The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí was damned if he would do as everyone else was doing.

The rest were laughing at the old painting conventions. They had taken to scrawling guitars and newspapers and lop-sided things of all kinds as childishly as they could and smearing them with primitive colors. Well, let them. He, Dalí, would paint like a master in the old classical way and perfect it even further.

The rest were going abstract? Good for them. He would go so concrete, so realistic, his stuff would look like a photo.

The world was raving about spontaneity and brush strokes?

He would paint with soft marten hairs and smooth out his colors with fan brushes. No brush strokes and no alla prima look: he would apply his colors in careful transparent layers, just like Van Eyck and Vermeer.

Dreams would be his subject. Things aren’t always foggy in dreams: sometimes they are hyper-real. What happens is that they change into other things or appear in odd places or get mixed with other things. Dalí put these mysterious hybrids into his paintings, like telling a dream. This one he said he had after seeing some Camembert cheese melt.