Associated with · 1931
Surrealism
The Museum of Modern Art files it under Surrealism and hung it in Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism in 1936, five years after it was painted. It is the movement's most widely reproduced painting.
PaintingSurrealism
The Persistence of Memory
Dalí painted the melting watches in 1931, on a canvas smaller than a sheet of paper. The Museum of Modern Art has had it since 1934.
- 1931
- Oil on canvas
About Salvador Dalí
What the painting shows
A bay at evening, seen from a shelf of bare ground. On the right, cliffs of yellow rock catch the last light above still water. Everything else is in shadow.
Four watches are in the picture. One hangs over the branch of a dead tree, one droops off the edge of a wooden block, one lies over a soft grey form on the ground, and one, a closed orange pocket watch, sits on the block covered in ants. Three of the four have gone limp. The fourth has not, and it is the one being eaten.
The grey form in the centre is a head, seen in profile, lying on its side with its eye shut and one long lash trailing. It has a nose, a closed eyelid and a tongue, and no skull to hold them. The same profile appears across Dalí's paintings of these years, including The Great Masturbator, painted two summers earlier.
The cliffs are not invented. The Museum of Modern Art's catalogue identifies them as the coast of Catalonia, which is where Dalí lived and painted for most of his life.
It is smaller than a sheet of paper
The canvas is 24.1 by 33 centimetres. A sheet of A4 paper is 21 by 29.7. The image is known worldwide from reproductions printed larger than the painting.
The scale matters to how it was made. At this size the ants are a few millimetres across and the watch faces are the width of a thumbnail, which is the sort of precision Dalí wanted: the technique of an academic miniature applied to an image that cannot be true.
Where the soft watches came from
Dalí's own explanation was food. MoMA's catalogue quotes him calling the limp watches "the camembert of time".
The other explanation, repeated everywhere, is that the watches illustrate Einstein's relativity. This is worth stating plainly: it appears in no statement by Dalí, in no line of MoMA's record of the painting, and in no entry of the Fundació's catalogue raisonné. The version usually cited, in which Dalí is asked directly and answers that the watches are camembert rather than relativity, circulates without a primary source attached to it.
What can be said is that the painting was made in a year when the softening of hard objects was already Dalí's working method, and that the first published explanation of it came from him and was about cheese.
The method behind it
Dalí arrived at what he called the paranoiac-critical method around 1930, the year before this painting. The idea was to induce the state in which a mind under delusion sees one thing as another, hold that state deliberately, and then paint the result with the discipline of a nineteenth-century academic.
The Persistence of Memory is the method's clearest small demonstration. Nothing in it is loosely painted. The impossible part is not the handling; it is the fact that watches behave like cloth and a face lies on the ground without a body, rendered with exactly the care a still life would get.
How it reached New York in three years
The painting was shown in Paris at the Galerie Pierre Colle between 3 and 15 June 1931, as number 23 in the catalogue. From Colle it went to the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, which through the thirties was the main American route for Surrealism, and it was exhibited there in 1932 alongside a showing at the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art in Cambridge.
In 1934 Helen Resor bought it from Levy, and in the same year it entered the Museum of Modern Art as object 162.1934 with the credit line "Given anonymously". Dalí was thirty.
Why the painting matters
The Persistence of Memory is the picture most people see when they picture Surrealism. Reproduced on posters, book covers and mugs, the soft watches long ago left the canvas and became a general sign for the dreamlike and the strange — used, often, by people who could not name the painter.
Two things carry that reach. The image is instantly legible: everyone knows what a watch is, and what it means for one to melt. And it is executed with a control that makes the impossible look observed rather than invented. The Surrealists prized dream imagery; here the movement got a picture a person could grasp in a second and not forget.
The title, and what it does not say
The title is Dalí's own, and it does not mention clocks. "The Persistence of Memory" names the one thing in the picture that does not soften — memory — holding its shape while time, in the watches, goes limp.
We leave the reading there. Anything tighter — the watches as mortality, as relativity, as the unconscious — is interpretation laid over a title Dalí left deliberately open.
The version Dalí made twenty years later
Dalí returned to the scene two decades on. [The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory](work:the-disintegration-of-the-persistence-of-memory), painted between 1952 and 1954, breaks the same bay, dead tree and watches into floating blocks and horn-like forms — the earlier dream re-seen through the atomic physics of his later "nuclear mysticism".
It hangs at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, and is the reason the 1931 canvas is sometimes called the original melting-clocks painting.
Timeline
c. 1930
Dalí worked out what he called the paranoiac-critical method, the year before the painting.
1931
Painted and signed lower left "Olive Salvador Dali 1931".
1931
Shown at the Galerie Pierre Colle, Paris, 3–15 June, as catalogue number 23.
1932
Exhibited in New York at the Julien Levy Gallery, and at the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art in Cambridge.
1934
Bought from Levy by Helen Resor; enters the Museum of Modern Art the same year, given anonymously. Object number 162.1934.
1936
Included in MoMA's Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism.
1952–54
Dalí paints a sequel, The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, now at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.
1968
Included in MoMA's Dada, Surrealism, and Their Heritage.
Frequently asked questions
Is The Persistence of Memory the “melting clocks” painting?
Yes. When people search for the “melting clocks painting” or “Dalí's clock painting,” this is the work they mean — Salvador Dalí's small 1931 canvas of soft watches draped over a dead tree branch and a wooden block. Strictly the objects are pocket watches rather than clocks, and three of the four have gone limp while the fourth, closed and swarming with ants, has not. It is his best-known painting and one of the defining images of Surrealism.
What does The Persistence of Memory mean?
Dalí never published a single meaning for it, and we will not invent one. What the painting reliably does is put decay and impossibility inside an otherwise ordinary Catalan landscape: watches that will not keep time, ants eating metal, a face without a skull, and a real coastline behind all of it. Readings that go further than that — time as relative, the clocks as mortality — are interpretations, and worth labelling as such.
Why are the clocks melting?
The explanation Dalí gave was a runny camembert. MoMA's catalogue quotes him describing the limp watches as "the camembert of time". He was also, in 1930 and 1931, systematically painting hard things soft, so the watches are the method as much as the anecdote.
Is the painting about Einstein's theory of relativity?
There is no evidence that it is. The relativity reading appears in no statement by Dalí, in MoMA's record of the painting, or in the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí's catalogue raisonné entry. It is a later interpretation that has been repeated until it sounds like provenance.
How big is The Persistence of Memory?
24.1 by 33 centimetres, smaller than a sheet of A4 paper. Almost every reproduction of it is printed larger than the painting.
Where is The Persistence of Memory?
The Museum of Modern Art in New York, which has held it since 1934. At the last check of MoMA's object record it was on view on Floor 5 in gallery 517, the Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Galleries.
What is the grey shape in the middle?
A head lying on its side in profile, with a closed eye, long lashes and a tongue, and no skull under it. The same soft profile runs through Dalí's paintings of 1929 to 1931, most conspicuously in The Great Masturbator. It is usually read as a self-portrait.
Why are there ants on one of the watches?
The fourth watch is closed, orange and swarming. Ants recur through Dalí's work of this period, including the hand they pour out of in Un Chien Andalou, and they consistently mark decay. Here they cover the one object in the picture that has not gone soft.
Who painted the melting clocks?
Salvador Dalí, the Catalan Surrealist, painted The Persistence of Memory in 1931, when he was twenty-seven. It is the work people mean by “Dalí's clock painting.”
When and where did Dalí paint it?
In 1931, on the coast of Catalonia where he lived. The yellow cliffs behind the watches are that real coastline — MoMA's catalogue identifies them as the coast of Catalonia.
What style is The Persistence of Memory?
Surrealism, and one of the movement's defining images. Dalí made it with his paranoiac-critical method: dream imagery painted with the precision of a nineteenth-century academic.
Why is The Persistence of Memory so famous?
Because it is legible and impossible at once. Everyone knows a watch, and a melting one is unforgettable — painted with a control that makes it look observed rather than invented. The soft watches became popular shorthand for Surrealism and for dreams.
Did Dalí paint a second melting-clocks picture?
Yes. The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1952–54) breaks the same scene into floating blocks in his later “nuclear mysticism” manner. It hangs at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.
What does the title “The Persistence of Memory” mean?
It is Dalí's own title, and it names the one thing in the picture that does not soften — memory — while time, in the watches, goes limp. Readings beyond that are interpretation, which we keep separate from what Dalí and the museums actually record.
What do the melting clocks symbolize?
Most often they are read as time made unreliable — clocks that cannot keep time — and, by extension, dreams, memory or mortality. Dalí himself gave no fixed symbolism; his one recorded gloss was that the soft watches were “the camembert of time.” We present the rest as interpretation rather than the artist's stated intent.
How much is The Persistence of Memory worth?
It is not for sale and has no market price. The Museum of Modern Art has owned it since 1934, and like other masterworks held by major public museums it is effectively priceless — it would never come to auction, so any dollar figure attached to it is guesswork.
In the atlas
More by Salvador Dalí
Painting · Nuclear mysticismChrist of Saint John of the CrossPainting · Nuclear mysticismCrucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus)Painting · Return to classicismGalarinaPainting · Nuclear mysticismGalatea in CreationPainting · Nuclear mysticismGalatea of the SpheresPainting · Nuclear mysticismLeda AtomicaSculpture · SurrealismLobster TelephonePainting · SurrealismPortrait of Gala with Two Chops Balanced on Her ShoulderPainting · Nuclear mysticismThe Ecumenical CouncilPainting · SurrealismThe Great MasturbatorPainting · Nuclear mysticismThe Madonna of PortlligatPainting · Nuclear mysticismThe Meditative RosePainting · Nuclear mysticismThe Sacrament of the Last SupperFilmUn Chien AndalouPainting · SurrealismMetamorphosis of NarcissusPainting · SurrealismSwans Reflecting ElephantsPainting · SurrealismThe Burning GiraffePainting · Nuclear mysticismThe Disintegration of the Persistence of MemoryPainting · Late double-image paintingThe Hallucinogenic Toreador
