The piece of art I chose when visiting the Museum of Modern Art was “The Persistence of Memory” which was painted by artist Salvador Dali in 1931. Salvador Dali was born in May of 1904. He was known for his strange images and surrealist work. His painting skills were heavily influenced by the Renaissance. In his youth he supported anarchism and communism which he received backlash for. After the Spanish Civil War began, he fled as he did not want to take a side in the war and ended up doing the same during World War II and received criticism for it. At times his own actions and beliefs made his name more well known then his own work.
At a glance when looking at this art, we are shown four clocks in what seems to be a desert. When we look deeper into the painting, we can see the clocks are oddly “melting”. We can also see that one of the clocks is melting over a corpse of something or someone. There are a group of ants on the orange clock. One of the clocks is melting over a dead tree branch. In this image there seems to be no humans that we know of that are alive. Dali’s inspiration for this work came from Albert Einstein and exactly from his theory of relativity of space and time. Dali came up with the idea of the “melting clocks” after watching a piece of cheese melt on a summer day.
The lifelessness and melting clocks play hand in hand in this painting. We are shown decay through the corpse on the ground and the ants over the orange clock. Time is infinite but humans are not. Dali lived through the Spanish Civil War and World War II and watched as lives were taken in a blink of an eye.
Before Going to see this piece of art at the Museum of Modern Art I have encountered myself with The Persistence of Memory. As a kid the most memorable time was in the movie Looney Tunes: Back in Action. There was an entire scene that was animated in that painting and it always stuck with me. The painting is very intriguing as we question everything that is happening in the painting. It is interesting and draws viewers into trying to decipher all the abnormalities in it such as the melting clocks, corpse and the desert.
I would have a few questions for Dali on this painting. One would be, what is exactly under the blanket or cover? Is it dead or alive? Another question is if the idea of death is preeminent here, how come the two clocks on the left and tree on top of something that seems to be man-made? It seems to be some type of furniture, so it opens the question to, is this on earth or a different realm?
Edward – This is such a mysterious image. I like how carefully you’ve described it here. I didn’t know about the Looney Tunes connection. I will have to check it out! What about the title of the painting? I’m curious about how the melting clocks might be connected to “The Persistence of Memory.”