In 1920 M. Cheremnikh changed the striking of the Moscow Kremlin chimes. The bells were chiming a new national anthem instead of the old Russian song. This is the symbol of the epoch.

"Has the mortal seen the Time? Heard its silent step?"- these are the words of a poet.

On a picture "Don't waste time!" by M. Slatkovsky in the "Khimia and Zhizn" ("Chemistry and Life") magazine we see a run down alarm-clock in a glass can. This is a symbol of stagnation (Brezhnev's epoch). By the way during those days (70s, early 80s) philosophical caricature art was in full swing.

Time belongs to philosophy, it is abstract, there is nothing funny about it. But still time belongs to our everyday life. There are a lot of caricatures picturing clocks - a symbol of time. A funny alarm-clock strikes a sleepyhead; an anxious lover puts a clock on to make his girl-friend come sooner. "Would you set a clock for the year 2000"(R. G d'la Surn). Time is an ample subject for caricaturists. Ancient people thought time was stagnant. There were sun, moon, and water dials. Later time began to move though there were no precision instruments for time measuring. In the XIIth century when the big towns were booming watch was invented."Where are you flying?"- Time was asked. - "Hurry to become eternal"- It answered. In old times watches were very complicated and ingenious, like the musical water clock which was named "devil's vessel" and was presented by Garun al Rashid to Charles the Great. "Time - a passing of life, space in existence" (Dahl dictionary). To be up-to-date means to be a pendulum. A pendulum clock was invented in 1657. A cuckoo clock appeared in 1830s. They were pictured by many caricaturists. (Y. Fedorov. "Conference cuckoo", "Krokodil" magazine, 1965). Time went on faster, and finally the great A. Einstein deduced a formula-a joke which proved that time may slow down its pace and vice versa. Perhaps he burst into laughter when he proved that. The abstract time could be expressed only by distinguished extraordinary artists -

R. Magritte, G. Gurmelin, and S. Dali. On S. Dali's picture "The Persistence of Memory" the damaged, smashed, and cracked clock faces lay on the sea shore.

In old times some clocks had a shape of a skull or even of a human being symbolizing the connection between time and a human life. One statue in the museum of Vladimir is "Clock and Time". The clocks in Paris show how much time is left in the XXth century. "Who says that we show not the right time? No, we are fast. We show the way to the future" (K. Chapek)