feelings about how time was just slipping away from him, and no matter how hard he tried, he wouldnt be able to grasp it. Also, some of the clocks are placed on certain objects, be it a tree, or a box. I think that it represents how he perceives the notion of time to be. As in the fact that time can not be harnessed by any one, individual being, but actually controls everything in the universe. In the Persistence of Memory, one is on the tree, and it is showing that no matter what nature throws at time, it will persist. In the Disintegration of Memory, floating spikes are tying to puncture it. I think he is trying to express the fact that if nature decides to change the weather, and therefore killing the tree, time does not care. It will still go on. It might be warped and out of control, but it is still constant.Also, Salvador Dali tends to use insects a lot in his work. A few years ago, at the Dali museum in Tampa, I learned that when he was young the other children used to torment him by throwing bugs, especially huge grasshoppers at him. These became symbols of horror in his paintings. The insects depicted his agony and torment, and when he put them in his paintings, it was as if was letting go of some of the pain. They would crawl around infesting and projecting their evil onto everything they came in contact with. As in Persistence, there were tons of ants on top of a clock. I feel that he is once again projecting the message that even though time can be corrupt and vile, that it goes on. As for his pain and constant fear of the insects, they always kept coming back, and there was always more pain to release. In Persistence as well as other paintings, such as Sleep and Le Grand Masterbateur he seems to like to use strange, disorientated faces with gigantic eyes. In many of them, the eye (or eyes) are closed. I feel this is his way of expressing that old saying, the eyes are the windows of the soul. And because of...
