The Persistence of Memory
(La persistencia de la memoria)

1931
oil on canvas
Surrealism
24 x 33cm

Salvador Dali
11 May 1904
23 January 1989

Salvador Dalí completed one of his most famous works in 1931. The Persistence of Memory, also known as Soft Watches or Melting Clocks. It depicts four melting pocket watches in the foreground. One is on the branch of a tree, another two are on a block, and the fourth is draped over an unidentifiable object on the ground. The desert background shows the Catalan landscape in front of the rugged cliffs of Cap de Creus. Beneath the cliffs is a small white building. Perhaps this was painted in the background to show Dali’s physical presence when he painted this picture, while everything in the foreground was a part of a subconscious hallucination.

The painting has been dissected and analysed, and the interpretations are fascinating.

Although Dalí denied taking drugs, he wrote later in his autobiography that, throughout his life, he had experimented with various substances. During the 1930s, the artist used mescaline, a psychedelic drug. Dali recounts that “the hallucinations” he experienced while taking mescal were “intense and vivid” and helped him access a “deeper level of creativity.”

Returning to the picture, I have read several interpretations, (Thank you Wikipedia!) and before I add my own, I will relate these for you.

The watches:
Epitomizes Dalí’s theory of “softness” and “hardness”, which was central to his thinking at the time.

An unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time.

(Dalí later said that the soft watches were not inspired by the theory of relativity but by the surrealist perception of a Camembert melting in the sun.)

The orange watch at the bottom left of the painting is covered in ants; Dalí often used ants in his paintings as a symbol of decay.

A fly sits on the watch next to the orange watch. The fly appears to cast a human shadow as it is hit by the sun.

The object on the floor:
The strange “monster” (with a lot of texture near its face, and plenty of contrast and tone in the picture) that Dalí used in several contemporary pieces to represent himself – the abstract form becoming something of a self-portrait, reappearing frequently in his work.

After zooming in and checking closely, I would suggest the following:

The watches:
If he was under the influence, he could have perceived that time was fading and melting away or that time itself, was irrelevant while he was working.
The ants could have been attracted to the orange watch as it looked like a sweet sticky substance.
The shadow of the fly is just a shadow.

The object on the floor:
If you look closely at the object on the floor, there is a snake’s head poking out at the bottom left side and the tail is visible further away under what I believe to be a fleshy piece of a face, an eyelid, and an eyelash is also visible.

Nobody will ever know what Dali was thinking or his state of mind when he painted the picture but as Dali himself once said,

“The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret. ”