Visual texts are similar to written texts in the fact that they communicate a message to the audience. Instead of just using words, visual texts contain angles, lighting, gazes, colors, and shots. By including these extra elements in an analysis of a visual text, the audience is more apt to retain a better understanding of the piece. Dreaming while asleep, the body is in an unconscious state; Dali uses this example of time to express a theme of a frozen state of a moment. In Salvador Dali’s surreal painting, The Persistence of Memory, Dali incorporates shot, color contrasts, motifs, and imagery to further express the theme of time.

The shot of a frame positions the audience to how they will view the image. In Dali’s painting, a point-of-view shot is established, causing the audience to view the painting as if they are viewing it from Dali’s perspective. The shot portrays four clocks in the foreground; three which are morphed and bent, and one being a pocket watch. In the mid-ground and background, a desert scene is painted. The morphed and melted clocks are as so in order to represent a lapse in time, where the being has no normal concept of time. These clocks symbolize a distorted passage of time, as they are misshapen, and suggest that time does not persist, hence the title The Persistence of Memory. The clocks are brought to attention by their harsh colored backgrounds.

Color contrasts in paintings assist in bringing a major or major items in that picture to the audience’s first gaze. Opposite colors are placed near or parallel to each other in order to make the item laid against it “pop”. In Dali’s surrealism painting, oranges, blues, browns, whites, and blacks are placed strategically around the canvas. He uses oranges, browns, whites, hints of gold and shadowing in the bottom left corner to emphasize the lightly colored pocket watch against a dull colored box of some sort. Shadows are placed around this box-like figure to emphasize the clocks, which show the faces portraying different times. Just above this scene, there is a brown branch supporting a drooping blue/grey clock. Just to the right of this, in the middle of the canvas, is another distorted clock laid above a white object. All around this scene are black shadows, causing the white objects (especially the clock) to pop out to the audience. All of these object portray a sense of time, further emphasizing the overall theme of Dali’s surrealist work.

Visual motifs are helpful during the time that the audience is trying to gather what the artist intended on them to focus on. In The Persistence of Memory, Dali places flour clocks around the canvas to represent “time”. The pocket watches are all symbols of keeping a unit of time, which contradicts Dali’s initial stance on the state of the audience viewing the piece, but by distorting the figures, he achieves a sense of lost time, or being unable to keep track of time, as if the audience is in a dream-like state.

Symbols are relevant in paintings because they can assist the audience in understanding a deeper meaning than just that inanimate object. The ants on the darker orange pocket watch in the bottom left corner are used to represent a feeling of decay, if not mimicking a scene of ants on a blanket at a picnic, devouring the last piece of bread. Although this particular symbol represents a loss of time, or time running out, the others perceived in the painting represent an everlasting time, or eternity. The mirror in the top left section of the canvas is a symbol of the two states Dali is trying to place into the viewer’s mind; a state of conscious thinking, and a state of unconscious thinking. Once asleep, people undergo a sense of unconscious thinking, projecting a feeling of eternity or never ending time while dreaming. Dreams can feel like a lifetime, but last only a few minutes. Dali puts this object here to spotlight that this image can be viewed from two different states as seen by the audience, but represents a state of time that can be both infinite and ephemeral. The sea pictured at the top left portion of the picture symbolizes eternity or immortality. Seas are deemed “never ending”, as the earth is round in shape, and one cannot see a specific stopping point for an ocean. Time spent on a boat is known to feel a lot longer than what is actually spent. Finally, the eyelashes on a closed eye placed on the object in the center of the painting represents a figure sleeping, assumingly in the dream state. With a drooped clock placed over the figure, maybe representative of a blanket of time, it represents a halt in time as the figure sleeps. 

Writers and artists are similar regarding the fact that both create a version of art that portrays a theme within the piece. In The Persistence of Memory, painted by Salvador Dali, many elements are used throughout the painting to help produce an overall theme of time. Shot is used to position the reader to see what Dali envisioned them to see. Color contrasting is applied to the shades of paint used in order to make objects stick out for the reader, or even further position the audience through the use of shadows. A visual motif is representative of the main theme of the overall piece, and symbols are placed in the painting to provide the audience with more meaning. Overall, elements are provided to the audience in order to gain an understanding of what the artist’s intentions for the viewer were.
