Melting Clocks
Salvador Dalí’s surrealist masterpiece The Persistence of Memory (1931) showcases one of the artist’s most iconic motifs: melting clocks. On permanent display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the hallucinatory painting features the limp clocks draped across branches, furniture, and even a sleeping human face. These melting clocks, sometimes referred to as soft or droopy watches, make repeated appearances throughout Dalí’s career, generating a variety of interpretations. Some scholars associate this symbol with the omnipresence of time and its mastery over humans. Others believe Dalí’s melting clocks are a symbol for Albert Einstein’s groundbreaking Theory of Relativity, while some art historians attribute Dalí’s inspiration to a much simpler moment: when the artist watched cheese melt in the sun.
Series by this artist
- The Divine Comedy246 available
- Venus48 available
- Dante36 available
- The Bible31 available
- Fruits30 available
- Faust27 available
- Signs of the Zodiac26 available
- Don Quixote25 available
- Shakespeare24 available
- Elephants21 available
- Mythologies20 available
- Butterflies19 available
- Les Amours de Cassandre16 available
- Lobsters9 available
- Casanova8 available
- Memories of Surrealism8 available
- Les Diners de Gala5 available
- Poems4 available
- Playing Cards2 available