Surrealist Dali’s melting clock sure to turn some heads

Surrealist master’s melting watch on display in Vancouver

A sculpture of a melting stopwatch by Salvador Dali is expected to turn heads in downtown Vancouver.

Called Dance of Time I, the bronze sculpture is more than two metres high but will seem even taller on its 60 cm plinth. Dali, who died in 1989, remains one of the 20th century’s most recognizable figures both for his distinctive surrealist paintings and sculptures, but also for persona as a celebrity artist.

The sculpture is located in the mini park known as Lot 19 at West Hastings and Hornby. The unveiling is Saturday at 2 p.m.

The sculpture will be in the park until September. The duration of about 150 days coincides with this year’s Canada 150 celebrations, said Susanna Strem, president of Chali Rosso Art Gallery, which is temporarily gifting the sculpture to the people of Vancouver.

Strem said she’s arranged for the installation of Dance of Time I because she believes in the power of art in public to affect people. She said Dali’s sculpture should be visible for several blocks along Hornby.

“If someone decides to come into the gallery, it’s for a specific reason — it’s a destination. In public, it’s part of everyday routine,” she said.

“It’s fantastic, gorgeous to be around public art. It’s important to bring art into our daily lives. People can’t pass by this sculpture without being affected by it.”

Chali Rosso describes itself as the city’s largest private gallery of original European modern masters. A portion of gallery sales will go to Arts Umbrella while the Dali sculpture is on public display.

A melting clock is probably the one image most often associated with Dali. Three melting clocks — as well as a stopwatch covered with ants — first appeared in Dali’s figurative and dreamlike painting Persistence of Memory in 1931. For surrealists, soft clocks referred to the relativity of time and space. For Dali, symbols had a very personal meaning and often related to how he thought about objects and their “hardness” or “softness.” He said he was inspired to create soft clocks after seeing melting Camembert cheese during a meal.

Strem said Dali’s melting clocks may be more relevant today than they were when they were first created more than 75 years ago.

“Today, time is even more pressing, more precious,” she said. “Time has a different meaning than it had when Dali first created melting clocks.”

Melting clocks can also refer to the inadequacy of durational measuring devices in capturing the full meaning of time.

Dance of Time I is the sixth of eight sculptures made from the same mould. Although the surface of bronze can oxidize to create a green patina, the green on Dance of Time I is from an applied enamel paint. If you look at the numbers on the face of the stopwatch, numeral 6 at the bottom is missing. Dance of Time I was cast in 1984 and is valued at $750,000. It is owned by the Stratton Institute, a non-profit organization based in Switzerland.

During his lifetime, Dali had a genius for getting media attention and presenting himself as an outrageous artist. His self-marketing included a distinctive curving moustache and deliberately bulging eyes.

Born Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali Domenech in the Catalonian region of northeastern Spain, he said that at age six he wanted to be a cook, and at age seven, Napoleon.

“My ambition has been growing steadily ever since,” he said as an adult.

Dali worked in whatever medium was the best to give expression to his surrealist images. He made a sofa in the shape of Mae West’s lips, a working telephone with a plaster lobster on the receiver, and a dream sequence for Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller Spellbound.

Dali’s performance art events were legendary. In London during a lecture, he nearly suffocated wearing an old-fashioned, ocean diving suit, which was meant to represent how he survived at the bottom of the sea of the subconscious. Gasping for air behind the soundproof glass bowl, he was rescued by a poet with a wrench.

In Paris, he showed up for a lecture at the Sorbonne with a friend’s white Rolls-Royce Phantom II stuffed with 500 kg of cauliflower. He later explained that he was attracted to cauliflower because of its “logarithmic curve.”

And in Manhattan, where he was promoting one of his books, he dressed in a golden robe and lay on a bed while his brain waves and blood pressure were recorded. Everyone who bought a book was given a copy of his vital signs.

It’s important to bring art into our daily lives. People can’t pass by this sculpture without being affected by it.