"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.