I register without choice and with all possible exactitude the dictates of my subconscious, my dreams….” By rendering these images so meticulously, he nurtured the illusion that they might exist in the real world. On the results of this process, he wrote, “I am the first to be surprised and often terrified by the images I see appear upon my canvas. Unlike other artists who use substances to achieve their end goals on a canvas, Salvador Dalí induced himself to hallucinate to access his subconscious while making art, a process he called the ‘paranoiac-critical method’. This was after it was discovered that a year before he painted this artwork, he formulated a unique method through which he self-induced psychotic hallucinations to create art. He famously once said, “the difference between a madman and me is that I am not mad”. The theory that this is symbolism for Dalí and his dream in which he experienced the passing of time is more probable if one looks at Dalí’s other works. However, some say that the creature seems to be based on a figure from the Paradise section of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, which Dalí was quite fond of. 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. Dalí was perhaps aiming to represent himself through his work and painting this ‘self-portrait’ of sorts to express his inner thoughts. There is also a strange ‘monster’ or a human figure in the middle of the painting. And it is not just the clocks that are doing the job of painting this bizarre dream for the viewers. It’s considered to be one of the most important and well-recognized surrealist works of art, a style that gained ground after World War I, and is known for absurd and uncommon imagery that has a deeper meaning. The entire painting depicts imagery that is more likely to be found in dreams rather than in waking consciousness. The Persistence of Memory is a 1931 surrealist painting that represents the lack of meaning of time in the unconscious world. He even painted a fly which is seen sitting on the watch next to the orange watch and it appears to be casting a human shadow as the sun hits it. An orange clock at the bottom left of the painting is covered in ants and those who follow the artwork of Dalí, they know that he often used ants in his paintings as a symbol of decay. Dalí said the soft watches were not inspired by the theory of relativity but by the surrealist perception of a Camembert melting in the sun.
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