The Persistence of Memory
1931 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Dalí said the soft watches came to him from a camembert melting in the sun, and he painted them with hallucinatory precision.
★ 8.7
The Art canon
Sourced and hung.
Every work chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Metamorphosis of Narcissus
1937 · Tate Modern, London
The kneeling figure on the left is the same shape as the stone hand on the right, holding an egg with a flower coming out.
★ 6.7
Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening
1944 · Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
A bee circles a pomegranate, and in the second before waking it has become two tigers and a bayonet coming at Gala's arm.
★ 6.7
The Sacrament of the Last Supper
1955 · National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia
The room is a twelve-sided glass chamber and a torso hovers over the table. Dalí called this sort of thing nuclear mysticism.
★ 6.5
The Temptation of Saint Anthony (Dali)
1946 · Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels
Elephants on impossibly long insect legs carry obelisks and naked women across the plain while the saint holds up a makeshift cross.
★ 6.3
Swans Reflecting Elephants
1937 · Private collection
Three swans on a lake, and in the reflection the necks have become trunks and the trees have become legs.
★ 6.1
Leda Atomica
1949 · Teatro-Museo Dali, Figueres
Nothing in the picture touches anything else. Dalí built it on the physics of the atom, where matter is mostly empty space.
★ 5.6
The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory
1954 · Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida
Dalí went back to his own melting watches and broke the ground beneath them into floating bricks, for the atomic age.
★ 5.2
The Elephants
1948 · Private collection
Two elephants carrying obelisks on legs far too spindly to hold them, which is the entire effect and it works.
★ 4.8