Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali

The early 1920s art movement of surrealism was founded by Andre Breton, a French writer. Comp atomic number 18d to other art groups or movements, surrealism focused on evoking the unconscious in painting. Members of this group showed extensive importance in illustrating a more profound reality revealed by the unconscious estimation. Most of the surrealists involve grotesque portrayal of images in their paintings. They create visuals that go beyond mere painting to reach a new level of reality. This extraordinary approach in creating a provocative image is derived from the surrealists dreams.The products of their subconscious mind combined with the concept of enigma or mystery have been their inspiration in producing eccentric entirely remarkable masterpieces (Artbeyondsight. com). One of the famous Surrealist painters who is well-known for his bizarre ideas and eccentric behaviors was Salvador Dali. Most of his artworks became and integral part in the advancement of the Surrea list aesthetic. His main objective was to materialize images of concrete irrationality with the most imperialist fury of precision. more so, Dalis paintings illustrated dream-like images still these were treated with precision and fine details that made the viewers enter a hallucinatory landscape. Dali named these paintings with dream and fantasy theme as hand-painted dream photographs. In these artworks, unusual placement of images and the revision of a specific form into another completely new form were evident. Because of this composition, it appears that most of Dalis paintings take the principle of Physics. He created images that represented the irrational and unpredictable world of the dream (Artbeyondsight. om). In the painting perseveration of Memory, Dali presented the unusual images of melted watches. Dali said that the elements present in this particular painting atomic number 18 nil else, but the Camembert cheese of space and time tender, outlandish, solitary and critical-paranoiac (3d-dali. com, 2008). This painting can be classified as a landscape painting, a self portrait or a still-life painting. It all depends on the viewers intelligence and knowledge on how to understand and interpret the painting.In terms of the visual elements exhibited, the background is a margin landscape while the foreground consists of the strange images of three melted pocket watches, the rectangular box and an animal-like creature. The unusual objects created a mysterious effect while the realistic lighting and coloring added a realness doer to the painting. At first glance, these may all seem meaningless and peculiar but if viewers would nerve closely and try to find out the rationale for putting these elements together, they could get a better hold of understanding of the paintings and the inner workings of Dalis mind.According to Robert Bradford, the bare, hard outline of the cliffs and the crystal light of the flip-flop are there, but the empty, deser t-like expanses of the painting are much closer to the topography of the min, to a dreamscape. The viewers care is fermented precisely through the lack of clues of distance, of recognizable landmark, of time of day, of temperature-it could equally be as hot, or as cold as an unknown planet. We are in an arena of silence, a frozen nightmare, in which nothing moves or make a noise. (p. 146)Overall, the Persistence of Memory is an artwork that takes the viewers into a very arouse world wherein they are transported from the predictable realm of reality to a place filled with ambiguity and peculiarity. The techniques in coloring and brush strokes employed by Dali were conventional but it is the compositional aspects that stand out are the placement and the choice of objects displayed in the painting. This painting ingeniously juxtaposed the real with the make believe which are the primary characteristics of Surrealism.References3d-dali.com. (2008). Salavador Dali Painitngs. Retrieved N ovember 28, 2008, from http//www.3d-dali.com/dali_paintings_analysis_interpretation.htmArtbeyondsight.com. (n.d.). Salvador Dali and Surrealism. Retrieved November 28, 2008, from http//www.artbeyondsight.org/ahtts/dali-read.shtmlRadford, R. (1997). Dali. London Phaidon Press Ltd.