In early August 1929, young Dali met his future wife and muse Gala. Their union became the key to the incredible success of the artist, influencing all his subsequent work, including the painting "The Persistence of Memory".
Salvador Dali and Gala in Cadaqués. 1930 Photo: courtesy of the Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin
History of creation
They say that Dali was a little out of his mind. Yes, he suffered from paranoia. But without this, there would be no Dali as an artist. He had mild delirium, expressed in the appearance in the mind of dream images that the artist could transfer to the canvas. The thoughts that visited Dali during the creation of paintings were always bizarre (it was not for nothing that he was fond of psychoanalysis), and a vivid example of this is the story of the appearance of one of his most famous works, The Persistence of Memory (New York, Museum contemporary art).
It was the summer of 1931 in Paris, when Dali was preparing for a solo exhibition. After seeing his common-law wife Gala with friends at the cinema, “I,” Dali writes in his memoirs, “returned to the table (we finished dinner with an excellent Camembert) and plunged into thoughts about the spreading pulp. Cheese popped into my mind's eye. I got up and, as usual, went to the studio - to look at the picture I was painting before going to bed. It was the landscape of Port Lligat in the transparent, sad sunset light. In the foreground is the bare skeleton of an olive tree with a broken branch.I felt that in this picture I managed to create an atmosphere consonant with some important image - but what? I have not the foggiest idea. I needed a marvelous image, but I did not find it. I went to turn off the light, and when I got out, I literally saw the solution: two pairs of soft clocks, they hang plaintively from an olive branch. Despite the migraine, I prepared my palette and set to work. Two hours later, by the time Gala returned, the most famous of my paintings was finished.
(1) Soft watch- a symbol of non-linear, subjective time, arbitrarily flowing and unevenly filling space. The three clocks in the picture are past, present and future. “You asked me,” Dali wrote to physicist Ilya Prigogine, “did I think about Einstein when I painted soft watches ( I mean the theory of relativity. - Approx. ed.). I answer you in the negative, the fact is that the connection between space and time was absolutely obvious to me for a long time, so there was nothing special in this picture for me, it was the same as any other ... To this I can add that I thinking about Heraclitus ancient Greek philosopher who believed that time is measured by the flow of thought. - Approx. ed.). That is why my painting is called The Persistence of Memory. Memory of the relationship of space and time.
(2) Blurred object with eyelashes. This is a self-portrait of a sleeping Dali. The world in the picture is his dream, the death of the objective world, the triumph of the unconscious. “The relationship between sleep, love and death is obvious,” the artist wrote in his autobiography. “Sleep is death, or at least it is an exclusion from reality, or, even better, it is the death of reality itself, which dies in the same way during the act of love.” According to Dali, sleep frees the subconscious, so the artist's head blurs like a clam - this is evidence of his defenselessness. Only Gala, he will say after the death of his wife, “knowing my defenselessness, hid my hermit oyster pulp in a fortress-shell, and thus saved it.”
(3) Solid watch- lie on the left with the dial down - a symbol of objective time.
(4) Ants- a symbol of decay and decay. According to Nina Getashvili, professor Russian Academy painting, sculpture and architecture, "a childish impression of bat a wounded animal infested with ants, as well as the memory of a bathing baby with ants in the anus, invented by the artist himself, endowed the artist with the obsessive presence of this insect in his painting for life. ( “I loved to nostalgically recall this action, which in fact did not take place,” the artist writes in “The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, told by himself.” - Approx. ed.). On the clock on the left, the only one that has retained its hardness, the ants also create a clear cyclic structure, obeying the divisions of the chronometer. However, this does not obscure the meaning that the presence of ants is still a sign of decay.” According to Dali, linear time devours itself.
(5) Fly. According to Nina Getashvili, “the artist called them fairies of the Mediterranean. In The Diary of a Genius, Dali wrote: "They carried inspiration to the Greek philosophers who spent their lives under the sun, covered in flies."
(6) Oliva. For an artist, this is a symbol ancient wisdom, which, unfortunately, has already sunk into oblivion (therefore, the tree is depicted dry).
(7) Cape Creus. This cape on the Catalan coast of the Mediterranean Sea, near the city of Figueres, where Dali was born. The artist often depicted him in paintings. “Here,” he wrote, “the most important principle of my theory of paranoid metamorphoses is embodied in rocky granite ( the flow of one delusional image into another. - Approx. ed.)... These are frozen clouds reared up by an explosion in all their countless incarnations, all new and new - you just need to slightly change the angle of view.
(8) Sea for Dali it symbolized immortality and eternity. The artist considered it an ideal space for traveling, where time does not flow at an objective speed, but in accordance with the internal rhythms of the traveler's consciousness.
(9) Egg. According to Nina Getashvili, the World Egg in Dali's work symbolizes life. The artist borrowed his image from the Orphics - ancient Greek mystics. According to Orphic mythology, the first androgynous deity Phanes was born from the World Egg, who created people, and heaven and earth were formed from the two halves of its shell.
(10) Mirror lying horizontally to the left. It is a symbol of variability and inconstancy, obediently reflecting both the subjective and objective world.
Painter
Salvador Dali
The great Spanish artist Salvador Filipe Jacinto Dali i Domenech was born in the spring of 1904, on May 11th at 08:45...
Brief biographical note
1904 Salvador Dali Domanech was born on May 11th in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain.
1910 Dali begins visiting primary school"Immaculate Conception" Christian Brethren.
1916 Summer vacation with the Pichot family. Dali encounters modern painting for the first time.
1917 Spanish artist Nunez teaches Dali the techniques of the original engraving.
1919 First exhibition in a group show at the municipal theater in Figueres. Dali is 15 years old.
1921 Death of mother.
1922 Dali passes the entrance exam to the Accademia de San Fernando in Madrid.
1923 Temporary expulsion from the Academy.
1925 First professional solo exhibition at the Dalmau Gallery in Barcelona.
1926 First trip to Paris and Brussels. Meeting with Picasso. Final expulsion from the Academy.
Leda Atomica 1949Dream inspired by the flight of a bee 1943
The Last Supper 1955
Temptation of Saint Anthony 1946
1929 Collaboration with Louis Buñuel in the production of the film "Andalusian dog". Meeting with Gala Eluard. First exhibition in Paris.
1930 Dalí resides with Gala in Port Ligat, Spain.
1931 Painting "The Persistence of Memory".
1934 Painting "The Riddle of William Tell" Dali quarreled with a group of surrealists. Civil marriage with Gala. Trip to New York. Albert Schira publishes 42 original Dalí engravings.
1936 Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Paintings "Autumn of Cannibalism", "Soft Hours", "Civil War Warning".
1938 Conversation with the sick Sigmund Freud in London. Dali takes part in international exhibition Surrealists in Paris.
1939 Definitively expelled from the Surrealist group due to Dalí's unwillingness to support their political motives.
1940 Dali and Gala emigrate to America where they live for eight years, first in Virginia, then in California and New York.
1941 Retrospective exhibition with Miro at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
1942 Publication of an autobiography" Secret Life Salvador Dali as told by himself.
1946 Participation in the film project "Destino" by Walt Disney. Participation in the Alfred Hitchcock Film Project. Painting "The Temptation of St. Anthony".
1949 Paintings "Leda Atomica" and Madonna Port - Ligat "(version 1). Return to Europe.
1957 Publication of twelve original lithographs by Dalí, titled "Pages of the Quest for Don Quixote of La Mancha".
1958 Wedding of Gala and Dali in Girona, Spain.
1959 Painting "Discovery of America by Columbus".
1962 Dalí enters into a ten-year agreement with publisher Pierre Argille to publish illustrations./>
1965 Dali signs a contract with Sidney Lucas, New York.
1967 Acquisition of Pubol Castle in Girona and rebuilding.
1969 Ceremonial moving into Pubol Castle.
1971 The Salvador Dalí Museum opens in Cleveland, Ohio.
1974 Dali begins to worry about health problems.
1982 Opening of the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. Death Gala at Pubol Castle.
1983 Grand exhibition of Dali's works in Spain, in Madrid and Barcelona. Completion of painting classes. The last painting is "Swallow's Tail".
1989 January 23, Dali died of heart failure. He is buried in the crypt of the Tatro Museum, in Figueres, Spain.
S. Dali. Persistence of memory, 1931.
The most famous and most discussed painting by Salvador Dali among artists. The painting is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 1934.
This picture depicts a clock as a symbol of the human experience of time, memory. Here they are shown in large distortions, which our memories sometimes are. Dali did not forget himself, he is also present in the form of a sleeping head, which appears in his other paintings. During this period, Dali constantly displayed the image of a deserted coast, by which he expressed the emptiness within himself.
This void was filled when he saw a piece of Kemember cheese. "... Deciding to write a clock, I wrote them soft. It was one evening, I was tired, I had a migraine - an extremely rare ailment for me. We were supposed to go to the cinema with friends, but at the last moment I decided to stay at home.
Gala will go with them, and I will go to bed early. We ate very tasty cheese, then I was left alone, sitting, leaning on the table, and thinking about how "super soft" melted cheese is.
I got up and went to the studio to take a look at my work as usual. The picture I was going to paint was a landscape of the outskirts of Port Lligat, rocks, as if illuminated by a dim evening light.
In the foreground, I sketched the chopped off trunk of a leafless olive tree. This landscape is the basis for a canvas with some idea, but what? I needed a marvelous image, but I did not find it.
I went to turn off the light, and when I got out, I literally “saw” the solution: two pairs of soft clocks, one hanging plaintively from an olive branch. Despite the migraine, I prepared my palette and set to work.
Two hours later, when Gala returned from the cinema, the picture, which was to become one of the most famous, was completed.
The painting has become a symbol modern concept relativity of time. A year after the exhibition in the Paris gallery of Pierre Colet, the painting was bought by the New York Museum of Modern Art.
In the picture, the artist expressed the relativity of time and emphasized the amazing property of human memory, which allows us to be transported again to those days that have long been left in the past.
HIDDEN SYMBOLS
Soft clock on the table
A symbol of non-linear, subjective time, arbitrarily flowing and unevenly filling space. The three clocks in the picture are past, present and future.
Blurred object with eyelashes.
This is a self-portrait of a sleeping Dali. The world in the picture is his dream, the death of the objective world, the triumph of the unconscious. “The relationship between sleep, love and death is obvious,” the artist wrote in his autobiography. “Sleep is death, or at least it is an exclusion from reality, or, even better, it is the death of reality itself, which dies in the same way during the act of love.” According to Dali, sleep frees the subconscious, so the artist's head blurs like a clam - this is evidence of his defenselessness.
Solid clock, lie on the left side of the dial down. Symbol of objective time.
Ants are a symbol of decay and decay. According to Nina Getashvili, a professor at the Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, “a childish impression of a wounded bat infested with ants.
Fly. According to Nina Getashvili, “the artist called them fairies of the Mediterranean. In The Diary of a Genius, Dali wrote: "They carried inspiration to the Greek philosophers who spent their lives under the sun, covered in flies."
Olive.
For the artist, this is a symbol of ancient wisdom, which, unfortunately, has already sunk into oblivion (therefore, the tree is depicted dry).
Cape Creus.
This cape on the Catalan coast of the Mediterranean Sea, near the city of Figueres, where Dali was born. The artist often depicted him in paintings. “Here,” he wrote, “the most important principle of my theory of paranoid metamorphoses (the flow of one delusional image into another. - Approx. ed.) is embodied in rocky granite ... new ones - you just need to slightly change the angle of view.
The sea for Dali symbolized immortality and eternity. The artist considered it an ideal space for traveling, where time does not flow at an objective speed, but in accordance with the internal rhythms of the traveler's consciousness.
Egg.
According to Nina Getashvili, the World Egg in Dali's work symbolizes life. The artist borrowed his image from the Orphics - ancient Greek mystics. According to Orphic mythology, the first androgynous deity Phanes was born from the World Egg, who created people, and heaven and earth were formed from the two halves of its shell.
Mirror lying horizontally to the left. It is a symbol of variability and inconstancy, obediently reflecting both the subjective and objective world.
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Reviews
One has to regret that Salvador Dali did not paint, but only painted objects for a photograph, although he gives this explanation why he did just that in his "Diary of a Genius", but this work it can hardly be attributed to successful, it costs exactly as much as the mental effort spent on it. A large dark, simply painted over field creates an undesirable effect of being unoccupied, and even a lying head does not give impetus to comprehend the essence of the idea. Using dreams in his work, as he did, is a good thing, but does not always lead to brilliant results.
My attitude towards creativity was ambiguous. At one time I visited his homeland in the city of Figueres in Spain. There is a large museum there, which he himself created, many of his works. This made an impression on me. Later, I read his biography, reviewed his works and wrote several articles about his work.
I don’t like this kind of painting, but it’s interesting. So I just perceive his work as a special phenomenon in painting.
It must be assumed that he, like any artist, has various works: those that are flagship and just ordinary. If by the first we judge the pinnacle of skill, then the others are essentially routine work and you can’t do without it. Perhaps a dozen of Dali's works are exactly those with which you can enter the top ten most-most in the world in the section of surrealism. To many, he is an example and inspirer of this direction.
What amazes me in his work is not skill, but fantasy. Some of the paintings are simply repulsive, but it’s interesting to figure out what he wanted to say. There is one composition with lips in the museum, something similar to theatrical scenery. You can also look at the museum at this link and some work. By the way, he is buried in this museum.
One of the most famous paintings written in the genre of surrealism is "The Persistence of Memory". Salvador Dali, the author of this painting, created it in just a few hours. The canvas is now in New York, at the Museum of Modern Art. This small painting, measuring only 24 by 33 centimeters, is the most discussed work of the artist.
Name Explanation
Salvador Dali's painting "The Persistence of Memory" was painted in 1931 on a tapestry canvas self made. The idea of creating this canvas was due to the fact that once, while waiting for the return of his wife Gala from the cinema, Salvador Dali painted an absolutely desert landscape of the sea coast. Suddenly, he saw on the table a piece of cheese melting in the sun, which they ate in the evening with friends. The cheese melted and became softer and softer. Thinking and connecting the long running time with a melting piece of cheese, Dali began to fill the canvas with spreading clocks. Salvador Dali called his work “The Persistence of Memory”, explaining the name by the fact that once you look at the picture, you will never forget it. Another name for the painting is "Flowing hours". This name is associated with the content of the canvas itself, which Salvador Dali put into it.
"The Persistence of Memory": a description of the painting
When you look at this canvas, the unusual placement and structure of the depicted objects immediately catches your eye. The picture shows the self-sufficiency of each of them and the general feeling of emptiness. There are a lot of seemingly unrelated items here, but they all create a general impression. What did Salvador Dali depict in the painting "The Persistence of Memory"? The description of all items takes up quite a lot of space.
The atmosphere of the painting "The Persistence of Memory"
Salvador Dali completed the painting in brown tones. The general shadow lies on the left side and middle of the picture, the sun falls on the back and right side canvases. The picture seems to be filled with quiet horror and fear of such calmness, and at the same time, a strange atmosphere fills The Persistence of Memory. Salvador Dali with this canvas makes you think about the meaning of time in the life of every person. About how, can time stop? And can it adapt to each of us? Probably, everyone should give himself the answers to these questions.
It is a known fact that the artist always left notes about his paintings in his diary. However, about the famous painting"The Persistence of Memory" Salvador Dali said nothing. great artist initially understood that by painting this picture, he would make people think about the frailty of being in this world.
The influence of the canvas on a person
Salvador Dali's painting "The Persistence of Memory" was considered by American psychologists, who came to the conclusion that this painting has the strongest psychological impact on certain types of human beings. Many people, looking at this painting by Salvador Dali, described their feelings. Most of the people were immersed in nostalgia, the rest were trying to deal with the mixed emotions of general horror and thoughtfulness caused by the composition of the picture. The canvas conveys feelings, thoughts, experiences and attitudes towards the “softness and hardness” of the artist himself.
Of course, this picture is small in size, but it can be considered one of the greatest and most powerful psychological paintings by Salvador Dali. The painting "The Persistence of Memory" carries the greatness of the classics of surrealistic painting.