- Artist: Salvador Dali
- Title: Persistence of Memory
- Media: Painting (Oil on Canvass)
- Dimensions: 9.5" X 13"
- Date: 1931
Salvador
Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1st Marqués de Dalí de Pubol
(better known as Salvador Dalí) was a Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born
in Figueres, Spain. He lived from May 11, 1904 till January 23, 1989, and is
best remembered for being a highly imaginative painter who also enjoyed and
indulged in unusual and highly grandiose behavior. Challenging those who held
his work in high esteem, and irritating his critics, his behavior sometimes
drew more attention that his artwork (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Dal%C3%AD).
Dalí
had a fundamental appreciation for science and employed a great deal of
symbolism in his work. This can be seen in the iconic image of the melting
clock. The symbology of this reoccurring Dalí theme is the result of his
challenge to himself to represent Einstein’s theory that time is relative and
not fixed (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Dal%C3%AD). In this representation, Dalí
challenges the world of hard scientific theory and fact with flowing lines that
melt before the viewer’s eyes.
In
creating this piece, Dalí is attempting to bridge the worlds of science and art
in a way that conceptualizes scientific theory as a real, albeit abstract,
thing (a melting clock). Dalí is said to developed this representation while
watching a piece of soft Camembert cheese become runny on a hot August
afternoon (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Dal%C3%AD).
Dalí’s
art and ideas challenged traditional notions of form held at the time. He
imagined a world in which everyday objects take on new and abstract forms, and
become symbolic representations of much higher concepts. Without the works of
Dalí, works by Giger and Grey may not exist.
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