Persistence Of Memory
"Persistence
of Memory" by Salvador Dali
is one his most distinguished works. It is an
Oil on Canvas 9 1/2" x 13"
and was painted in 1931. Dali uses many types of
media in this picture to
portray the imagery he was looking for. The First media
I recognized was
chiaroscuro. The artwork starts from a bright white and blue in
the top left
hand corner and ends up fading into darkness. There is a large
figure with a
clock draped over it right before the fade to darkness which may
symbolize a
time in the artists life in which he was feeling that his memories
were
fading and falling into blackness. The Second media I noticed was
trompe
l’oeil. This was most noticed with the seemingly melted watches
representing
time or memory draping off a table and a tree. It is really a
barren landscape
with 4 clocks, a table, fake tree, a blue rectangular mass,
and some mountains
in the background. I suppose he is trying to symbolize his
thoughts and memories
and how he was feeling about them at that moment. This
artwork consists of a
mostly cool color scheme with one instance of warm.
There is a red clock in the
bottom left hand corner that does seem to stick
out with the effect of red and
black it uses. That also is covered with ants
that look like they are eating
which may symbolize some type of eating away
at a memory he had. The cool colors
are the sky and 3 of the clocks while the
warm is 1 clock and the base of the
mountain. The rest of the landscape is a
very neutral brown and black.
Persistence of Memory also exhibits a kind
of atmospheric/linear perspective.
The objects in the front of the piece,
the tree, clocks, table, figure, are most
noticeable with detail and it seems
like those are the objects the artist wants
you to be most familiar with
relative to the mountains, sky, and ocean in the
distance which really are
not that symbolic in this picture. They are of less
focus than the melted
clocks. Dali was a noted Surrealist and this picture may
have been his
greatest in that era. He was a man that could put photorealistic
images on a
canvas. His surrealist era was influenced by a famous psychologist
which led
him to explore his own fears and fantasies. In 1934 Dali was expelled
from
the Surrealist group due to the world war and his supposed crazy ideas.
I
chose this artwork because of Dali’s intense, illusionistic style. He was
a
great artist and a man not ashamed to show how he felt. He wanted to
explore his
fears and fantasies and express them through artwork which gives
me the sense
that he had great pride. I feel this piece is very important to
the surrealist
artworld as it is a perfect example of Dali’s realistically
dreamlike content.
Dali was expelled from his surrealist group in 1934
and responded as follows "
the difference between me and the surrealists is
that I am surrealism.