Analysis of the painting The Persistence of Memory
*Source: http://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/1168-2
NP - The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali is an oil on canvas painting (the oil on canvas being the medium of the artwork) painted in surrealism style in 1931. The painting is a form of two dimensional art. All the colors on the canvas are opaque and the painting has a smooth texture. We can see on the beach Dali adds more value (he adds more black to the green) to the shaded part of the landscape, and more white to the grass where the sun would be shining. The same is applied for the cliff on the background, where the sun is shining the value of the color is much less than areas of the cliff that are not hit by the setting sun. This type of painting is painterly work. Dali uses value, hue and chroma with paint to construct realistic looking world which we can see with how he did correct shading for a setting sun.
BQ - The painting’s textures are rather simple to my taste, there is some detail made on the mountainside in the background of the painting, but other than that, there is no texture that really pops out. The colors are also sort of lifeless in their usage. There is a lot of brown used in this painting, and while there is some blue as well, the blue does not invoke any sort of life to it, it simply just looks rather tranquil and empty. The brown by itself seems to represent lack of life as I personally correlate brown with lack of life as plants turn brown when they die or deserts, like the one depicted here, also tend to be brown and lifeless. I too noticed that the sun depicted in this painting seemed to either be a rising sun or a setting sun, given the lighting effects in the painting, but ...
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...eeding on a watch. By this point we’ve established that these watches are soft and organic, but the ants feeding on the watch seems to imply that the watch is alive. By that nature, what Dali seems to be telling us is that time is alive. Since we’ve established that the context of this painting is within a memory, it seems to signify that memories are also in a way living things. And like all living things, they must die, which seems to be shown by the dying creature in the middle of the painting and how it’s the closest to the portion of the painting that is fading to black. I really think that this painting was an excellent painting to view as although it looks strange and simple at first, when you look closely enough the content this painting brings with it is staggering and thought provoking.
Works Cited
"MoMA Learning: MoMA. Web. 30 April 2014.
At the left-bottom corner of the painting, the viewer is presented with a rugged-orangish cliff and on top of it, two parallel dark green trees extending towards the sky. This section of the painting is mostly shadowed in darkness since the cliff is high, and the light is emanating from the background. A waterfall, seen originating from the far distant mountains, makes its way down into a patch of lime-green pasture, then fuses into a white lake, and finally becomes anew, a chaotic waterfall(rocks interfere its smooth passage), separating the latter cliff with a more distant cliff in the center. At the immediate bottom-center of the foreground appears a flat land which runs from the center and slowly ascends into a cliff as it travels to the right. Green bushes, rough orange rocks, and pine trees are scattered throughout this piece of land. Since this section of the painting is at a lower level as opposed to the left cliff, the light is more evidently being exposed around the edges of the land, rocks, and trees. Although the atmosphere of the landscape is a chilly one, highlights of a warm light make this scene seem to take place around the time of spring.
Imagine if time was the single most important thing: greater than family, friends, or making memories. The reason one would survive, but never truly live, is all determined by the time of day. Between the three mediums that have been read and discussed in class; Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis (the graphic novel) illustrated by Peter Kuper, and the painting ‘The Persistence of Memory’ by Salvador Dali all contain a common theme; time is all consuming.
Salvador Dali was born on May 11, 1904, in Figueras, Spain (“Salvador Dali”). He became to be known as the most influential and the most famous painter known in the twentieth century. On January 23, 1989, in Figueras, Spain Dali had died from a cardiac arrest at the age of 84 (“Salvador Dali”). However, his paintings and artworks are still around and are located at the Salvador Dali Museum, in Saint Petersburg, Florida. The Salvador Dali Museum holds the largest collection of Dali’s artworks outside of Europe and the museum shelters the artwork with an eighteen-inch concrete wall (“The Building”). Two of the most famous and memorable artworks located in the Salvador Dali Museum are called The Hallucinogenic Toreador and Lincoln in Dalivision. These two artworks have influenced many new inspiring artists to paint and to express his or her self like the influential Dali himself, in which he has captivated many viewers who had visited the Salvador Dali Museum.
Surrealism was a important tool for Dali, using it he could express his feelings, dreams and political standings. His art sometimes seemed as if it was a way ...
Though most works of art have some underlying, deeper meaning attached to them, our first impression of their significance comes through our initial visual interpretation. When we first view a painting or a statue or other piece of art, we notice first the visual details – its size, its medium, its color, and its condition, for example – before we begin to ponder its greater significance. Indeed, these visual clues are just as important as any other interpretation or meaning of a work, for they allow us to understand just what that deeper meaning is. The expression on a statue’s face tells us the emotion and message that the artist is trying to convey. Its color, too, can provide clues: darker or lighter colors can play a role in how we judge a piece of art. The type of lines used in a piece can send different messages. A sculpture, for example, may have been carved with hard, rough lines or it may have been carved with smoother, more flowing lines that portray a kind of gentleness.
Salvador Dali was a modern master of art. He unleashed a tidal wave of surrealistic inspiration, affecting not only fellow painters, but also designers of jewelry, fashion, architecture, Walt Disney, directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, performers like Lady Gaga, and Madison Street advertisers. Filled with antics of the absurd, Dali fashioned a world for himself, a world which we are cordially invited to experience his eccentricity, his passions, and his eternal questioning nature. Dali’s surreal paintings transport us to fantastic realms of dream, food, sex, and religion. Born on May 11, 1904, Dali was encouraged by his mother to explore, to taste, to smell, to experience life with all of its sensuality. As a boy, Dali often visited the Spanish coastal town of Cadaqués with his family. It was here that he found inspiration from the landscape, the sea, the rock formations, the bustling harbor, with ships transporting barrels of olives and troves of exotic spices. Dali was impressed by the Catholic churches, and their altars with the portrayal of Christ and of the angels and saints gracefully flying overhead, yet frozen in time and marble. It was in Cadaqués that Dali declared “I have been made in these rocks. Here have I shaped my personality. I cannot separate myself from this sky, this sea and these rocks.” It was in
Dali, Salvador. “The Persistance of Memory.” A World of Ideas. 9th ed. Ed. Lee A.Jacobus. Boston: Bedford/St.Martins, 2013.Print
Spanish painter Salvador Dali was undeniably one of the most eccentric personalities of the XX century. He is well known as a pioneer of surrealist art whose production has had a huge influence on media and modern artists around the globe . By bringing surreal elements into everyday objects he pushed surrealism forward. It is partly to his credit that surrealism is this popular today. In "M...
The composition of the painting takes place with the square of the canvas. The square is approximately 5' x 5'. A black frame surrounding the painting protrudes approximately 4" off the canvas. There is a 1" inlay between the canvas and frame. From this square, Reinhardt breaks the composition into six equal squares in three even rows. Texture is no where to be found in the painting. No visual indication of the artist's brush stroke is present. No varnished glare is given off by the piece. The entire work, including the frame, is completely matte. The squares take up the entire canvas in a checkerboard type arrangement. Each square is a slightly different shade of blue-black. It almost becomes impossible to see the difference between each square. The middle squares in the top and bottom rows shift more towards blue than the rest of the squares. The division of these middle squares become more obvious than the others. When the painting is looked at from a distance, it is almost impossible to see any of the squares at all. When looking from a far, all a viewer can see is a blackish blue canvas. As you stare longer into the painting, a halo begins to form around the corners of the canvas, creating a circle inside the square. Once you look away from the canvas, the circle is gone. With this observation in mind, we could say that the painting most definitely relies on the viewer. A viewer is required to look at the piece for its full affect. We could say that the squares in the painting are self-contained.
The man’s eyes are closed and his mouth is slightly open. The colours of the painting shades of blue, and there is a flatness to the painting. The only break in color is the brown guitar. Like other paintings at this time, the mas is assumed to be poor. There is an overall sense of depression and tragedy.
The texture of the canvas works very well with the subject matter portrayed in the painting. The grassy hill side and the leaves of the trees are especially complimented by the canvas. It makes the leaves feel like they are slightly moving, this combined with the lack of detail itself the leaves. This is contrasted nicely with the very detailed renderings of the trunks and branches of the trees, the conscious decision to put so much effort into the tree itself and then to use obvious brushwork in the leaves makes the trees much more firm and immovable in the landscape. The brushstrokes are very clean and precise on the trees in the background.
Looking at landscape art, especially when painted by one of the masters, many have undoubtedly pondered: what would it be like to live there? Shapes and attention to detail are, of course, important in a painting. However, it is color that draws the eye and inspires the heart. Oscar Wilde, an Irish poet and dramatist, spoke well of this when he noted that, “Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways. (qtd in “color”)”. Vincent Ward had a similar understanding of this impact when, in 1998, he directed the movie What Dreams May Come. Looking at this film, one can easily imagine being inside a living painting. The use of color to emphasize the emotional state of a character or event is common in films; nevertheless, Director Ward goes even farther in using color to represent the actual characters themselves. Red is the shade chosen to signify Annie and likewise, blue is used for Chris. Both of these, as will be shown, are accurate in defining these fictitious people. However, it is the profound use of purple in this film that is the true focal point. When mixing red and blue paint, one would find that, after being mixed, they cannot be separated. Likewise, this is true of the life and love these characters build and share. Purple represents the many ways in which Chris and Annie are melded, and joined.
One of the visual elements of this painting is the color he really uses the color to get people's attention because he uses watercolors to blend them together to make such a wonderful painting. He blends many different colors together to make new ones there is not a spot in this painting that there isn’t color. The second visual element is the people in the painting they are naked and dancing around like nobody's looking. The people in the painting are relaxing and enjoying one another and various ways. Some are even having sexual contact in the painting it’s expressing themselves from one to
The Salvador Dali artistic movement is called surrealism in this style there are very strange and imaginative images. He tries to express the unconscious like in a dream. In The Persistence of Memory painting, there are four droopy watches in an eerie landscape. “If Persistence of Memory depicts a dream state, the melting and distorted clocks symbolize the erratic passage of time that we experience while dreaming.”(Legomenon) This is one example of many of the meanings of this precious painting. This painting was made in 1921 and it was made by using oil on canvas.
...th color, the way he used color when it was used conveyed what was important in the piece. The body as it hangs lifeless from Saturn’s death grip is dripping with blood and it is even between the white knuckles of Saturn. In having Saturn’s knuckles white it emphasizes his grip that is so strong on the body he is drawing blood from the back. It is showing his passion in that the deed has to be done. His expression is wild and his stance is cowardly showing that he may not have wanted to do what he was doing. The message in the painting is that time consumes us all, and that is by having the god of time eating a faceless body. There is another message in this too, I believe and it is that people will do almost anything to keep their reign in power. I found this painting very stimulating and gave me many emotions. I think just because of that the piece is successful.