The painter Edith London

Edith London

Hilde Bial-Neurath

The Bial-Neurath Family

The following aphoristic observations reflect some of Edith London’s artistic aims.

In retrospect I see consistency in my life—a kind of order which has imposed itself upon me and my work—independently of my will and doing.

Events—far, far back as well as recent ones—seem to touch one another; they span distances of time and space, gradually melt and produce a rhythm which becomes something quite individual. The result is a melody which assumes individuality and now winds itself peacefully through my life.

Yes, I have music in mind where I use the word melody. Just at this point I am painting as well as drawing. My pen and ink drawings go in the same direction as my paintings—they are subject to the same guiding principles. The one important principle is my attempt to achieve in gentle language forms which have strength, forms which I place one against the other, forms which thereby create powerful tensions.

Marine Still Life, painting by Edith London

Marine Still Life, 1953, oil on canvas

I have often pondered the role played by Chance. While at work, Chance will enter upon the scene and, before I know it, lifeless substance, that is the material with which I am working, assume vital force.

If I may speak of progress in my work, I could well imagine that this is a result of my yielding to accidents more than ever before. One must give Chance every opportunity to have its say in what one creates. At the same time my work assumes, increasingly, the character of being automatic—automatic, and yet relentlessly subjected to my critique. Of course, Chance and Accident should never be allowed to govern your work. They are means to an end. In German you use the word Zufall which corresponds to English chance/accident. The nice thing about the word Zufall is that literally it signifies something that ‘falls to one’.

Pensive, charcoal sketch by Edith London

Pensive, 1980, graphite on paper

Hand in hand with color (which no longer was a reproduction of color observed when studying natural objects), the entire scale of naturalistic rendering of what the eye observed yielded to a highly personal, poetic language. Rather than echo coloristic impressions, the color-areas were treated in their relationship to one another. This attuning of interdependent areas of color in terms of well-tempered tonal values (you see how I don’t seem to be able to escape musical terminology!) is what I mean when I speak of modulation which in German is Abstimmung.

Subtle Variation, painting by Edith London

Subtle Variation, 1987, oil on canvas

An example of ideal modulation might be a painting with a basic color—say blue—which works with nothing but modulations of blue. This I achieve by making use of very thin glazes. The result of modulation is a spatial impression. This space I am speaking of is in no manner concerned with space as the Renaissance had created it by means of illusion and by means of mathematical construction. It is a purely painterly space—and when I say ‘painterly’ I mean of course malerisch, that difficult and indispensable German word.

This is what I have learned from Matisse: that color and form can be created independently of the object. He demonstrated to us that is was possible to bring both color and form to life without aiming at the representational.

 

I have often wondered about the reaction of Matisse who, when he attended a very important exhibition of another artist’s work, was heard to say: “Actually, my own compositions are of much greater interest to me.”

The artist as a snob? I doubt that. I believe that I know what he meant: it is, somehow, inescapable that you live with that part of your own work which has not as yet been born—those silent creations-to-be which are the companions of your waking hours, and probably your sleeping hours, too. And this brings me full circle back to human contacts. How difficult in view of this absorption into one’s work to achieve a sane basis for the equally strong and equally legitimate claims of friendship. After all, friendship as something which both partners have to cultivate is a form of creativity in its own right. Against this, however, stands the all-too-common inability of modern man to tolerate his own existence. People have a way of escaping from themselves into what I would call facile conviviality. The majority of mankind is forever in quest of some kind of outer frame that will contain and support the individual—the well-known need for the illusion (for it is nothing but an illusion) that life is a matter of close contacts with the group, of Tuchfühlung.

Night Sounds, mixed media by Edith London

Night Sounds, 1990, mixed media collage

What can I say about creativity? I often ask myself why I should trouble myself so much with my artistic ideas. They can prosper only in solitude. I can deeply sympathize with all those creatures who in their artistic work come to grief because they feel that their human relationships are thereby endangered. In this respect an artist doesn’t differ much from a scientist. How often have a discussed this point with Fritz—the need for a modicum of time for one’s own work. But as a social being one must, of course, at all times endeavor to keep things in some kind of equilibrium. You cannot live and create without the warmth of human relationships. Creativity has to be nourished in an unlimited variety of ways. It wants to be protected; it wants to be guarded. It is not something you can turn on and off like a faucet.

You remember Goethe’s saying “Des eigentlich Schöpferischen ist niemand Herr, und wir müssen es immer nur gewähren lassen.“ „No one is fully in control of his own creativity. All we can do is to give it full rein.”

Late Flowering, painting by Edith London

Late Flowering, 1990, oil on canvas

Hilde Bial-Neurath

The Bial-Neurath Family

Share