The Persistence Of Memory Analysis

Salvador Dali had a vivid mind filled with altered images of everyday things in which they all symbolized something, all sort of made from a dream realm. Dali envisioned his paintings all based on a dream state and were based on the ideas of Sigmund Freud. Freud said once that dreams are created based on secret desires and inner wants. Dali painted his paintings on his inner desires and fears, but also based many of them around central ideas from scientific gatherings. The Persistence of Memory, for example, is said to revolve around the idea of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Dali, however, has not refuted this claim, but also not given it the proper response it required. While no one quite knows the real meaning of The Persistence of Memory,

The area The Persistence of Memory takes place in is changed to be barren and empty. Dali changes portions of the area to have a large crate with a dead tree growing from it. Toward the sea a large flat slab can be seen and looks to be a enormous mirror or reflective surface. The watches are another example. Clocks and watches are rigid and cannot be bent, however Dali painted his watches to melt and look bent. Decades after he painted The Persistence of Memory, Dali painted The Disintegration of The Persistence of Memory. This painting was to be more science based and replaced much of the scenery with new shapes and materials. The landscape is replaced with a grid of rectangular prisms that are floating free from each other. The sea is shown to be a thin layer of water only touching the cliffs of Catalonia. The dead tree from the original painting has now been shifted into a tree made from many different segments and parts. The white creature from the center of the painting has been replaced with a transparent almost liquid-like shape. In the foreground before the cliffs a fish can be seen floating. All of these different shapes and objects have particular relations to Dali’s own beliefs and scientific or philosophical discoveries of the

The clocks seen in The Persistence of Memory could be seen as a reference to Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. An interpretation of the clocks melting is that the clocks symbolize the endless flow of time and the hard ground and other objects could represent the hard reality of reality in which time is not endless and it all ends for everyone eventually. Martin Ries explains how the ants on the orange watch could be related to the concept by stating “Ants usually suggest putrefaction and decay; the rigid watch is attacked by scavenger ants, indicating the inorganic is becoming organic and vulnerable.” (para. 10) The ants have a possibility of representing the decay of time and human life. The white figure in the center of the photo could also be seen as Dali’s interpretation of how people are imagined in dreams. This is based from an idea by Freud. This white figure is seen to be a self portrait of Dali because of his tendency to paint distorted figures that look like something straight from a dream and may be a representation of himself. The Persistence of Memory could be seen as symbolizing a plethora of different meanings, but no one may ever know the