Gabriel Detter
Mrs. Flynn
Humanities-English 12 Honors
18 April 2016
Salvador Dali was an interesting personality. His waxed mustache and eccentric persona gave him an almost celebratory status. He was a prominent figurehead in the surrealist movement. He wanted to pursue the fundamentals of reality and as such was interested in a wide variety of fields of study and attempted to incorporate them into his work. One of these fields was psychology and psychoanalysis, which Sigmund Freud headed. He later became interested and almost obsessed by the field of science, which was lead by Albert Einstein. Salvador Dali’s most recognizable masterpiece, The Persistence of Memory, which was painted in 1931, serves as a prime example of the surrealist movement, and reflects the impact of science and psychology on the early twentieth century. In 1924 Andre Breton, a writer and a poet completed “The Surrealist Manifesto” which gave birth to the era of surrealism. Breton wanted to lead a revolution by “breaking down the barriers between their inner and outer
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It continues to impact people today eighty-five years after its original conception. It has appeared multiple times on television in The Simpsons, Futurama, Hey Arnold, Doctor Who, and Sesame Street. It has also appeared in the movie Looney Tunes: Back in Action, the comic strip The Far Side and even in videogames including EarthBound and Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced. It was even used to make fun of the Deflategate scandal by replacing all of the pocket watches with footballs (Puchko). The Persistence of Memory can also been seen many places in the form of posters. It is currently located in the Museum of Modern Art and is located next to other familiar masterpieces such as Starry Night, by Vincent Van Gogh (Dali, The Persistence of Memory). The innate connection this piece has with modern society gives it the mark of a true