Salvador Dali

            Paintings in the surrealism period are difficult to interpret. Critics have stated that it is nearly impossible to explain in rational language what the significance of a surrealist piece of work is because seems to have been conceived in a state of hallucination. In Salvador Dali's work, The Persistence of Memory, one can assume just that.
             This painting consists of relatively awkward images in a setting that is outside in a fairly barren landscape. Yellows and blues are in the sky that meets up with a body of water and a cliff in the background. The main focus would be the three limp watches. One is on a branch of a dead tree, another that seems to be sliding off the side of a box of some kind, and the last one looks to be resting on what could be a rock at first glimpse. After looking more and reading about this painting, I have learned that what I once thought was a rock, is actually a "profiled self-portrait "a motif that [Salvador Dali] frequently featured in his works- (Fiero 861). If you look closely, you can see an eye closed with eyelashes, a nose, and an eyebrow. Also, you can see the side profile of his face, which of course is distorted. There is a red-orange pocket watch in the bottom left-hand corner of the painting that is crawling with ants. The limp watch that is sliding off the box has a fly on the face of it. The sun appears to be coming in from the top right side, but the foreground is still shadowed, so it leads me to believe that something to the right of this view of the picture is blocking the sunlight and therefore casting that shadow. .
             My interpretation of the painting is not of concrete evidence within the piece, but rather how the title plays the most important role. Dali himself said that he saw the painting as, "hand-painted dream photographs- that were produced to "stamp themselves indelibly upon the mind- (Fiero 861). Thus the title, The Persistence of Memory, fits the painting exactly how the artist intended.