Comments on: The Persistence of Memory

By: soulrebel_777

soulrebel_777 — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:57:02 +0000

Sometimes we have to value time as we value ourselves, because people live for love and that defines time.

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:12:23 +0000

The painting is influenced by Dali’s realisation of the theory of relativity laid out by Einstein in the paper “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” which identified that time is not fixed in space but is in fact relative to the position and motion of the observer. Dali was obsessed with the nature of matter as a result of many of the breakthroughs being made in physics during his life. His work “The Disinitgration of the Persistence of Memory” deconstructed the subject matter of the original Persistence of Memory into the quantum world - Dali composing the picture of representations of the building blocks of matter, a reflection of the realisation that all matter is comprised at the quantum level of particles. Other references to mathematics in his work include depictions of the fractal spirals of the Romanesco Broccolli, Rhino Horns and Swallows Tails, which are the subject matter of his last work “The Swallow’s Tail” - based on the work of the mathmetician Rene Thorn in the field of catastrophe theory

By: pascale

pascale — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 19:39:07 +0000

Here we see Dali’s home in the distant golden cliffs that represent the coast of Catalonia. As opposed to this realistic element, the rest of the image is from another reality. This “dreamlike” quality is typical of surrealism. The softness and hardness of things being reversed is often used by artists of this genre and seen in the melting clocks. The fleshy creature in the painting’s center could be a bizarre animal, but in it we see the artist’s self portrait. Ants, a repeated element in Dali’s paintings, are representative of decay and are meant to reflect that time has no meaning–the central message of this painting. So time has no meaning, yet memory persists.

By: Juancito

Juancito — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 01:48:53 +0000

In response to Adriana… The ants on the only clock isn’t yet melted, it represents death.

By: Malia F.

Malia F. — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 04:05:31 +0000

Its portraying how time is such a precious thing that is slowly being wasted.

By: Vincent Rankin

Vincent Rankin — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:23:01 +0000

This pictures depicts how futile his attempts is to remember his past, as it seems to melt with time (symbolised with the melting clocks). The landscape is also similar to the way he painted the Island of the Dead–the face appears in six other paintings which seem to represent his mother. He is trying to remember her, but can’t.

By: J.

J. — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 02:05:56 +0000

To me it it represents a point in life where time has died (the ants feeding on the stopwatch, the fly on the face of the drooping clock, the dead branch on the stone). Also the darkness that covers the foreground appears to give off a sense of ending. However, looking toward the water, some light appears at the water’s edge, and grows brighter as one looks further toward the sunlight. In the sunlight, even the grass is still green on the hill. It is almost spiritual—the darkness is past and dead. The future is through the living water.

By: Rox

Rox — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 22:37:09 +0000

Maybe he wanted to say that time can make us suffer…

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 16:15:33 +0000

Time is out of reach in our dreams, we are floating in our own dimension. We are lost and helpless.

By: Mia

Mia — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 19:01:37 +0000

Memories surpass every limitation time presents to us in the real world…they persist till time dries out …for eternity!