Persistence Of Memory Essay Example For Students

Persistence Of Memory Essay Persistenceof Memory by Salvador Dali is one his most distinguished works. It is anOil on Canvas 9 1/2 x 13 and was painted in 1931. Dali uses many types ofmedia in this picture to portray the imagery he was looking for. The First mediaI recognized was chiaroscuro. The artwork starts from a bright white and blue inthe top left hand corner and ends up fading into darkness. There is a largefigure with a clock draped over it right before the fade to darkness which maysymbolize a time in the artists life in which he was feeling that his memorieswere fading and falling into blackness. The Second media I noticed was trompeloeil. This was most noticed with the seemingly melted watches representingtime or memory draping off a table and a tree. It is really a barren landscapewith 4 clocks, a table, fake tree, a blue rectangular mass, and some mountainsin the background. I suppose he is trying to symbolize his thoughts and memoriesand how he was feeling about them at that moment. This artwork consists of amostly cool color scheme with one instance of warm. There is a red clock in thebottom left hand corner that does seem to stick out with the effect of red andblack it uses. That also is covered with ants that look like they are eatingwhich may symbolize some type of eating away at a memory he had. The cool colorsare the sky and 3 of the clocks while the warm is 1 clock and the base of themountain. The rest of the landscape is a very neutral brown and black. Persistence of Memory also exhibits a kind of atmospheric/linear perspective. The objects in the front of the piece, the tree, clocks, table, figure, are mostnoticeable with detail and it seems like those are the objects the artist wantsyou to be most familiar with relative to the mountains, sky, and ocean in thedistance which really are not that symbolic in this picture. They are of lessfocus than the melted clocks. Dali was a noted Surrealist and this picture mayhave been his greatest in that era. He was a man that could put photorealisticimages on a canvas. His surrealist era was influenced by a famous psychologistwhich led him to explore his own fears and fantasies. In 1934 Dali was expelledfrom the Surrealist group due to the world war and his supposed crazy ideas. Ichose this artwork because of Dalis intense, illusionistic style. He was agreat artist and a man not ashamed to show how he felt. He wanted to explore hisfears and fantasies and express them through artwork which gives me the sensethat he had great pride. I feel this piece is very important to the surrealistartworld as it is a perfect example of Dalis realistically dreamlike content. Dali was expelled from his surrealist group in 1934 and responded as follows the difference between me and the surrealists is that I am surrealism.