The Persistence of Memory is a painting produced in 1931 by Spanish artist Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marqués de Dalí de Pubol, known as Salvador Dalí.
Probably the most memorable painting of popular culture, which is best known as Melting Clocks and has been considered as Surrealism itself, just as Dali.
The main motifs of the painting are melting clocks and ants. The theme is time, expressed in a multitude of meanings. Ants appear as a symbol of decay in Dalí’s works and clock is a symbol of time. Melting clocks suggest that the time is melting, representing its relativity. The painting depicts a landscape, the seaside and cliffs, probably of the artist’s homeland in Catalonia, Spain. In the central part of the composition, there is a being, possibly human, with nose and closed eye, having long eyelashes. The artist was talking about his paintings as they are hand-painted dream photographs. Although the dreams belong to sphere of subconscious, Dalí painted them with incredible precision.
The work can be viewed at Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York.