An Analysis Of Salvador Dali's The Persistence Of Memory 1931

An Analysis Of Salvador Dali's The Persistence Of Memory 1931

THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY (1931)



The Persistence of Memory (1931) was made in 1931 by Salvador Dali, the artwork is 24 x 33 cm oil on canvas painting, and now the artwork is in The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The style of the artwork is surrealistic. The subject matter is a barren landscape with melting clocks draped over unrelated objects, caricature of Dali's face on the ground, plus a rocky headland with sea in the background. The focal point of the artwork is the strange caricature of Dali's profile, complete with eyelashes, tongue and nose. This is because it is so light amongst dark surrounding shadows on the ground.



The artist used some surrealist techniques which is Metamorphosis, Rescaling of objects and out of context ... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...The main colours used are blue, yellow, orange and brown. There is also a specific scheme involved in this artwork, which is orange and blue are opposite on the colour wheel, creating visual interest and drama in the composition. Those colour been used to realistically describe forms, they also used to communicate a feeling in this painting. The strongly contrasting colours creates a mysterious shadowy atmosphere in the unusual foreground objects, which is balanced by the lighter landscape areas in the horizon.



There are some lines been used in the artwork, which is thin, straight and neat. Dali used very thin and detailed lines particularly on the foreground object such as the numbers on the clocks and the eyelashes on his caricature's eye. He also used some shapes which is definite, geometric, organic and detailed. Dali has created definite and detailed looking shapes. He has contrasted the organic shapes of the boxes on the left–hand side of the composition. There is a very strong tonal contrast between the darker foreground, and the lighter background areas of the landscape. This contrast creates the effect of visual interest in the composition. And the surface of the artwork is smooth. Any texture left on this canvas would be implied to represent rougher areas, such as in the rocks and ants. Dali took extreme care to ensure that his brush strokes were smooth and invisible to create a photographic

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