Hi-Diddle the Cat's the Fiddle
Oil on canvas
24 1/8 x 28 7/8 inches
1943
As published in: New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Volume 21: Art & Architecture
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.
Other works by this artist