What is The Persistence of Memory about?

‘The Persistence of Memory’ (1931) is Salvador Dali’s most famous painting, featuring melting watches draped across a barren landscape. Dali described the soft watches as inspired by melting Camembert cheese, but their meaning extends deeper. The painting explores the fluidity and subjective nature of time-how time feels different in dreams, memory, and altered states versus the rigid measurement of clocks. The dead tree, crawling ants, and fleshy creature (a distorted self-portrait) suggest decay and mortality. The precise, hard landscape contrasts with the soft, melting forms, creating uncanny tension. Created using Dali’s paranoiac-critical method, the painting visualizes how the unconscious experiences time differently than waking consciousness. It remains an icon of Surrealism housed at MoMA.