Загадка осени: 1970-1979

Gala and Salvador Dalí

Gala began an extra conjugal dalliance with Dali after her trip to Spain, something Éluard might have assumed would be a brief fling, given her prior relationship with Max Ernst. But the bond that developed between them wasn’t a breakable one. In his autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (1942), Dali stated that Gala was destined to be his Gradiva, victory, and wife. Gala quickly deserted her suddenly affluent and successful husband in favor of the poor artist, trading her posh Parisian apartment for one in a Spanish fishing town. Many people, including Éluard, were undoubtedly shocked by her decision. Gala, however, had a different goal in mind.

Gala saw a love interest in Dalí, but she also saw potential in him that needed to be developed. She would act as Salvador Dalí’s primary inspiration. Gala was painted several hundred times by Dalí during the following sixty years. These works seem to be governed by ideas of desire, passion, love, and adoration. In 1932, Gala became Dalí’s wife.

Dalí once said: I polished Gala to make her shine, to make her as happy as possible, I took care of her better than myself, because without her it was all over. Never shying away from the significance of his wife in his life and art, Dalí began signing several of his works with the name Gala Salvador Dalí. Dalí emphasized Gala’s involvement in his creative production through their shared signature. By including her in his signature, Dalí publicly acknowledged their collaborative effort, contrary to many other painters across history who neglected to acknowledge the involvement of their own spouses in the creation process of their art.

There is no better example of the Gala-Dalí partnership than a collection of monochrome images showing the pair constructing a pavilion, which they called the Dream of Venus. The structure was made for the sole purpose of exhibiting it at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. These images show Gala’s creative contribution to the creation of this fantastic surrealist spectacle, which she made in collaboration with a group of builders. Models dressed as lobsters, mermaids, and pianos populated the venue, transforming it into a breathtaking fantasy.

Gala also served as Dalí’s agent, promoting his work internationally and making deals with corporate galleries. She became such a self-assured entrepreneur that even Giorgio de Chirico asked her to be his agent. Gala’s drive and commitment to the Gala-Dalí brand can be seen in how she handled everything, even in a patriarchal setting.

Salvador Dali Persistence of Memory Meaning Explained: Salvador Dali’s Melting Clocks

The Persistence of Memory is arguably Dali’s most famous painting. Its iconic «melting clocks» have become an icon of Surrealism and one of the most recognizable pieces of art of the twentieth century. While the painting’s true secret meaning is uncertain, Salvador Dali most likely knowingly encrypted all of these layers of historical, psychological, artistic, social and autobiographical meaning into his mysterious, enduring work of art. There may be even more layers of meaning hidden in The Persistence of Memory that we haven’t found yet.

Image credit: Salvador Dali­. (Spanish, 1904-1989). The Persistence of Memory. 1931. Oil on canvas, 9 1/2 x 13″ (24.1 x 33 cm). Salvador Dali­, Gala-Salvador Dali­ Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph taken in 2004.

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Analysis of The Persistence of Memory

Since Dali’s intention was to use his art as a vehicle for his subconscious, we have every reason to analyze The Persistence of Memory through the lens of who Dali is—his life experiences, his desires, and his fears. With that in mind, let’s examine the 4 parts of this painting that were most important to Dali:

The landscape

With the clear blue of the Mediterranean visible from his cottage windows and the foothills of the Serra de Rodes rising behind him, it’s no surprise that The Persistence of Memory features calm water and jutting cliffs reminiscent of his new home—certainly, those distinct cliffs help link this piece with Dali himself, in a very personal way.

However, Dali primarily used this landscape as a backdrop and means of creating a clear visual space for the surreal story taking place.

For the landscape itself, only a few features emerge: a (seemingly) dead olive tree growing out of a large square platform, and another more distant platform  closer to the water. The olive tree demonstrates the stunted growth and the lifeless nature of this world, while serving as a structural prop to hold up one of Dali’s melting pocket watches in the middle of the painting.

Both platforms help to balance the composition (a counterpoint to the cliffs on the right side of the painting) and bring a clear sense of perspective depth without distracting from the rest of the painting. Dali chose not to use buildings—or natural, or organic elements—to add perspective, no doubt in order to play up the “lifeless” and empty nature of this dreamlike place.

Melting clocks

Much has been made of these melting pocket watches, and rightfully so—they are unique to Salvador Dali’s work, and are the most memorable objects in this painting. When asked about them, Dali simply said they were inspired by melting cheese, but looking at Dali’s work as a whole, we can see there’s a bit more to them than that.

There is no doubt that time—or the concept of time, in this dreamlike place—is not functioning in a familiar, reliable way. And if time is unreliable, then what guarantees do we have that ANY element of this world acts in a logical fashion?

The short answer? There is no guarantee. No constants. Everything in this surreal world that Dali created is unknowable.

A surreal melting figure

In the center of the painting lies an even more confusing image. A figure, or creature, lies senseless on the group. The flat clock draped over its back almost feels like a saddle, but there are other interpretations as well. Perhaps the watch is weighing it down, or has merely fallen upon its prone body by happenstance.

Whatever the case, the figure DOES show some resemblance to a partial self-portrait of Dali. A nose, and perhaps a closed eye with long, antennae-like eyelashes make up the left-most side.

This may represent the tilted, dream-like experience of Dali himself in this space. The rocks beneath it serve to illustrate its fluid, melting state, much like the tree branch and platform do the same for two of the pocket watches.

Whether this is a true self-portrait or not, we may never know for sure, but it is a popular opinion given Dali’s interest in exploring his own subconscious through his art.

Congregating ants

The final important element of this painting is the cluster of ants gathering on the back of the only face-down pocket watch in the composition.

As a painter myself, I can appreciate the composition both ways—if that last pocket watch containing the ants had NOT been included in the painting, this painting would have a slightly more typical grouping of visual elements (formed by the three watches) reminiscent of classical paintings with their structured, triangular compositions.

With the fourth watch and ants included, Dali has created a sort of visual arrowhead—crafting a painting with a much more dynamic and non-traditional composition. The closeness of the fourth watch to the edge of the painting draws the eye, as does its more intense, orange, color and the contrasting black ants gathering on top of it.

There’s no reason to believe, for sure, that the fourth watch was added later—but its visual importance makes it clear that the ants (or their destructive influence, at least) hold special meaning to Dali.

Surrealism and Humor: Persistence of Memory Meaning & Analysis

Jokes, humor, sarcasm and wordplay play an important role in Surrealist art. Are the timepieces seen in The Persistence of Memory actually clocks or are they pocket watches? Unlike wall clocks, Dali’s timepieces include the recognizable winding feature. Pocket watches were popular fashion accessories in the 1920s and 1930s, the peak of the Surrealist art movement. Surrealists often mocked the trends and fashions of middle-class society in their paintings. In The Treachery of Images (1929), also known as “This is Not a Pipe,” fellow surrealist Rene Magritte famously painted a smoking pipe, another fashionable modern accessory of the era. Perhaps Dali was similarly poking fun at the pocket watch trend in The Persistence of Memory, pointing out how useless, irrelevant, and arbitrary our modern obsession with time is, inside and outside of the dream state.

Rene Magritte — The Treachery of Images (1929)

Salvador Dali Soft Clocks Meaning, Einstein & Relativity

Some art history scholars believe that Dali’s melting clocks may symbolize Albert Einstein’s groundbreaking Theory of Relativity, a new and revolutionary idea back in the 1930s. In his Theory of Relativity, Einstein proposed a new concept of time. According to Einstein’s theory, time is a relative and complex concept that cannot be tracked with such a crude, simple gadget as a clock or a pocket watch. In The Persistence of Memory, Dali’s clocks might be melting away because they are outmoded and losing power over the world around them. Limp and increasingly ineffectual, Dali’s soft clocks are old-fashioned and even impotent in a post-Einstein world.

«Man, when he ceases to sleep, is above all the plaything of his memory.» Andre Breton, The Surrealist Manifesto

«We had topped off our meal with a strong Camembert, and after everybody had gone I remained a long time at the table meditating on the philosophic problems of the ‘super-soft’ which the cheese presented to my mind.» Salvador Dali, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali

Much analysis is given to the melting clocks in The Persistence of Memory, but the reference to memory in the painting’s title adds a new layer to the overall understanding and meaning of Dali’s painting. As we all know, memory breaks down, or even rots, with time. In his autobiography, Dali explained that he was inspired to paint The Persistence of Memory after eating some «super-soft» Camembert cheese. In the painting, what looks like an assembly of ants seem to industriously eat away at the back of the red clock, almost like a piece of hard candy. Another insect lingers on the face of the clock nearby. Left exposed out in the elements, the clocks, perhaps symbolic of both time and memory, will degrade, break down and change over time. In The Persistence of Memory, Dali captures one moment of the lifelong organic process that takes place in each of our psyches.

«This picture represented a landscape near Port Lligat, whose rocks were lighted by a transparent and melancholy twilight; in the foreground an olive tree with its branches cut, and without leaves.»Salvador Dali on «The Persistence of Memory»

Personal Memory: Autobiographical Meaning of The Persistence of Memory

Is there a personal and autobiographical meaning to Dali’s famous painting? Art history scholars have pointed out the resemblance and similarity of this landscape to Port Lligat in Catalonia, the same region where Dali grew up. Dali himself also stated that the painting was inspired by Port Lligat. In the background, a body of water stretches out, perhaps symbolizing an ocean of memory surrounded by the sands of time. Beyond, the brown desert landscape looks barren and inhospitable. Does anybody live here? This may be the abandoned home Dali left behind and has not revisited since his youth. A watch hangs on a tree branch like laundry left on the line hung out to dry, forgotten. As Dali notes, the withered olive tree branches are not leafy or flowering, but cut back and dried out.

The Persistence of Memory Meaning: a Self Portrait?

Who is that sleeping in the foreground of the painting? On close inspection, the sleeping white figure in The Persistence of Memory boasts curious facial hair that could be interpreted as eyelashes, an eyebrow or his recognizable moustache. Is that in fact Salvador Dali? An almost fetal figure absurdly sporting a full moustache, this strange being does not seem to be fully formed, and is left noticeably wispy at the edges by the artist. Painted when Dali was just twenty-seven years old, this amorphous figure may represent his view of himself as a young artist, caught in a perpetual state between childhood and adulthood, innocence and experience, birth and death.

Similar paintings by Salvador Dali

While many of Dali’s Surrealist paintings contain similar arid landscapes and prominent rocky cliffs, he returned to the specific landscape of The Persistence of Memory in the 1950’s, creating a secondary work titled The Disintegration of The Persistence of Memory.

The cliffs separate from the water, rising upward into the sky while pocket watches begin to float and shiver apart into the air. The olive tree separates branch from limb, limb from trunk and even the water lifts up like a sheet.

Underneath it all, a grid of blocks (referencing the new era of nuclear power and atomic weapons) seems seconds away from permanently vanishing into chaos.

Copyright informationThe Persistence of Memory and The Disintegration of The Persistence of Memory are copyright  Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Sources & further reading

The Surrealist MovementHow the Surrealist Movement Shaped the Course of Art HistoryThe Surrealist Art Movement: André Breton, the Subconscious, and SurrealismThe Surrealist Manifesto

Salvador DaliA Timeline of Salvador Dali’s LifeSalvador Dali, the Famous Surrealist Painter

Salvador Dalí: Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Filmmaker, Printmaker, and Performance ArtistSalvador-Dali.org

The Persistence of MemoryOfficial MoMA exhibit of The Persistence of MemoryThe Persistence of Memory ExplainedThe History of The Persistence of MemoryWikipedia & WikiArt articles

Other Articles & ResourcesSalvador Dalí’s Forgotten HorizonOil Painting Certified as Early Work by DaliDali Work Still Highest Auction Price for a Work of SurrealismThe Disintegration of The Persistence of MemoryList of Most Expensive Paintings Ever Sold

Before PoD[]

She was born to Gladys Pearl Baker at the Los Angeles County Hospital in Los Angeles, California, on June 1, 1926 and was named Norma Jeane Mortenson, although her father is unknown.

Gladys was unprepared for a child. Gladys placed her daughter with evangelical Christian foster parents Albert and Ida Bolender in the rural town of Hawthorne; she also lived there for the first six months, until she was forced to move back to the city due to work. Gladys would then begin visiting her daughter on weekends. In the summer of 1933, Gladys bought a small house in Hollywood with a loan from the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and moved seven-year-old Monroe in with her. They shared the house with lodgers, actors George and Maude Atkinson and their daughter, Nellie. In January 1934, Gladys had a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. She was committed to the Metropolitan State Hospital. Gladys spent the rest of her life in and out of hospitals. Norma became a ward of the state, and her mother’s friend, Grace Goddard, took responsibility over her and her mother’s affairs.

In the next four years, Norma’s living situation changed often. For the first 16 months, she continued living with the Atkinsons. Norma was a shy girl and developed a stutter and became withdrawn. In the summer of 1935, she briefly stayed with Grace and her husband Erwin «Doc» Goddard and two other families, and in September, Grace placed her in the Los Angeles Orphans Home. The orphanage was «a model institution» and was described in positive terms by her peers, but Norma felt abandoned. Encouraged by the orphanage staff who thought that Norma would be happier living in a family, Grace became her legal guardian in 1936, but did not take her out of the orphanage until the summer of 1937. Norma’s second stay with the Goddards lasted only a few months; she then lived brief periods with her relatives and Grace’s friends and relatives in Los Angeles and Compton.

Norma and husband James Dougherty

Norma found a more permanent home in September 1938, when she began living with Grace’s aunt, Ana Lower, in Sawtelle. She was enrolled in Emerson Junior High School and went to weekly Christian Science services with Lower. Norma was otherwise a mediocre student but excelled in writing and contributed to the school newspaper. Due to the elderly Lower’s health problems, Norma returned to live with the Goddards in Van Nuys in around early 1941. The same year, she began attending Van Nuys High School. In 1942, the company that employed Doc Goddard relocated him to West Virginia. California child protection laws prevented the Goddards from taking Norma out of state, and she faced having to return to the orphanage. As a solution, she married their neighbors’ 21-year-old son, factory worker James Dougherty, on June 19, 1942, just eighteen days after her 16th birthday. Norma subsequently dropped out of high school and became a housewife. In 1943, Dougherty enlisted in the Merchant Marine and was stationed on Santa Catalina Island, where Norma moved with him.

In April 1944, Dougherty was shipped out to the Pacific, and he would remain there for most of the next two years. Norma moved in with Dougherty’s parents and began a job at the Radioplane Company, a munitions factory in Van Nuys. In late 1944, she met photographer David Conover, who had been sent by the U.S. Army Air Forces’ First Motion Picture Unit to the factory to shoot morale-boosting pictures of female workers. None of her pictures were used, she quit working at the factory in January 1945 and began modeling for Conover and his friends.

As a model, Norma occasionally used the name Jean Norman. She straightened her curly brunette hair and dyed it blonde to make herself more employable. Her figure was deemed more suitable for pin-up than fashion modeling, and she was featured mostly in advertisements and men’s magazines. By the early 1946, she had appeared on 33 magazine covers for publications such as Pageant, U.S. Camera, Laff, and Peek.

Литература[править | править код]

• Dali, Salvador, Descharnes, Robert, Neret, Gilles. Salvador Dali, 1904-1989: The Paintings 1904-1946.. — Taschen, 1997. — Т. 1. — 780 с. — (Jumbo Series). — ISBN 978-3822-8826-34.
• Halsman, Philippe, Halsman, Yvonne. Halsman at work: Philippe Halsman and Yvonne Halsman.. — Abrams, 1989. — 94 с.
• Spoto, Donald. Marilyn Monroe: The Biography. — Cooper Square Press, 2001. — ISBN 978-0815-4118-33.
• Taylor, Michael. The Dali Renaissance: New Perspectives on His Life and Art After 1940.. — Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2008. — 226 с. — (Philadelphia Museum of Art Series). — ISBN 978-0300-1364-70.

After PoD[]

After the ending her career she moved back in with her husband and stopped dying and straightened her hair.

In the winter of 1947 Norma gave birth to her first child, a daughter which the couple named Evie. Norma turned her attention on the role of motherhood hoping to be there for her children where her mother was unable to be.

In 1949, Dougherty joined the Los Angeles Police Department and served as a detective.

In 1952 Norma would give birth to the couple’s second daughter who they would name Peggy. Four years later Norma gave birth to a daughter who they named Elsie.

James Dougherty began teaching at the LAPD Police Academy and also worked as a Police Consultant for television and movies. During the time her marriage would be struggle, but Norma kept loyal to James. The reasoning was a split between being able to focus on her children, her own financial support, and for her long history with abandonment during her youth.

When her children were in school Norma would join the PTA and was very active in her daughters’ school activities including organizing fund raisers and helping coach her daughter’s softball team for a season.

Norma was often bored at home after her children began school, and so she would become an avid reader. She would also begin a hobby of writing and would become a part of a correspondence course for the Famous Writers School. She wrote a few short stories during that time, but never tried to publish them. Norma would also have an Advice Column under the name of Ask Monroe, which she kept secret from her family.

Although not active in politics, Norma would be well read on the issues of the day. She was against the War in Vietnam and supported civil rights but was a critic of the anti-war movements and their protests. Norma also despised Hippies who saw their drug use as a danger to youth of America; Norma would forbid her daughters from dating boys with hair long then their own. Her voting record in the presidential elections would be

• Kennedy 1960,
• Goldwater 1964,
• Nixon 1968,
• Nixon 1972,
• Ford 1976
• Reagan 1980
• Reagan 1984

Norma loved music, but barely sung. She was fan of Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis Presley.

Norma was a smoker, and although she didn’t partake when her children were at home she did when they were at school or after they had gone to bed. In March of 1987, she found a lump on her vocal cords. She would be received the test results indicating that while her throat was fine, but she had inoperable lung cancer. She underwent radiation therapy which damaged her throat difficult for her to speak.

Aware she was dying; Norma began to write a novel in July 1987. The novel would be about the affair of a fictional movie star and the daughter of the president and the effects on a personal and national level. She would finish about a 3rd of it before being unable to write. Her daughter Peggy owns the unfinished work.

Introduction

Salvador Dali’s iconic painting, The Persistence of Memory, is quite probably one of the most famous works of art in the entire world, along with Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Picasso’s Guernica, and a few others—and certainly, it is the most-recognizable surrealist painting ever created.

After all, whether or not you know your Braque from your Baroque, those strangely melting pocket watches are instantly recognizable. . . so much so that The Persistence of Memory is still referenced and parodied in art, literature, and popular culture, more than 80 years later.

But how did this (rather small) painting garner such widespread, global interest? What makes Dali’s imagery so different from other surrealist artists of his day, or now for that matter?

And what do those melting clocks mean?

To answer all of these questions, let’s first take a short trip back to 1931, the year that The Persistence of Memory was painted.

By 1931, Salvador Dali had already attended (and been expelled from) San Fernando Academy of Art in Madrid. He was 27, and living in a recently-purchased fishing cottage in the town of Port Lligat on the Mediterranean Sea with his future wife, Gala.

It was far removed from the center of Spain—in fact, his cottage was just 25 miles south of the French/Spanish border. But Dali had already visited Paris several times, and had begun to experiment in the fledgling movement of Surrealism.

And it was here in this strange, rocky coastline that Dali would take the seeds of what he’d learned in Paris and Madrid, and craft something new—something eminently “Dali-esque.”

Later in life, Dali often spoke about his desire to confuse the viewer’s eye with hyper-realistic imagery that conveyed impossible, dreamlike scenes. Even at this comparatively young age, though, Dali wanted to force his viewers to encounter something indescribable, undefinable, unknowable.  To make us wonder, even if just for a second—what is real?

To Dali, that questioning-and-yet-not-knowing is what Surrealism is all about. To others, however, it meant something a bit different.

Estimated value at art auction

The Persistence of Memory has never been solid at auction and was donated anonymously to the Museum of Modern Art’s collection in 1934 (where it has remained for over 80 years). Given its current owner, its importance in art history, and its cultural popularity, it is unlikely ever to be sold.

However, we can extrapolate the value of The Persistence of Memory by looking at the most expensive purchase of a Dali painting to-date, as well as sales of artwork by other modern artists.

Dali’s most expensive painting was Portrait de Paul Eluard which sold for just under 22.5 million dollars in 2011 and gives us a baseline value for The Persistence of Memory. In recent years, paintings by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Pablo Picasso have all sold for between 100 and 200 million dollars, which offers an upper range (and perhaps a better estimate) of value. As a result, it’s likely that The Persistence of Memory would sell for anywhere from 50 to 150 million dollars.

Характеристика изображения

Задумка художника

Картина “Диптих Мэрилин” состоит из пятидесяти отдельных изображений актрисы. Половина этих изображений, расположенная в левой части картины, раскрашена в яркие цвета. А вторая окрашена бледно, неравномерно. Вся она размыта и лишена какой-либо четкости. Этим Уорхол стремился показать, как культ американских звезд меняется со временем. Другие считают, что этим он выразил, какое контрастное наследие оставила после себя Монро.

Техника изготовления и особенности графики

“Диптих Мэрилин” — это первая работа, которая создана с помощью шелкотрафаретной печати. Такая техника подразумевает перенесение изображения на ткань с помощью печатной формы в мелкую сетку. Эта технология используется уже много тысяч лет, но пика популярности достигла в прошлом веке. Во многом на ее основе начала развиваться печать, которой человечество пользуется на данный момент. Это новшество, на которое пошел Уорхол, и сделало картину знаменитой.

Судьба работы

Долгое время “Диптих Мэрилин” оставался в коллекции самого великого деятеля современного искусства, Энди Уорхола. Вообще за историей полотна трудно следить, так как его слишком легко скопировать — оно не уникально по технологии создания, хоть и уникально по идее.

Потом оно долго путешествовало по миру в рамках международных выставок Уорхола. Так, работу демонстрировали в британском Ливерпуле. На данный момент оригинал, созданный лично американским творцом, хранится в Британской галерее Тейт, что в Лондоне.

Биография американского художника Энди Уорхола

Шишкин «На севере диком…» самое известное полотно гения

Жан-Мишель Баския – прорыв в искусстве XX века

Примечания[править | править код]

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