Mmmm-Masterwork

Ok. So i was supposed to comment on a surrealist masterwork. and not knowing many surrealists, i (very obviously) chose to do something based on Dali's piece " La persistencia de la memoria" (aka The Persistence of Memory, Melting Clocks, Soft Watches and Droopy Watches ). Perhaps because surrealism by nature makes people go "huh?", there was a need to put an almost-literal title to the pieces to immediately give people the idea of what the painter is trying to portray.

So what's this painting of his about then? Appears to me that from the title (and the nature of the watches illustrated in the painting, that Dali gives a literal spin to the idea that time is indeed "fluid", perhaps somewhat in reference to Einstein's Theory of Relativity. When you think about it, time in its way does "flow" in a sense. The "melted" and fluid feeling of time thus also indicates that while it is flexible, there is still a relatively fixed amount to it (like how liquids take on various shapes of their containers and yet have a fixed volume). This flexibility of time reminds me of a quote from a book i read called "Thief of Time" by Terry Pratchett. In it Pratchett speaks of the guardians of time (referred to as the History Monks) and how people have been manipulating time:

People have been messing around with time ever since they were people. Wasting it, killing it, sparing it, making it up. And they do it. People's heads were made to play with time. You watch the Procrastinators even on a quiet day. Moving time, stretching it here, compressing it there. Its a big job.

With the composition of the piture being rather empty on every side except the left (where the clocks are), it naturally brings the viewer's attention to what Dali has so strategically placed there (which obviously is the point of this painting). Having the watches / clocks set against a dark background (of what appears to be the ground), they stand out even more in the picture. And thus ends the commentary on a masterwork.