Salvador Dali
(1904-89) was the leading Surrealist painter and sculptor of the 20th
century, as well known for his flamboyant personality and turned-up-at-the-ends
moustache as his works of art.
Dali did not
start out as a Surrealist, but became influenced by artists such as René
Magritte and the film-maker Jean Buñuel. He was admitted to the Paris-based
Surrealist group in 1929, but was expelled in 1937 after a falling-out with
other members over political differences and a perceived frivolity on Dali’s part
towards figures such as Adolf Hitler. He spent the war years in the United States and had broken away from
Surrealism by the time of his return to Europe
in 1948.
Dali’s
surrealism was based on dreams and hallucinations, which he suffered as a child
and which, in later life, he caused to happen by standing on his head. It
incorporates the Freudian concept of the dream’s apparent reality serving to
conceal the dreamer’s real desires, which are often sexual.
Dali
developed what he called the “paranoiac-critical” method which interprets the
world according to an obsessional idea. The same object can be seen in many
different ways, with a single shape being interpreted as various manifestations
of the unconscious.
The
Persistence of Memory
The
Persistence of Memory (1931) was one of Dali’s first major Surrealist works,
and is justly famed for the first appearance of Dali’s characteristic “soft
watches”. There are three of them here, one being draped over the branch of a
dead tree, one over the edge of a wooden box or platform, and the third over a
strange object that looks like part of a distorted human head.
The scene is
a deserted landscape that might well be based on the coast of Catalonia
Another
recurring Dali image is the swarm of ants, and there is one here on the back of
a fourth watch that is undistorted and lies face down on the platform to the
left of the canvas. Ants were symbolic of death and decay to Dali, based on a
childhood experience of seeing a dead bat being consumed by ants. Perhaps the
implication here is that time itself is subject to decay, just like everything
else, and the ants, having destroyed three of the watches, are about to get
started on the fourth.
All sorts of
interpretations have been offered as to what Dali meant by his soft watches.
One thought is that Dali was offering a pictorial representation of Einstein’s
Theory of Relativity, such that even time is not fixed. Another is that time when
one dreams follows the contours of the dream and is not related to reality. As
the objects in the painting are dream images, they exist only in dream time. On
the other hand, Dali said that he got the idea from watching a piece of
Camembert cheese melting in the sun.
The image at
the centre of the canvas, draped over rocks, has also given rise to speculation
as to what Dali meant it to be. It has been described as foetus-like, or
fish-like, and it certainly appears to have eyelashes and a nose. Dali used a
very similar image in an earlier painting, “The Great Masturbator” (1929),
which had a strong sexual theme, and the memory of that painting’s meaning may
be one of the things that have persisted in the later one. There is also a
memory of a rock formation on the coast near Dali’s boyhood home.
However, in
another sense it does not matter what the object is, because any one person’s
interpretation of an artist’s dream is as valid as anyone else’s. This dream is
remembered from a possibly distant past (hence the title), and dreams rarely
make much sense when recalled, even if one can remember them with any clarity.
The images in this painting must stand as they are, to be interpreted as the
viewer wishes.
An
interesting feature that is overlooked by anyone seeing “The Persistence of
Memory” in a book or on a screen is the painting’s size. It only measures 33 by
24 centimetres (13 by 9 inches), which is not much larger than a sheet of A4
paper. The details on the painting, down to spots of light on the backs of
ants, were therefore made with a very steady hand using the finest of brushes.
One has to admire Dali’s skill in being so precise.
Dali returned
to this painting in a later work, “The Disintegration of the Persistence of
Memory”, dated 1952-4, in which the original landscape has been flooded and the
various objects have been transformed or broken up. By this time Dali was
putting Surrealism behind him and was more interested in nuclear physics
(occasioned by the atomic bomb explosions at Hiroshima
and Nagasaki
“The
Persistence of Memory” continues to be one of Dali’s most popular works,
whatever interpretation the viewer wishes to make of it. The original is on
view at the Museum of Modern Art , New
York
© John
Welford
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