The landscape is most likely Port Lligat in Catalonia, where the rocky cliffs and dramatic shores are famous. It is reminiscent of Vermeer’s best in its ‘jewel-like’ intensity. The painting can be described as a self-portrait, still life and landscape. It is almost photographic in its realism and smoothed of brushwork. 4 inches by 13 inches, is small by conventional standards. The painting seems to be a dreamscape, and not grounded in any realty whatsoever. Dali’s surrealism attempts to strip those objects, thought of as real, and through manipulation of the objects and their placement or distortions, allows the viewer of the piece to develop an empathy not normally attached to art-work. It is considered Dali’s trademark (Pinchot, et al. It has become a cultural icon and is seen on such diverse objects as post cards and dinner plates. Dali was in the vanguard of the Surrealist movement and this painting is a classic example of that genre. They suggests Dali’s homeland of Catalonia, Spain (MoMA. The realism of the background cliffs brings to the painting a sense of sanity, which the foreground dispels. There is a human-like face in the center, which is likely a self-portrait. It is this surrealist work which introduced the soft melting pocket watch. It is arguably Dali’s most famous piece of art. It was painted in 1931 and donated to MoMA in 1934. Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory is an oil-on-canvas work, 24 x 33 cm in size, and is presently in the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, in New York.

The persistence of memory