Constancy of time. Description of the painting by S. Dali. "The Persistence of Memory" by Salvador Dali. The secret to the success of the painting Salvador gave wasted time

The Persistence of the Memory of Salvador Dali, or, as is popularly known, the soft watch, is perhaps the master’s most popular painting. The only people who haven’t heard about it are those who are in an information vacuum in some village without a sewer system.

Well, let’s start our “story of one painting,” perhaps, with its description, so beloved by hippopotamus adherents. For those who don’t understand what I mean, conversations about hippopotamus are a blast, especially for those who have ever communicated with an art critic. It's on YouTube, Google can help. But let's return to our Salvadoran sheep.

The same painting “The Persistence of Memory”, another name is “Soft Hours”. The genre of the picture is surrealism, your captain of obviousness is always ready to serve. Located in the New York Museum contemporary art. Oil. Year of creation 1931. Size - 100 by 330 cm.

More about Salvadorich and his paintings

The permanence of the memory of Salvador Dali, description of the painting.

The painting depicts the lifeless landscape of the notorious Port Lligat, where Salvador spent a significant part of his life. On foreground in the left corner there is a piece of something hard, on which, in fact, there is a pair of soft watches. One of the soft watches is dripping from a hard thing (either a rock, or hardened earth, or God knows what), another watch is located on the branch of the corpse of an olive tree that has long since died in the bosom. That red weird thing in the left corner is a solid pocket watch being eaten by ants.

In the middle of the composition one can see an amorphous mass with eyelashes, in which, however, one can easily see a self-portrait of Salvador Dali. Similar image is present in so many of Salvadorich’s paintings that it is quite difficult not to recognize him (for example in) Soft Dali wrapped soft watch like a blanket and, apparently, sleeps and has sweet dreams.

In the background settled the sea, coastal rocks and again a piece of some hard blue unknown garbage.

Salvador Dali Persistence of memory, analysis of paintings and the meaning of images.

My personal opinion is that the painting symbolizes exactly what is stated in its title - the constancy of memory, while time is fleeting and quickly “melts” and “flows down” like a soft clock or is devoured like a hard one. As they say, sometimes a banana is just a banana.

All that can be said with some degree of certainty is that Salvador painted the picture while Gala went to the cinema to have fun, and he stayed at home due to a migraine attack. The idea for the painting came to him some time after eating soft Camembert cheese and thinking about its “super softness.” All this is from Dali’s words and therefore closest to the truth. Although the master was still a talker and a hoaxer, and his words should be filtered through a fine, fine sieve.

Deep Meaning Syndrome

This is all below - the creation of shadowy geniuses from the Internet and I don’t know how to feel about it. I have not found any documentary evidence or statements from El Salvador on this matter, so do not take it at face value. But some assumptions are beautiful and have a place to be.

When creating the painting, Salvador may have been inspired by the common ancient saying “Everything flows, everything changes,” which is attributed to Heraclitus. Claims to some degree of authenticity, since Dali was familiar firsthand with the philosophy of the ancient thinker. Salvadorich even has a decoration (a necklace, if I'm not mistaken) called the Heraclitus fountain.

There is an opinion that the three clocks in the picture are the past, present and future. It is unlikely that this was really what El Salvador intended, but the idea is beautiful.

The hard clock is perhaps time in the physical sense, and the soft clock is the subjective time we perceive. More like the truth.

The dead olive is supposedly a symbol of ancient wisdom that has sunk into oblivion. This is, of course, interesting, but considering that at the beginning Dali simply painted a landscape, and the idea to include all these surreal images came to him much later, it seems very doubtful.

The sea in the picture is supposedly a symbol of immortality and eternity. It’s also beautiful, but I doubt it, since, again, the landscape was painted earlier and did not contain any deep and surreal ideas.

Among lovers of the search for deep meaning, there was an assumption that the painting The Persistence of Memory was created under the influence of ideas about the theory of relativity of Uncle Albert. In response to this, Dali replied in an interview that, in fact, he was inspired not by the theory of relativity, but by “the surreal feeling of Camembert cheese melting in the sun.” So it goes.

By the way, Camembert is a very good yum with a delicate texture and a slightly mushroom flavor. Although Dorblu is much tastier, in my opinion.

What does the sleeping Dali himself mean in the middle, wrapped in a clock? I have no idea, to be honest. Did you want to show your unity with time, with memory? Or the connection of time with sleep and death? Covered in the darkness of history.

Salvador Dali became famous throughout the world thanks to his inimitable surreal style of painting. To the very famous works The author’s works include his personal self-portrait, where he depicted himself with a neck in the style of Raphael’s brush, “Flesh on the Stones,” “Enlightened Pleasures,” and “The Invisible Man.” However, Salvador Dali wrote “The Persistence of Memory”, attaching this work to one of his most profound theories. This happened at the junction of his stylistic rethinking, when the artist joined the trend of surrealism.

"The Persistence of Memory". Salvador Dali and his Freudian theory

The famous canvas was created in 1931, when the artist was in a state of heightened excitement from the theories of his idol, the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. IN general outline The idea of ​​the painting was to convey the artist’s attitude towards softness and hardness.

Being a very self-centered person, prone to flashes of uncontrollable inspiration and at the same time carefully understanding it from the point of view of psychoanalysis, Salvador Dali, like everyone else creative personalities, created his masterpiece under the influence of hot summer day. As the artist himself recalls, he was puzzled by the contemplation of how the heat melted. He had previously been attracted by the theme of transforming objects into different states, which he tried to convey on canvas. The painting “The Persistence of Memory” by Salvador Dali is a symbiosis of melted cheese with an olive tree standing alone against the backdrop of the mountains. By the way, it was this image that became the prototype of the soft watch.

Description of the picture

Almost all works of that period are filled with abstract images human faces, hidden behind the shapes of foreign objects. They seem to be hidden from view, but at the same time they are the main ones acting characters. This is how the surrealist tried to depict the subconscious in his works. Central figure In the painting “The Persistence of Memory” Salvador Dali made a face that is similar to his self-portrait.

The picture seems to have absorbed everything significant milestones in the artist’s life, and also reflected the inevitable future. You can notice that in the lower left corner of the canvas you can see a closed clock completely dotted with ants. Dali often resorted to depicting these insects, which for him were associated with death. The shape and color of the clock were based on the artist's memories of one in his childhood home that was broken. By the way, the mountains visible are nothing more than a piece from the landscape of the Spaniard’s homeland.

Salvador Dali portrayed “The Persistence of Memory” as somewhat devastated. It is clearly visible that all objects are separated from each other by the desert and are not self-sufficient. Art critics believe that with this the author tried to convey his spiritual emptiness, which weighed on him at that time. In fact, the idea was to convey human anguish over the passage of time and changes in memory. Time, according to Dali, is infinite, relative and in constant motion. Memory, on the contrary, is short-lived, but its stability should not be underestimated.

Secret images in the picture

Salvador Dali wrote “The Persistence of Memory” in a couple of hours and did not bother to explain to anyone what he wanted to say with this canvas. Many art historians are still building hypotheses around this iconic work of the master, noticing in it only individual symbols that the artist resorted to throughout his entire career.

Upon closer inspection, you can see that the clock hanging from the branch on the left is shaped like a tongue. The tree on the canvas is depicted as withered, which indicates the destructive aspect of time. This work is small in size, but is considered the most powerful of all that Salvador Dali wrote. “The Persistence of Memory” is certainly the most psychologically deep picture that reveals inner world author. Perhaps that is why he did not want to comment on it, leaving his admirers guessing.

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 many different versions of the Persistence of Memory analysis. 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.

At the beginning of August 1929, young Dali met his future wife and muse Gala. Their union became the guarantee incredible success artist, influencing all of his subsequent creativity, including the painting “The Persistence of Memory”.

(1) Soft watch- a symbol of nonlinear, subjective time, arbitrarily flowing and unevenly filling space. The three clocks in the picture are the past, present and future. “You asked me,” Dali wrote to physicist Ilya Prigogine, “if I thought about Einstein when I drew a soft clock (meaning the theory of relativity. - Ed.). I answer you in the negative, the fact is that the connection between space and time was absolutely obvious to me for a long time, so there was nothing special in this picture for me, it was the same as any other... To this I can add that I I thought about Heraclitus (an ancient Greek philosopher who believed that time is measured by the flow of thought. - Ed.). That is why my painting is called “The Persistence of Memory.” Memory of the relationship between space and time."

(2) 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. Only Gala, he will say after the death of his wife, “knowing my defenselessness, hid my hermit’s oyster pulp in a fortress-shell, and thereby saved it.”

(3) Solid watch - lie on the left with the dial down - a symbol of objective time.

(4) Ants- a symbol of rotting and decomposition. According to Nina Getashvili, professor Russian Academy painting, sculpture and architecture, “children’s impression of bat a wounded animal infested with ants, as well as a memory invented by the artist himself about a baby being bathed with ants in the anus, endowed the artist with the obsessive presence of this insect in his painting for the rest of his life. (“I loved to remember nostalgically this action, which in fact did not happen,” the artist will write in “The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, Told by Himself.” - Ed.). On the clock on the left, the only one that has remained solid, the ants also create a clear cyclic structure, obeying the divisions of the chronometer. However, this does not obscure the meaning that the presence of ants is still a sign of decomposition.” According to Dali, linear time devours itself.

(5) 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.”

(6) 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).

(7) 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 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.”

(8) Sea for Dali it 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.

(9) 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.

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

Photo: M.FLYNN/ALAMY/DIOMEDIA, CARL VAN VECHTEN/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

One of the most famous paintings, written in the genre of surrealism, is “The Persistence of Memory.” Salvador Dali, the author of this painting, created it in just a few hours. The canvas is now in New York, at the Museum of Modern Art. This small painting, measuring only 24 by 33 centimeters, is the artist’s most discussed work.

Explanation of the name

Salvador Dali's painting "The Persistence of Memory" was painted in 1931 on a tapestry canvas self made. The idea of ​​​​creating this painting was connected with the fact that one day, while waiting for his wife Gala to return from the cinema, Salvador Dali painted an absolutely deserted landscape of the sea coast. Suddenly he saw on the table a piece of cheese, which he had eaten in the evening with friends, melting in the sun. The cheese melted and became softer and softer. Having thought about it and connecting the long passage of time with a melting piece of cheese, Dali began to fill the canvas with spreading hours. Salvador Dali called his work “The Persistence of Memory,” explaining the title by the fact that once you look at a painting, you will never forget it. Another name of the painting is “Flowing Clock”. This name is associated with the content of the canvas itself, which Salvador Dali put into it.

“Persistence of Memory”: description of the painting

When you look at this canvas, your eye is immediately struck by the unusual placement and structure of the objects depicted. The picture shows the self-sufficiency of each of them and general feeling emptiness. There are many seemingly unrelated items here, but they all create a general impression. What did Salvador Dali depict in the painting “The Persistence of Memory”? The description of all items takes up quite a lot of space.

The atmosphere of the painting “The Persistence of Memory”

Salvador Dali painted the painting in brown tones. The general shadow lies on the left side and middle of the painting, the sun falls on the back and right side of the canvas. The picture seems to be filled with quiet horror and fear of such calm, and at the same time, a strange atmosphere fills “The Persistence of Memory.” Salvador Dali with this painting makes you think about the meaning of time in the life of every person. About whether time can stop? Can it adapt to each of us? Probably everyone should give themselves answers to these questions.

It is a known fact that the artist always left notes about his paintings in his diary. However, about the famous painting“The Persistence of Memory” Salvador Dali said nothing. great artist Initially he understood that by painting this picture he would make people think about the frailty of existence in this world.

The influence of canvas on a person

Salvador Dali's painting "The Persistence of Memory" was examined by American psychologists, who came to the conclusion that this painting has the strongest psychological impact on certain types of human personalities. Many people, looking at this painting by Salvador Dali, described their feelings. Most of people were immersed in nostalgia, others were trying to sort out the mixed emotions of general horror and thoughtfulness caused by the composition of the picture. The canvas conveys the feelings, thoughts, experiences and attitude towards the “softness and hardness” of the artist himself.

Of course, this picture is small in size, but it can be considered one of the greatest and most powerful psychological paintings by Salvador Dali. The painting “The Persistence of Memory” carries the greatness of the classics of surrealist painting.