The painting I choose is the persistence of memory , which is painted by Salvador dali in 1931.
To begin with, Dalí was a famous Spanish painter (1904-1989). He is known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work, just like we see in the persistence of memory. Dalí’’s interest also lies in film, sculpture, and photography. Also, he has contributed a lot to surrealism.
The persistence of memory, also known as “the soft watches”, is probably the most famous Surrealism painting among his work. If we take a look at this painting, we can easily find a lot of bizarre images in it. The orange clock at the left-side of painting is covered in ants and there are three soft watches on the trees, tables and the monster.
His painting is kind of like dream, since in reality, all of the watches are hard , while in this painting, the watches , or “the time” are soft. In other words, they are bent and they can even hang on a tree, which will never happen in reality. More interestingly, the orange clock seems to be fully attractive to these ants, since it is covered by these ants . However, in real word, I never see a single ant is attracted to some mental clock ever. What represents in this painting is totally different with our common sense. Although nothing is real in this painting, Dalí works on the detail of this painting so that the viewers can tell how realistic this painting is . I guess that is what surrealism means: the theme are always absurd, but the details are so real.Thus, to some extent, it reminds of me the Metamorphosis.
Actually, when I arrive the museum, I am just wandering aimlessly. I don’t know which work I will choose to explain modernism until I see the persistence of memory. When I first glanced at this piece of work, I know I am going to work on it. Though I don’t know a lot in art, I do know that is a great work on modernism. And since it is so great and so well-known, this work itself must have some specific modernism for me to work on. That’s why I choose this work.
I do still have some questions about his work. Though people always talk about how great and how famous this , I still don’t know what the painter want to express through all this bizarre images : bent watches , ants , orange clock and the little monster lied on the ground. What does Dalí try to say to us?
Le, I agree with you that this painting leaves us with a lot of questions. What do you think the relationship is between the melting clocks in the painting and its title, “The Persistence of Memory”? One of the things I like about this work is that, even though it is a static painting, we can feel the slowness of the scene it depicts, as though time has slowed down.