Narrator: The artist Salvador Dalí made The Persistence of Memory in 1931, using oil on canvas. The work measures 9 and a half inches high and 13 inches wide. In metric units, it is 24 centimeters high and 33 centimeters wide. It is set within a muted olive-colored mat and encased by a thin, dark brown wood frame.
In this dreamlike scene, drooping, oversized pocket watches and other strange forms populate a barren, coastal landscape. Dalí described it as “a landscape … whose rocks were lighted by a transparent and melancholy twilight.”
The painting is small—about the size of a laptop screen. It’s dominated by shades of brown, yellow, and blue. The paint is smoothly applied with fluid shifts between colors. Each detail is depicted in a hyper-realistic style, making use of what Dalí called the “paralyzing tricks of eye-fooling.”
Let’s explore the painting in more detail. The upper third of the canvas shows the distant background. At the very top is the sky: starting with a band of swimming pool blue, it blends gradually into creamy yellow along the horizon line. Below the sky is a strip of calm, pale blue sea. Near the top right corner, sunlit cliffs tower over the water. A mirror image of the cliffs is reflected in the glass-like surface directly below.
At first, the painting might appear to depict an imaginary scene, but the golden cliffs and blue sea are inspired by the Mediterranean coast of Catalonia—a region the artist called home. This realistic depiction gives way to more imaginative elements in the painting’s middle- and foreground where we begin to encounter unexpected objects.
The bottom two-thirds of the canvas is filled with a flat expanse of dark brown sand. The upper portion of the sand is a lighter umber, as if touched by the fading sunlight. Near the upper left section of the sand, a thin, horizontal blue platform bridges the sand and sea.
At the center of the painting, in the foreground, we encounter a mysterious, pale, pinkish-gray creature, draped over rocks in the sand. While it’s amorphous, some of its elements resemble human facial features. It’s almost as if a rubbery face mask was dropped onto its right cheek so that its left side is turned up toward the sky. Its nose, in profile, points down to the painting’s bottom edge. Emerging from the nostril is a thick bit of flesh, like a tongue. Directly above, is the creature’s closed eye—with very long lashes that extend toward the right. To the left of the eye, a wavy blonde eyebrow arcs across its forehead.
Draped along the creature’s cheek is a droopy, old-fashioned watch with a numbered blue face, silver rim, and hands positioned to indicate that it’s 12:30. As we travel right across the length of the creature, its flaccid form tapers off until it disappears into the dark brown expanse of sand.
Let’s move toward the painting’s lower left side. Here, a thick brown wooden platform juts out toward the painting’s center and supports several objects.
Let’s start with the one that appears closest to us. Near the painting’s lower left corner rests a copper-colored pocket watch. A cluster of 25 shiny black ants swarm on its closed oval case. Above the pocket watch, a larger, gold-rimmed watch with a blue face droops over the platform’s right-hand edge. A single fly rests on the watch face, directly next to the number 1.
Beyond these two watches, near the platform’s back edge, the bare, gray trunk of an olive tree extends up toward the sky. A thin, leafless branch extends to the right, supporting a final watch that drapes over it like a piece of clothing on an outstretched arm.
Salvador Dalí was often associated with Surrealism, an artistic and literary movement that called on artists to explore the depths of the subconscious mind—a part of our mind that runs constantly without any filter or control. By fusing elements from his surroundings with the illogical details we might find in a dream, Dalí sought to, as he said, “discredit completely the world of reality.”