
Artists and authors write and illustrate things in order to express their feelings or show meaning through their work. Artists illustrate their work in order to make a point. But artwork can be interpreted in many ways and what a work means to every viewer can be unique to them. Salvador Dali was born May 11, 1904 and died January 23, 1989 (theartstory.org.) Dali was a Spanish painter from the 1930’s and throughout the 1950’s. During this time, the surrealism movement came about. Dali was a known surrealist painter who through his works hoped to unleash the subconscious imagination (tate.org.uk). Surrealism capitalized on the ideas of the subconscious. Many of Dali’s paintings illustrate the subconscious and dreaming, which is also the case in his painting The Persistence of Memory. This was painted in 1931. In The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dali uses a number of different illustrative methods in this painting in order to convey a theme. Dali uses melting clocks, a deformed man sleeping, a solid clock with ants, and a dead tree to illustrate that time is always continuous.

Time is a persistent thing and sometimes it can make life harder. Salvador Dali uses melting clocks to illustrate that time is the central motif of the work. The melting of clocks was used subjectively by Dali. He wants to illustrate the meaning of time. Dali’s work suggests that the melted clocks represent that the constant change in time is not a personal choice. “It is likely that Dali was using the clocks to symbolize mortality (specifically his own) rather than literal time, as the melting flesh in the painting's center is loosely based on Dali's profile,” (theartstory.org.) He suggests that time moves a lot faster than we think it does. In this painting the clocks look melted and proposes that time is changing constantly and what we do with our time is up to us. Time is a metaphor for life, and Dali wants to portray that our lives are short lived and can change constantly without us even realizing it.

The Persistence of Memory was painted around the time Freudian theories of the unconscious and subconscious arose. So many psychologists and theorists were studying the meaning of the subconscious (totallyhistory.com). Dali wanted to use his talent of painting to help to convey the meaning and depth of the subconscious mind and what it meant to him. Dali may have believed that in our subconscious, we could escape from reality. In The Persistence of Memory, Dali paints what looks to be a man and is thought to be a portrait of himself (moma.org). In the painting, this man is dreaming and dreaming shows us the inner-workings of our subconscious mind. In The Persistence of Memory, the self-portrait of Dali may have been him illustrating himself as dead or dreaming because time was of absence. The illustration of this man shows that time will bring upon death. Dali paints us a man that appears to be asleep with a clock on him to illustrate that while we may be unconscious, time is still moving. 

In The Persistence of Memory, Dali uses numerous clocks to contribute to the theme of time. However, there is one that is notably different than all the other ones. This clock is solid. Meaning that while all the other clocks could have been showing time subjectively, this solid clock is showing time impartially. As this clock is solid and showing the real time the others depicted in Dali’s painting were melted and just an image of what Dali thought time meant. This clock shows the true meaning of time and that time only consumes itself. On this clock, ants can be seen marching around on it, and they give meaning of decay. So Dali wants to express to the viewer that true time is slowly decaying. To him the real time and the time while we are conscious, we are gradually brought to death. This clock with ants shows us that time is limited, just as life is. 

On the left side of The Persistence of Memory is a tree that appears to be dead or ridded of leaves, or life. This tree is old and bare. Trees are usually used by wildlife to provide shelter and a home, but a bare tree would be useless to wildlife as it provides no protection or support. The tree is used to show that as it gets older it becomes more barren and this can relate to life as life becomes more barren with the passage of time. This is another symbol that Dali uses to show us that with time, death arises. Just like life, the tree illustrates that time will bring us to our end. On the limb of the tree a melted clock is present. This helps to convey to the viewer that while the time is undefined, the tree still faces life like we do and time still goes on. While the rest of the painting is of the water and sand, this tree was purposefully painted where it was to show us that life is persistent and while time moves on, so does life. 

Artists use their talents to express their thoughts and ideas. The purpose behind many illustrations is to reveal meaning and to persuade the viewer to agree or at least make sense of their thoughts on a certain idea. Around the 1920’s a movement called Surrealism arose. Surrealism works to expose the subconscious and studies what we may be thinking deep in the recesses of our mind. Salvador Dali was a popular artist that painted surrealist illustrations. He expressed his ideas about surrealism through his artwork. One of Dali’s most famous pieces is The Persistence of Memory. In this painting he develops a theme of time and what time means to him.  Dali expresses his meaning of time by using melting clocks, a deformed man sleeping, a solid clock with ants, and a dead tree to illustrate that time is always continuous.

 