The Persistance of Memory, Salvador Dali, 1931, owned by MOMA NYC
There is a long tradition of writers being inspired by visual art and vice versa. I am intrigued by the theme of memory and I really like this piece of Dali’s surrealist art. The original oil lives in the New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. I have seen the original and owned a print that travelled with me for many years as I sojourned from the USA to England and then Ireland.
I wrote a poem today and afterwards I realised that it fit with this, my favourite Dali. (The other is the dream sequence he created for Alfred Hitchcock’s film Spellbound.) Today’s meditation on time and timelessness. This is the kind of stuff we talk about in our house…or on car journeys to collect parcels.
Savador Dali’s Stopwatch
when they say
pastpresentfuture
collide
or that
time stops
memory
moment
and hope
are all one
the ticking stops
the clockwork
mechanism
is not broken
just
irrelevant
they do not lie
I must admit I never “got” this painting but your poem just explained perfectly both the painting and the experience I have had of time not being linear & sequential but elastic, circular and irrelevant.
I know they call him surrealist, but I see Dali as metaphysical. Even though he may not have consciously been driven by that awareness. He had it to express visually in this painting. A favourite from the 20th century…along with Georgia O’Keefe and Frida Kahlo.
I love Georgia O’Keefe. One strong woman. Frida Kahlo is growing on me as I learn more about her life.