The Nobility of Time
Salvador Dalí (1904 to 1989) · Modelled 1977, cast 1984
A soft watch droops over the branch of a dead tree, its face sagging like melting cheese, and it wears a crown. An angel sits at one side, a woman leans on the other, and the whole strange monument rises from a rough base. The melting clock is Salvador Dalí's most famous invention, first painted in 1931 in The Persistence of Memory, and in the last decades of his life he turned it into sculpture. This bronze, The Nobility of Time, was modelled in 1977 and cast in an edition, and the Museo Soumaya holds one of the casts among its large group of Dalí bronzes, which is one of the biggest collections of his sculpture anywhere.
Look at the details, because Dalí loved them. The crown on top of the watch tells us that time is a king who rules over everything; the tree is dead, because time kills; the angel and the woman are the two ways we deal with it, through spirit or through the body. The watch face has numbers and hands, but they no longer measure anything. The surface is patinated in dark green and brown, with some parts polished to gold, and from a distance the melting form seems almost liquid. Dalí said that the soft watches were inspired by a runny Camembert cheese he ate one evening.
The Soumaya's Dalí sculptures were made by the foundries that worked with the artist late in life, and they are shown on the top floor of the museum alongside the Rodin collection, so that the father of modern sculpture and the showman of Surrealism share a room. The pairing is deliberate and it makes visitors argue, which is part of the fun. The Nobility of Time matters as the clearest statement of Dalí's central obsession, the fluidity of memory and time, in three dimensions. The memorable detail is the crown, which sits on the melting watch with perfect dignity.
Did You Know? Dalí said the idea of the melting watch came to him while looking at a runny Camembert cheese after dinner.
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