When I was a Research Fellow at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, I made several trips to New York, and one of the memorable visits was to the Museum of Modern Art where I saw Van Gogh's Starry Night and Salvador Dali's Persistence of Memory. 

 

I enjoyed both these paintings, and they continue to touch me, albeit in different ways. Dali's Persistence of Memory has influenced me both intellectually and emotionally. This surrealistic painting lets you enter a dream landscape consisting of a featureless desert, a quiet ocean in the distance, and some cliffs on the right border. What is most striking about this painting are three old-fashioned pocket watches that have become soft, and drape themselves onto a branch of a barren tree, the side of a table, and over a figure in the centre of the picture. On the bottom left of the painting is another pocket watch but this is facing down, and a slew of ants swarm over the back of this watch. In the centre is a figure that for many decades I never figured out what it represented until very recently when I listened to a lecture. It described a face with an eye, eyelashes, a nose, and below is a protruding tongue. The lecturer thought that the face was a distorted self-portrait of Salvador Dali.

 

What ideas are concealed in this picture?

​

Normally we think of time as being a unidirectional entity ticking away precisely and rigidly second by second. However, the three melting watches make us think of time as being mercurial and can be bent and distorted. This reflects Einstein's theory that time slows down as one approaches the speed of light. What about the fourth watch lying face down? If the pocket watch symbolises wealth and authority, then the ants represent the wretched workers trying to scrounge as much as they can from the affluent.

 

The illogicality of the picture can be seen where a tree grows out of a table, the melting watches, the swarming ants, and the distorted human lying in the centre, are all consistent with a bizarre dreamscape. This is reminiscent of Sigmund Freud and his attempts to unravel the hidden meanings of dreams.

 

Persistence of Memory is my favourite Dali painting, because it expresses many original ideas, and because it has embedded within its images so many philosophical concepts. It is a masterpiece that makes you think deeply.

 

It continues to inspire countless imitations. Here are some of them: