It is quite impossible to discuss Dalis contribution to Western art without understanding the essence of the Surrealist art movement, which was gaining particular popularity among European intellectuals, in the first part of the 20th century. This movement is best defined as such that is being concerned with artists strive to discover the mechanics of peoples subconsciousness, by turning it into the subject of ones artistic inspiration. In his article Surrealism, Jarrett Leplin provides us with a better understanding as to how Surrealists perceive surrounding reality: Surrealism makes no commitment as to the actual deep structure of the world. It allows that the world has a deep structure, but declines to represent it (Leplin 987, p. 520). When we take a closer look at Dalis most famous works, such as The Persistence of Memory, the validity of this suggestion becomes obvious.
This particular Dali painting depicts three pocket watches that appear to be melting, with a deep bluish horizon serving as the paintings background (the presence of far away prospective within paintings is one of most memorable trademarks of Dalis artistic style). Upon being exposed to this work for the first time, Dalis wife Gala became impressed to such an extent that she had told her husband that the scene portrayed in The Persistence of Memory would forever remain engraved in her mind, due to the fact that, even though the sight of soft watches does not make much of a logical sense, it nevertheless appeals to spectators subconscious anxieties. It is only when we resort to the theory of psychoanalysis that the phenomenological subtleties of The Persistence of Memory become apparent throughout their lives, people are being encouraged to th
ink of the flow of time as an objective category, which is being fixed in the three-dimensional continuum. However, since they subconsciously associate the flow of time with the eventual prospect of dying, peoples deep-seated anxieties, in regards to timely continuity, derive out of their irrational strive to resist such flow and even to reverse it backward.
Thus, The Persistence of Memory should be discussed as an artistic sublimation of peoples subconscious desire to become masters of their own destiny by bending time according to their wishes soft watches in this Dalis work subtly imply the relativistic subtleties of time. Therefore, it will not be an exaggeration, on our part, to suggest that The Persistence of Memory is nothing but an artistic representation of Einsteins theory of relativity, which refers to time as something that can be manipulated with in the same way we manipulate with physical matter. While referring to this Dalis famous painting in his book Crucified Mind: Rafael Alberti and the Surrealist Ethos in Spain, Robert Havard states: Dalís genius lies in having eliminated the appearances of the right angle, the logic, the aestheticism that lock reality into cages and returning to it the organic, malleable, limp forms on which a true network of correspondences can be established (Havard 200, p. 84). We can only agree with such suggestion in The Persistence of Memory, Dali was able to provide viewers with the glimpse into alternative reality. And the reason he was able to do it, is because, throughout his life, Dali remained being affected by such a reality in his own unique way. In its turn, this explains the artists existential eccentricity, which became an integral part of his individuality.