The Melting Watches

In The Persistence of Memory, watches seem to liquefy on branches, stones and a strange sleeping organic form. The image has become one of the major symbols of surrealism. Yet Salvador Dalí claims the idea simply came to him from a melting camembert observed during a meal.

Painted in 1931, The Persistence of Memory belongs to the period when Dalí developed his so-called "paranoiac-critical" method, consisting of associating precise images and dreamlike logic to produce deliberately unstable scenes.

The painting represents a desert landscape inspired by Catalonian rocky coasts. In this silent space appear several soft watches defying all usual mechanical rigidity. Contrary to popular interpretations immediately connecting the work to Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, Dalí himself explained that the deformed forms were inspired by observing a cheese melting under heat.

This almost trivial origin fits well with surrealism's functioning: transforming everyday objects into psychologically destabilizing visions. Watches then become organic objects, soft and vulnerable rather than precise instruments of rational time measurement.

At the painting's center also appears a strange soft creature with long eyelashes, often interpreted as a form of Dalí's own deformed self-portrait. The extreme technical precision of the painting paradoxically reinforces the impression of unreality. Dalí applied to absurd visions an almost photographic rendering quality that would become one of his work's major signatures.