The persistence of memory
| The Persistence of Memory (La persistencia de la memoria) |
|---|
| Salvador Dalí , 1931 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 24.1 x 33 cm |
| Museum of Modern Art, New York
Link to the picture |
The Persistence of Memory ( La persistencia de la memoria in Spanish), also known as The Melting Time or The Soft Clocks , is the most famous painting by the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí from 1931.
description
The oil painting , which is only 24.1 centimeters by 33 centimeters, shows three dissolving pocket watches arranged in the Catalan landscape in front of the rugged cliffs of the Cap de Creus . A fly sits on a clock, symbolizing how time flies. Another is being eaten away by ants, symbolic of transience and decay. In the center of the picture, a clock is running away on an abstract face of the artist depicted in profile, a motif that Dalí had used two years earlier in his work The Great Masturbator .
The sight of hot, melting camembert had inspired Dalí to create the painting. In its formal language it follows on from a series of images that thematize the rivalry between the “hard” and the “soft”. It also bears witness to the sexual desires that Dalí's great and only love Gala allowed to sprout in him, and the contradictions of which the declared “perfectly im-potent” artist expressed in these works.
Thematically, the painting contains compositional elements from Dalí's works The Great Masturbator (1929) and The Lost Face (1930). 21 years later, Dalí takes up the topic again and processes his newly gained painting experiences in dissolving the permanence of memory (1952/54).
Provenance
The Persistence of Memory was first exhibited in 1931 at the gallery owner Pierre Colle in Paris. In 1934, the Julien Levy Gallery in New York acquired it . In the same year, an anonymous buyer bought the painting and donated it to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gilles Néret: Dalí . Taschen-Verlag, 2002