Art History Write Short Post 300 words (150 for each part)

Art History Write Short Post 300 words (150 for each part)

1. Write a personal reflection on the painting Salvador Dalí THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY. This should be based on your own observations, thoughts, feelings. Please use this portion of the discussion to discuss the formal elements and subject matter.

2. Discuss the cultural changes happening during the period covered in the reading. Compare that culture to contemporary American culture. This should be a personal reflection of the comparison of cultures from your perspective/experience, 
not a summary of the text.


You may use the internet to research.

From the textbook:

Among the writers and artists around Breton was the Spanish

painter and printmaker Salvador Dalí (1904–1989). Dalí contributed

the “paranoid-critical method” to Surrealist practice. In this

approach, sane artists cultivate the ability of the paranoid to misread

ordinary appearances in order to free themselves from the shackles

of conventional thought. Dalí demonstrated his method in THE

PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY (FIG. 19–28) by placing limp timepieces

in a very realistic view of the Bay of Rosas near his birthplace

in Catalunya.

According to Dalí, the idea of the soft watches came to him one

evening after dinner while he was meditating on a plate of ripe Camembert

cheese. One of the limp watches drapes over an amoeba-like

human head, its shape inspired by a large rock on the coast. This

head, which Dalí identified as a self-portrait, appeared in several

paintings and, in combination with the limp watches, may express

the anxiety Dalí felt concerning his own sexuality. Another image

of anxiety in the work is the ant-covered watchcase at the lower

left, inspired by Dalí’s childhood memories of seeing dead animals

swarming with ants. The absurd yet compelling image of ants feeding

on a metallic watch typifies the Surrealist interest in unexpected

juxtapositions of disparate realities. Dalí’s choice of a meticulously

descriptive style makes his irrational world seem more convincing,

thus more unsettling.