The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory

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The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory

1954

by Salvador Dalí

Original Dimensions: 10 x 13 inch

In the Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory from 1954, Dalí disintegrated the scene from his popular 1931 painting The Persistence of Memory, located in New York's Museum of Modern Art. This disintegration is an acknowledgment of the developments of modern science.

The disquieting landscape of his earlier work has here been shattered by the effects of the atomic bomb. All of the elements in the painting are separating from each other.

The rectangular blocks in the foreground and the rhinoceros horns floating through space metaphorically suggest that the world is formed of atomic particles that are constantly in motion.

Forms disintegrating as a result of the bomb populate the barren landscape. The soft skin of the face to the right is fluid, and the soft watch from the 1931 canvas is not just draped over a branch in the dead olive tree, it is ripping apart.

By locating this work in the barren region of the Bay of Cullero, Dalí revealed that the atomic bomb has disturbed even the serenity of the artist's isolated Port Lligat.

Yet in spite of this painting's bleak implications, Dalí presents the atomic disintegration in a harmonious pattern, indicating the persistence of an underlying order in nature.