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拍品专文
Restaging the theme of the melting clock on a grand, monumental scale, Profile of Time brings one of the most entrancing inventions of Salvador Dalí into the third-dimension. First conceived in 1977, the work was cast in 1984 in an edition of eight. Melting clocks had first made their appearance in Dalí’s work in 1931, in the painting The Persistence of Memory, bought by the Museum of Modern Art in 1934. In his autobiography, the artist narrated the accidental genesis of that memorable image:
‘We had topped off our meal with a very strong Camembert, and after everyone had gone I remained for a long time seated at the table meditating on the philosophic problems of the “super-soft” which the cheese presented to my mind. I got up and went into the studio, where I lit the light in order to cast a final glance, as is my habit, at the picture I was in the midst of painting. This picture represented a landscape near Port Lligat, whose rocks were lighted by a transparent and melancholy twilight; in the foreground an olive tree with its branches cut, and without leaves. I knew that the atmosphere which I had succeeded in creating with this landscape was to serve as a setting for some idea, for some surprising image, but I did not in the least know what it was going to be. I was about to turn out the light, when instantaneously I “saw” the solution, I saw two soft watches, one of them hanging lamentably on the branch of the olive tree’ (S. Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, New York, 1942, p. 317).
Over three meters high, Profile of Time transports Dalí’s personal hallucination into the communal space of landscape. Towering above the viewer, the sculpture acts as a reminder of man’s struggle with time. Melting away, the clock takes the shape of a human profile, reminiscent of the long head appearing in Dalí’s seminal work The Great Masturbator (1929, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía), in itself a symbolic portrait of the artist. A tear slowly falls from his eye, lightly chiselled next to the tenth hour, possibly symbolising man’s existence, inexorably in thrall to the passing of time.
‘We had topped off our meal with a very strong Camembert, and after everyone had gone I remained for a long time seated at the table meditating on the philosophic problems of the “super-soft” which the cheese presented to my mind. I got up and went into the studio, where I lit the light in order to cast a final glance, as is my habit, at the picture I was in the midst of painting. This picture represented a landscape near Port Lligat, whose rocks were lighted by a transparent and melancholy twilight; in the foreground an olive tree with its branches cut, and without leaves. I knew that the atmosphere which I had succeeded in creating with this landscape was to serve as a setting for some idea, for some surprising image, but I did not in the least know what it was going to be. I was about to turn out the light, when instantaneously I “saw” the solution, I saw two soft watches, one of them hanging lamentably on the branch of the olive tree’ (S. Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, New York, 1942, p. 317).
Over three meters high, Profile of Time transports Dalí’s personal hallucination into the communal space of landscape. Towering above the viewer, the sculpture acts as a reminder of man’s struggle with time. Melting away, the clock takes the shape of a human profile, reminiscent of the long head appearing in Dalí’s seminal work The Great Masturbator (1929, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía), in itself a symbolic portrait of the artist. A tear slowly falls from his eye, lightly chiselled next to the tenth hour, possibly symbolising man’s existence, inexorably in thrall to the passing of time.