Of all the memorably twisted image created by Dali, perhaps the most famous is that of the melting watch. Dali returned to this motif repeatedly, sometimes painting (as in The Persistence of Memory, one of his signature works) an entire field of melting watches.

The painting scene on this page bears he full title of Soft Watch at the Moment of First Explosion, although it is also known under the shorter titles of Clock Explosion or, simply, Melting Watch. Part of the reason Dali's melting watches stick in our memory is that they take a familiar, day-to-day image of solidity and stability (after all, what could be more regular and reliable than time itself?) and twist it. Time has lost form; our tool for measuring time has melted.