What Do Salvador Dalí's Melting Clocks Mean?

Despite the intricacies behind Salvador Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory, a two-word phrase is all any art lover needs to conjure up this work of art. Completed in 1931, Dalí's "melting clocks" quickly became a worldwide sensation and today are considered by some as the height of the Surrealist movement. Dalí specialized in producing art that features familiar objects, but he presented them in unfamiliar ways—embracing irrationality. Conceiving of an irrational piece required a somewhat irrational process, which Dalí called the “paranoiac-critical” method. Developed in 1930, the technique relied on self-induced paranoia and hallucinations to make art and explains why so much of Dalí’s work feels like a dreamscape. This includes The Persistence of Memory, where a realistic coastal landscape, which was inspired by Dalí’s hometown in Catalonia, meets unrealistic, or surreal, subject matter, in this case a set of melting clocks. Typically known for their dependability in telling time, these clocks have been rendered useless as they hang on various surfaces within the painting. While some believe that these melting clocks represent the “omnipresence of time,” Dalí’s explanation of the inspiration behind these clocks is much simpler: they look like melting Camembert cheese. Other important aspects of the painting include the human-like mass in the foreground of the painting, which some argue holds resemblance to Dalí’s self-portraits, and the ants that swarm the clock in the corner, an allusion to death and decay. Could this painting just be a manifestation of one of Dalí’s dreams, or does it hold a deeper meaning?