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Summary Of The Secret Life Of Salvador Dali

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One of Dali’s most recognizable works is with the melting clocks in his, The Persistence of Memory, which represents a vision of his view from his home and studio in Port Lligat Bay on the Costa Brava in Catalonia Spain. This painting relates to Albert Einstein's theory of relativity which states that time is relative or not fixed. The watches were symbolism of this theory and the passing of time. Dalis idea for this painting came to him in a dream he had about cheese that formed into limp flimsy watches. However, in Dali’s History of Surrealist Painting, he says the watches symbolize impotence and the hands on the watches are the medical-scientific signs for male. Dali frequently used male symbols of impotence. In the painting Secret Life of Salvador Dali, he presents his nervousness about impotence. The painting depicts phallic symbols of tall erect trees but his small barren dead trees show are symbols of impotence. The soft tongue in the middle of the painting is flaccid like the watches and is a Freudian symbol of the penis. Freud believed menstrual periodicity transforms time into a feminine symbol. Therefore, the fourth watch in Dali’s painting, which is closed, is a feminine symbol. The watch in the foreground is red, the middle-ground watch is orange, and the background watch is gray representing the past, present and future in accordance with Einstein’s theory of everything, changing time and space. All three watches point to the top center of the painting which

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