How do we move away from being a civilization that produces art that causes comments like, “my five year old could make this,” back to being one that creates beauty and inspires deep questions? We must reject modernity and embrace tradition. To embrace tradition, we must first learn about it..
You might have guessed by now that I have a strong personal preference for art realism. That is true. However, I do not have anything against art movements that lie outside of realism, provided that the piece has something interesting to convey and is visually interesting in such a way that talent was required in the art’s creation.
To that end, I am actually a fan of Dali’s surrealism paintings. His art conveys a message and he displayed extraordinary talent in the making of that message. The piece above is fantastic in several respects. First, I love the idea of the imagery – melted clocks. That draws me in and spurs me to ask questions. “What is he saying? How does the painting fit together with the title of the piece? Do I agree?” The other thing I really like about this piece, in particular, is his use of color. Dali really highlights his surreal picture with a vibrant backdrop. Even if his message is crazy, it’s pretty.
The problem with the piece – and I say this as someone who enjoys it – is that the message is somewhat incomprehensible. Dali’s beliefs about cosmology do not make a lot of sense. It is likely a related fact that he intentionally induced hallucinations in himself to produce his work – something he called his “paranoiac critical method.” I guess long story short is that you can sometimes find a certain amount of beauty, even in madness, provided that the enterprise not go too far. (When you’ve made it to “my 5 year old could paint this” you’ve gone too far and should turn around.) If art is supposed to convey truth (an open question, but one that is often asserted) does it matter if it fails that test? Is it a failure if the artist believed it?
Surrealism has value in that it should inspire questions and hopefully the answers we find help us assert some boundaries between sanity and madness. Some food is delicious and reminds us via indigestion that we shouldn’t eat certain things. I view those as parallel concepts.
For more on the piece, we will see what wiki has to say:
The Persistence of Memory (Spanish: La persistencia de la memoria) is a 1931 painting by artist Salvador Dalí and one of the most recognizable works of Surrealism. First shown at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1932, since 1934 the painting has been in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, which received it from an anonymous donor. It is widely recognized and frequently referred to in popular culture, and sometimes referred to by more descriptive titles, such as “The Melting Clocks”, “The Soft Watches” or “The Melting Watches”.
Analysis
The well-known surrealist piece introduced the image of the soft melting pocket watch. It epitomizes Dalí’s theory of “softness” and “hardness”, which was central to his thinking at the time. As Dawn Adès wrote, “The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order”. This interpretation suggests that Dalí was incorporating an understanding of the world introduced by Albert Einstein‘s theory of special relativity. Asked by Ilya Prigogine whether this was the case, Dalí replied that the soft watches were not inspired by the theory of relativity, but by the surrealist perception of a Camembert melting in the sun.
The year prior to painting the Persistence of Memory, Dali developed his “paranoiac-critical method,” deliberately inducing psychotic hallucinations to inspire his art. He remarked, “The difference between a madman and me is that I am not mad.” This quote highlights Dali’s awareness of his mental state. Despite his engagement in activities that could be seen as insane, Dali maintained that he was not actually mad.
It is possible to recognize a human figure in the middle of the composition, in the strange “monster” (with much texture near its face, and much contrast and tone in the picture) that Dalí used in several contemporary pieces to represent himself – the abstract form becoming something of a self-portrait, reappearing frequently in his work. The creature seems to be based on a figure from the Paradise section of Hieronymus Bosch‘s The Garden of Earthly Delights, which Dalí had studied. It can be read as a “fading” creature, one that often appears in dreams where the dreamer cannot pinpoint the creature’s exact form and composition. The creature has one closed eye with several eyelashes, suggesting that it is also in a dream state. The iconography may refer to a dream that Dalí himself had experienced, and the clocks may symbolize the passing of time as one experiences it in sleep or the persistence of time in the eyes of the dreamer.
The orange watch at the bottom left of the painting is covered in ants; Dalí often used ants in his paintings as a symbol of decay. A fly sits on the watch next to the orange watch. The fly appears to be casting a human shadow as the sun hits it. The Persistence of Memory employs “the exactitude of realist painting techniques” to depict imagery more likely to be found in dreams than in waking consciousness.
The craggy rocks to the right represent the tip of Cap de Creus peninsula in north-eastern Catalonia. Many of Dalí’s paintings were inspired by the landscapes of his life in Catalonia. The strange and foreboding shadow in the foreground of this painting is a reference to Puig Pení [ca], a mountain in the northeast corner of Catalonia.
Versions
The Shanghai copy of the sculpture Nobility of Time
Dalí returned to the theme of this painting with the variation The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1954), showing his earlier famous work systematically fragmenting into smaller component elements, and a series of rectangular blocks which reveal further imagery through the gaps between them, implying something beneath the surface of the original work; this work is now in the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, while the original Persistence of Memory remains at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Dalí also produced various lithographs and sculptures on the theme of soft watches late in his career. Some of these sculptures are Persistence of Memory, Nobility of Time, Profile of Time, and Three Dancing Watches.
I’ve always enjoyed Dali. Just weird enough to intrigue me and yet real enough for me to feel I can get a handle on the meaning. Sort of how I like my humor, too.
That’s a really good way to put it, and I agree. For me, Dali exists just on the correct side of that barrier between art that I like and art I despise, but his proximity to the border makes me like him even more, I think.
You picked my favorite painting! I’ll never forget going through the Dali museum in St. Petersburg, FL.
Excellent! I really like this one, too. It’s so visually compelling.
I’ve always enjoyed Dali. Just weird enough to intrigue me and yet real enough for me to feel I can get a handle on the meaning. Sort of how I like my humor, too.
That’s a really good way to put it, and I agree. For me, Dali exists just on the correct side of that barrier between art that I like and art I despise, but his proximity to the border makes me like him even more, I think.