The legendary Spanish painter Salvador Dali became famous throughout the world thanks to his inimitable surrealistic style of painting. The most famous works of the author include his personal self-portrait, where he depicted himself with a neck in the style of Raphael’s brush, “Flesh on the Stones”, “Enlightened Pleasures”, “The Invisible Man”. However, Salvador Dali wrote The Persistence of Memory, introducing this work to one of his most profound theories. This happened at the junction of his stylistic rethinking, when the artist sided with the flow of surrealism.
"The Persistence of Memory". Salvador Dali and his Freudian Theory
The famous canvas was created in 1931, when the artist is in a state of increased excitement from the theories of his idol - the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. In general terms, the idea of the picture was to convey the artist's attitude to softness and rigidity.
Being a very egocentric personality, prone to flashes of uncontrolled inspiration and at the same time thoroughly comprehending it from the point of view of psychoanalysis, Salvador Dali, like all creative personalities, created his masterpiece under the influence of a hot summer day. As the artist himself recalls, he was puzzled by the contemplation of how
Camembert cheese melted from the heat
. He was previously attracted to the topic of transforming objects into different states, which he tried to convey on canvas. The painting "Constancy of memory" by Salvador Dali is a symbiosis of melted cheese with olive, standing alone on a background of mountains. By the way, it was this image that became the prototype of soft watches.
Description of the picture
Almost all the works of that period are filled with abstract images of human faces hidden behind the shapes of foreign objects. They seem to hide from view, but at the same time are the main characters in action. So the surrealist tried to portray the subconscious in his works. The central figure of the painting “Constancy of memory” Salvador Dali made the face of a sleeping man, which is similar to his self-portrait.
The picture seemed to incorporate all the significant stages in the life of the artist, and also reflected the inevitable future. You can see that in the lower left corner of the canvas you can see a closed orange watch , completely dotted with ants. Dali often resorted to portraying these insects, which for him were associated with death. The shape and color of the watch was based on the artist’s memories of those broken in his childhood home. By the way, the mountains visible in the background are nothing more than a piece from the landscape of the Spaniard’s homeland.
“Constancy of memory” Salvador Dali portrayed somewhat devastated. It is clearly seen that all objects are separated by a desert and are not self-sufficient. Art historians believe that this author tried to convey his spiritual emptiness, which weighed on him at that time. In fact, the idea was to convey human torment about the passage of time and changes in memory. Time, according to Dali, is infinite, relative and is in constant motion. Memory, on the contrary, is short-lived, but at the same time its stability cannot be underestimated.
Secret images in the picture
“Constancy of memory” Salvador Dali wrote in a couple of hours and did not bother to give anyone an explanation of what he wanted to say with this canvas. Many art historians still build hypotheses around this iconic work of the master, noting in it only individual symbols that the artist has resorted to throughout his creative work.
A closer look reveals that the clock hanging from a branch on the left is shaped like a language. The tree on the canvas is depicted as dried, indicating a destructive aspect of time. This work is small in size, but is considered the most powerful of all that Salvador Dali wrote. “The constancy of memory” is, of course, the most psychologically deep picture that reveals the author’s inner world to the maximum. Perhaps that is why he did not want to comment on it, leaving his admirers to guess.