Salvador Dalí — The Persistence of Memory

Clocks are melting. They hang over a branch, a table edge, and an unidentifiable sleeping form.

Dalí turned supposedly rigid time into a soft substance. A clock measures time, but remembered time stretches, folds, and stops. Objective time and inner time move at different speeds.

The distant cliffs and sea are unnaturally clear and still. Their precision makes the melting clocks seem even more unreal. Dreams are not always vague; sometimes they are sharper than reality.

Byun Shi-Ji’s time does not melt so much as dry. Under the sun and wind of Jeju, color fades, line is worn down, and form survives as residue. Dalí’s time flows; Byun’s settles.

Neither painter truly painted clocks or landscapes. They painted the changes that time leaves upon bodies and things.

The clock has not yet fallen.