Janson’s History of Art says, “Dali has created a provocative image of mysterious objects that can be read as metaphors for the deepest desires, fears, and anxieties, especially sexual, of the mind, and that can unleash multiple interpretations from a viewer’s own subconscious”. One of the most obvious is the passage of time, which eventually leads to death-indicated by the melting clocks and watch. The Persistence of Memory does not allow for specific interpretation, as surrealist paintings were typically hard to decipher, but it evokes many associations. Light, shape, and space are all incorporated to serve the purpose of unlocking the inner subconscious of the human mind they all give the painting an eerie, hallucinogenic quality that puts the viewer into the world of the subconscious, where normal objects are not what they seem and have deep significance. The cliffs are off in the distance, indicating that they have some significance, but they are not at the forefront of the purpose. We have a different concept of space in our dreams things can be farther away than they would be in real life, or objects would be bigger, smaller, or harder to reach. As stated before, the element of space also has a dreamlike quality to it. This is an indication of the paranoid state that Dali was in while he created the piece, and it serves to help unlock the subconscious parts of the mind. Shape also serves the painting well the strange shapes add an eerie feeling to the painting, and give it a dreamlike quality.
With time being such an important part of the interpretation of the piece, the light only serves to enhance it. Being able to see that there is a specific time of day is interesting because of the watches, which give the impression that time is important to the piece, as well as the title, which uses the word ‘memory’, also indicating time.
The light in the painting shows a specific time of day, most likely sunset. His use of light, shape, and space all contribute to his purpose. Overall, the painting uses the elements of light, shape, and space in an interesting manner. There are ants crawling on the case of the pocket watch. There is a fly standing on the clock that is draped over the edge of the block, and there is a pocket watch sitting nearby. The objects that are in this setting appear to be three melting watches one draped over a tree-branch that is protruding from a solid block, one on the block itself, and one over what appears to be an amorphous head with a closed human eye painted on it and a neck trailing behind it. First of all, it the subjects at the forefront of the painting with a cliff in the background that overlooks a body of water this is in the upper right-hand corner. There are many pieces of the painting to pay attention to. (5) It is a strange piece, and hard to understand without researching its background. It fits perfectly into the surrealist movement in that it depicts a hallucinatory dreamlike world with enigmatic objects that have hidden meanings. (4) He was just beginning to move into surrealism, so he still had a lot of changes ahead of him, but it is the beginning of a line of paintings that are very similar in style. One of his most famous paintings is The Persistence of Memory, which was painted in 1931, near the beginning of his surrealist period.
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