Painting of the week - The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931
Museum of Modern Art, New York
(Source)

Salvador Dali is the favourite artist of many people, no doubt due to his strange, and instantly recognisable images. The Persistence of Memory is possibly his most recognisable painting, filled with the iconic image of the melting clocks. There are many interpretations of this but the melting clocks have been seen to representsthe irrelevance of time, reinforced by the fob covered in ants indicating rot and decomposition. But these dreamlike images with the deformed and fading human-like figure in the middle are juxtaposed with the beach and cliffs, indentifiable as being from Dali's home and childhood experiences. So perhaps then what we're seeing is how time is rendered 'soft' by memory, but the eventual decay of memories changes our ability to perceive time.

As an aside, the incredibly amazing thing is how small the image actually is. At 24 x 33cm, it's just over the size of an A4 sheet. And having seen this in real life, the tininess really reinforced what a great draughtsman Dali is/was!