What do the melting clocks mean in Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory?
Completed in 1931, the "melting clocks" in Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory quickly became a worldwide sensation.
In the poetry of Breton, Paul Éluard, Pierre Reverdy, and others, Surrealism manifested itself in a juxtaposition of words that was startling because it was determined not by logical but by psychological—that is, unconscious—thought processes.
Surrealism’s major achievements, however, were in the field of painting. Surrealist painting was influenced not only by Dadaism but also by the fantastic and grotesque images of such earlier painters as Hieronymus Bosch and Francisco Goya and of closer contemporaries such as Odilon Redon, Giorgio de Chirico, and Marc Chagall.
The practice of Surrealist art strongly emphasized methodological research and experimentation, stressing the work of art as a means for prompting personal psychic investigation and revelation. Breton, however, demanded firm doctrinal allegiance.
Thus, although the Surrealists held a group show in Paris in 1925, the history of the movement is full of expulsions, defections, and personal attacks.