The Persistence of Memory is a painting done by Surrealist artist Salvador Dali in 1931. Though it is clearly his most famous work, this isn’t his only time he’s used this concept of soft clocks to convey a similar message. He also created the Nobility of Time, the Profile of Time and the Three Dancing Watches.
The iconic image of soft clocks in “The Persistence of Memory,” is meant to represent the irrelevancy of space and time during sleep. Dali communicates this idea with his theme of soft and hard, by making the clocks and everything in the darker section of the painting very soft, conveying that they are in some sort of dream state. The background shows rocky mountains that are in the sunlight that, unlike the rest of the painting, are hard. The use of light and darkness is meant to convey what is real and what is a dream.
