them flow down strange creature, which 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 watch was supposedly chosen by the artist like this. On the façade of the house in Port Ligat, where Dali lived, there is a 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 a certain hidden meaning. It is not known what looks like more confusion - the plots of the great Dali’s paintings 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.” In this regard, interesting conclusions are made by our contemporary, an 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 lethargic sleep 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 bright colors landscape, this 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 clock, 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.
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.
"Persistence of memory" is 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, protruding tongue and with one eye closed 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 junk or, at best, a painting by 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.
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 deep subtext and many encrypted characters. 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. deserted shore The artist associated it 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”, however new era 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.
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 completed.”
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.
