The Persistence of Memory (1931) is one of the iconic and recognizable paintings of Surrealism. Often referenced in widespread tradition, the small canvas (24x33 cm) is generally often known as "Melting Clocks", "The Smooth Watches" and "The Melting Watches". The painting depicts a dreamworld wherein frequent objects are deformed and displayed in a bizarre and irrational approach: watches, stable and laborious objects look like inexplicably limp and melting within the desolate landscape. Dalí paints his fantastical vision in a meticulous and reasonable method: he effortlessly integrates the real and the imaginary so as "to systemize confusion and thus to assist discredit completely the world of reality". When requested about the limp watches, the artist in contrast their softness to overripe cheese saying that they show "the camembert of time". The thought of rot and MemoryWave Community decay is most evident in the gold watch on the left, which is swarmed by ants. Ants, a typical motif in Dalí’s artwork are usually linked to decay and death.

He set the scene in a desolate panorama that was seemingly impressed by the landscape of his homeland, the Catalan coast. The affect of the Catalan landscape also appears in another ingredient of the painting: the artist inserts himself into the scene in the form of a wierd fleshy creature in the center of the painting. According to Dalí, the self-portrait was primarily based on a rock formation at Cap de Creus in northeast Catalonia. Some students have also drawn a parallel between the self-portrait and a bit of Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights (1510-1515) - on the suitable side of the left panel Bosch depicts rocks, bushes, and small animals that resemble Dalí’s profile with the distinguished nose and lengthy eyelashes. The melting watch, one of Dalí’s most powerful and potent motifs, continued to play an necessary position in his art. Two decades after The Persistence of Memory, Dalí recreated his famous work in the painting The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1952-1954). Because the title suggests, the painting exhibits the disintegration of the world depicted in the original painting, reflecting a world modified by the nuclear age.

The painting showed Dalí’s growing curiosity in quantum physics: he added rectangular blocks that symbolize "the atomic power source" and missile-like objects that reference the atomic bomb. The Persistence of Memory was first shown in 1932 on the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. In 1934, the painting was anonymously donated to the Museum of Trendy Artwork in New York, where it stays until this day. The Persistence of Memory (Spanish: La persistencia de la memoria) is a 1931 painting by artist Salvador MemoryWave Community Dalí, and certainly one of his most recognizable works. First proven at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1932, since 1934 the painting has been in the collection of the Museum of Trendy Artwork (MoMA) in New York Metropolis, which obtained it from an anonymous donor. It's widely recognized and regularly referenced in popular tradition, and generally referred to by extra descriptive (though incorrect) titles, akin to "Melting Clocks", "The Gentle Watches" or "The Melting Watches".

The well-known surrealist piece launched the image of the soft melting pocket watch. It epitomizes Dalí's idea of "softness" and "hardness", which was central to his thinking at the time. As Daybreak Adès wrote, "The gentle watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of area and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a hard and fast cosmic order". This interpretation suggests that Dalí was incorporating an understanding of the world launched by Albert Einstein's idea of particular relativity. Asked by Ilya Prigogine whether or not this was the truth is the case, Dalí replied that the tender watches weren't inspired by the idea of relativity, but by the surrealist perception of a Camembert melting within the sun. It is feasible to recognize a human determine in the middle of the composition, in the strange "monster" (with a whole lot of texture close to its face, and lots of contrast and tone in the picture) that Dalí utilized in several contemporary items to characterize himself - the summary kind turning into one thing of a self-portrait, reappearing continuously in his work.