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Feb. 3, 2010
By Milli Gilbaugh
NORTH LIBERTY LEADER
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| Milli Gilbaugh |
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I was reminiscing with a couple of my nieces recently and was struck by how differently we remember things from 50-odd years ago when they were young girls and I was a new bride. I had a sudden flash of insight, not about the things I was remembering, but about the title of a painting by Pablo Picasso. Probably one of his most familiar paintings, it is a weird landscape of distorted and twisted shapes- notably "soft" watches- and is from his surrealistic period. The common title, in case you haven't guessed, is "The Persistence of Memory"
I have no idea why this never occurred to me before. In all the years I studied art history and all the classes I taught about art and all the times I've studied and tried to analyze that particular painting, it never once crossed my mind that the meaning of that title was such a simple thing as a statement about the inaccuracy of memory.
If I may take a little side-trip here, it seems appropriate to mention the fact that visual art (like most other products of the human mind) seems to spring from the subconscious at least in part and, whatever its title happens to become by the time it is completed, that title is often derived from the work itself. In other words, paintings, songs, poems, stories - even scientific treatises - often more or less name themselves. To decide in advance what the title should be is limiting and confines its creator to the limitations of that concept. There are enough restrictions inherent in the process of making art without that added burden. The artist is limited by the characteristics and mechanics of his materials and equipment (the size and shape of the canvas, colors and qualities of the paint, the character of brushes, light and, of course, his own skill) without adding the boundaries inherent in a preconceived title.
You may not know that Picasso often painted with and discussed his work with fellow artist Georges Brach. Together, they pursued both popular and nascent trends in art and seem to have developed the form we know as cubism. They often went so far as to sign each others paintings which, during certain phases of their experimentations, are nearly impossible to tell apart. It seems logical to imagine the two of them discussing the finished work, pointing out heretofore unconsidered connotations and connections, arguing about its meaning and tossing around ideas for a title. I have little doubt that "The Persistence of Memory" was named after it was finished or during the last stages of completion.
It seems, now that I have come to understand it, that the title of that painting is perfectly straightforward and not at all mystical or even terribly profound. It simply points to what everybody already knows about memory - that it dims and distorts facts. No matter how much we want to believe the images and events that exist in our minds, we should always remember that, like the contorted shapes in that troubling landscape, things may not be exactly as we remember them.
I suppose there may be as many versions of an event as there were participants and witnesses at the time it occurred. We each perceive and recall things as filtered through our own unique frame of reference and store of experience. It's more than possible that, had the event taken place in a different place or at a different time, we each might have seen it as vastly different from the persistent memory.
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