Hi-Diddle the Cat’s the Fiddle

Frank London specialized in the genre of the still life, using tabletops to support recognizable objects. But most of his work achieves a more surreal quality than traditional still lifes because of the strange accumulation of disparate objects. His bizarre subject matter is usually combined with a somber palette.

For his title London altered the words of the English nursery rhyme "Hey Diddle Diddle", in which, of course, a cow jumps over the moon, and a little dog laughs. In the foreground, a cat plays the fiddle amidst an array of mixed objects that include broken buildings, pears, and crisscrossing wires. It’s a topsy-turvy world and may refer, like several other of London’s paintings, to the destruction being wrought by Adolph Hitler.