The depression of memory

What is a clock looks like? Most simple clocks are round and stable. However, Salvador Dali’s painting, The Persistence of Memory, the clocks seemed different. Has anyone ever see a melting? The clocks in the painting are melting, which seemed really inanimate and forceless. Then, for the scene part, the cliff and the seaside seemed really hopeless that nothing else is there and the colors seem so dark. In the painting The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dali expresses feelings of sadness and depression in the contrast between the light blue sky and the dark soil and the melting clocks.

First of all, about the melting clocks, he was the first person to show people a kind of clock like that. Clocks, in people’s minds, are always serious things because they are related to time. Nobody could really imagine these soft, liquid like and unstable things are clocks at that time. All the clocks were showing the same time in the painting and they seemed different, but they were still melting. Some of the clocks are colorless and clear and some of them are having dark colors, they are different type of clocks but all melting. Thus, it showed that the depression of memory always last a long time whatever where people were and what time that was. Also, it could imply that they were clocks from different places, and all the clock owners are thinking of this place together.

On the other hand, by looking at the background scene of the painting, the cliff that in the right part of the painting also showed a feeling of depression. The yellow brown cliff seemed so high, and under the cliff, it’s the deep sea. People cannot even see the end place of the sea. That made people feeling that they are so small and so dangerous to stay in the nature. It still gave people a great scene that showed hopelessness. Then, about the contrast between the light blue sky and sea and the dark seaside, the sky and the sea seemed more hopeful. However, people at that time can never reach that. There are no people in the whole painting, but a dead tree. The tree in the painting isn’t so tall and also cannot touch the hope. It’s near the sea but still dead, and it could not survive still. They could only stay at the seaside, and have wishes for hope but live in that despair forever.

Admittedly, according to the background information, the painter Salvador Dali was really shown his long to his hometown. It was a painting that had the same scene with his hometown. Then, he added these melting clocks, to imply his wish to make the time last forever and also imply his despair that he could never get back home (MoMA). The painting was a real classic that if people see that, they will never forget that. People would always see that melting clocks anywhere in their life and always wish the memory could last forever. Even though, the memory always gives people more despair, these depressive memories are always remembered.

"MoMA Learning." MoMA. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Sept. 2014.