BellaOnline Forums Education Art Appreciation The Persistence of Memory - Salvador Dali

http://www.art.com/asp/sp-asp/_/PD--10278393/SP--A/IGID--826599/The_Persistence_of_Memory_c1931.htm

I've always been intrigued by this, I think it's a very cool piece. Sort of trippy. I find it odd that the description for this on art.com says it "bears his trademark symbolism in his use of ordinary objects altered in an eerie, nightmarish way." I don't find it eerie or nightmarish at all! I think it's a cool reflection on time being fluid

OK what is that white board doing in the back left, though It shouldn't be there. Odd. I guess there's a combination of natural landscapes and man-made ones here.

Dali aimed to shock and disorient the viewer all of his life. He delighted in dismaying the public with his strange paintings and his larger-than-life persona. He painted objects in odd juxtapositions, warped perspectives and mysterious, morbid landscapes. And he suceeded in setting the art world of the 1930's on it's ear. To quote one critic, (George Orwell) Dali had a "special talent for diseased and disgusting imagery." and that was only one of the milder comments. Dali LOVED it!
Another critic (John Canaday) acknowledged that "up to the elbow Dali is a staggering artist." His painting technique was amazing and every bit the equal of the best realist painters.

As for the symbolism of The Persistance of Memory, it seems to be concerned with time and decay. The watches are like fossils, warped and attacked by the forces of decay (the ants trying to eat the watch on the left) but they are impervious and eternal.
The limp watches appear in many of Dali's paintings; maybe they symbolize the artist himself, strange and nonfunctional in the ordinary sense, but memorable.
As for the white board...who knows? Dali delighted in being unfathomable.

See I don't get a sense of decay, at least not in an "icky" way. I get the sense that time is fluid and melty, sort of like wax in the hot sun. That's the impression I get more than decay - I get a sense of a hot sun, and time is melllllting

So I guess to me this painting is cool like Escher, not icky or shocking

LIsa, this is his most "easy" work. You need to dig deeper. His popular stuff is great, like this piece. Very cool, very multi-interpretational.

However, many of his works in is more like pulling a breast on sticks, or dragging people to hell, or entrails hanging out.

I love Persistance of Vision. But some of his work is really MUCH more sane. And some is incredibly creepy, yucky. We are talking worms coming out of decaying female torsos.

That seems very logical to me though His popular work is great. His great work is popular. His unpopular work is yucky. His yucky work isn't very popular. Isn't that the same for any artist? Even musicians - if a group puts out an iffy album, nobody buys it. If they put out a great album, everyone buys it.

To be fair, this is only his 4th most popular work based on art.com - it seemed much more interesting to me than the #1 most popular, in terms of discussing it. But if we want to talk about his most popular work, I'll post that now! Can you guess what it is?

I'm guessing that his most popular work would be the Crucifixion of Christ? Certainly I've seen a lot of copies of it. Dali became quite religious in his older years and did a number of similar paintings, which seemed to annoy the art world but made him more acceptable to the public. As always, his technique in that painting was amazing.

Well again it depends I suppose on "how you determine popularity". Do you do a poll on a big website and ask everyone to vote which one appeals to them the most? Do we only go by what art museum owners say has the most importance in history?

If we do popularity by pieces that people actually want to hang in their homes, then we know it's that window one that is most popular. That is the top seller on art.com. They do have a lot of religious artwork on there but apparently people don't buy as much religious art as they do secular art.

I imagine there are far fewer "devoutly religious" than "not devoutly religious" people in the US at least ...

The Persistence of Memory is certainly everone's favorite, the most well-known and beloved of Dali's works and very easy to view. There are some weird body part things in there, but this isn't disturbing per se; it's more like a dreamscape.

This is my fave of his pieces, and one of the works that encouraged my own style of painting (back when i actually painted).

I also enjoy his Dream of A Virgin. The elephants on stilts just pleases me. It's slightly disturbing in content but nowhere NEAR his really depraved works. Anyway, we keep this one in DH's office.

All of his elephants on stilts ones are kinda cute.

We have a few of his sketches in public view - Cervantes and Don Quixote (my fave of his sketches). He has a wonderful dreamscape etching with a unicorn. Actually his etchings works also influenced my style.

Basically dali has a huge body of work and some very charming stuff. But it seems his main theme centers around his issues with sex, women, dismemberment and violent death. That tends to temper my view of him.

Okey dokey Dream of A Virgin will get a thread!