Naomi Ben-Shahar on Helène Aylon: The “Elusive Silver” Paintings
Helène Aylon, Softer Than Words, 1970, Acrylic on aluminum and Plexiglas, 28 x 37 inches
© Estate of Helène Aylon, Courtesy Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects
During the pandemic, I lived with my daughter and our dog in a tiny cottage on a pond by a bay beach. Each morning I woke up to watch the sunrise on the pond. I surveyed the light changing throughout the day in my garage studio and through our kitchen windows, and as the sun set during our evening beach walks. Noticing and absorbing the interchange between light and water became a subject of my daily ritual, as I yearned to decipher the magnificence of what I was witnessing around me. Maybe it was my imagination, induced by isolation and uncertain reality, but the light and water seemed increasingly to be engaging in a profound conversation that shifted variably and frequently. Light was emitting information that the water was recording and remembering and reflecting it back. Sometimes the interaction was dramatic, even operatic: the light sparkled, mirroring blindingly off the water, or glowing fiercely in the sky. On other days the relationship revealed a subtle and quiet beauty.
These profound experiences come to mind when I think of Helène Aylon's “Elusive Silver” series of early paintings from 1969-1973. Aylon, who was born in 1931 into an orthodox Jewish family, and died of COVID during the nascent period of the pandemic in 2020, was a feminist, an environmental activist, and a deeply spiritual artist. Throughout her career she pursued sublime aspects of feminism and environmentalism via a profoundly contemplative lens. Although I focus on her early work in this text, it is important to acknowledge her later work as well: in the late 1970s, she collaborated with contemporary women artists (including Nancy Spero and Hannah Wilke) whom she referred to as her “midwives,” on a series of paintings she titled “Breakings,”[1] each created by a performative painterly burst that physically evoked the process of childbirth[2]. Her ecofeminist project, Earth Ambulance (1982), was an anti-nuclear ritual performed by driving a truck disguised as an ambulance, collecting earth from nuclear bases across the United States and filling it into pillowcases as a healing process. The G-d Project (1990-2010's) represented Judaism through the lens of feminism, by eschewing traditional interpretations from the Hebrew Bible that have been used to support patriarchal hegemony.
"I instinctively resented men being masters, making masterpieces," she said about making her glowingly mesmerizing “Elusive Silver” series.[3] This led her to search for "a mystical female presence[4]" and refrain from strict processes of mark making. (“I didn’t want to be hammered in by exactitudes.[5]”)
Helène Aylon, Invisible Reflections, 1971, Acrylic on aluminum and Plexiglas, 36 x 36 inches
© Estate of Helène Aylon, Courtesy Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects
In this series, Aylon experimented with the idea of creating paintings that revealed themselves slowly, while being changeable and elusive like the sky, ethereal like breath. In Hebrew, the words breath ("neshima”) and soul ("neshama”) are related and come from the same root. These paintings allude to a misty, breath-like, tiding and ebbing presence. They're reminiscent of the pull of the silvery moon on shifting sands scattered by the sea. And they are lit from within: reflective, spatial, mystical.
To achieve this effect, Aylon painted and sprayed acrylic paint on aluminum boards, then pressed them against sheets of plexiglass, holding them together by silver frames. The result seems to fuse several depths together into a shimmery layer of silver-filled light. The paintings change as seen at different times of day or under different lighting conditions.
* * *
In her 1991 published book titled Writings, the artist Agnes Martin, whom Aylon revered, reflects about her own paintings and poetry:
"This poem, like the paintings, is not really about nature. It is not what is seen. It is what is known forever in the mind.[6] "
And two pages later, Martin writes these lines:
"The ocean is deathless
The islands rise and die
Quietly come, quietly go
A silent swaying breath
I wish the idea of time would drain out of my cells and leave me quiet even on this shore.[7]"
Helène Aylon, Still Life, 1971, Acrylic on aluminum and Plexiglas, 36 x 36 inches
© Estate of Helène Aylon, Courtesy Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects
Aylon's incredible, meditative silver paintings drain the idea of time out of our cells and leave us in a quiet contemplative state, like no other art I've ever experienced. Nothing is linear, there are no controlled brushstrokes, and no heroic striving. Just a quiet, vulnerable, silky silver liquid energy, and shimmery light, endlessly expanding.
[1] For example, see the 1979 iteration at White Columns: https://whitecolumns.org/exhibitions/helene-aylon-formations-breaking-april-7-10-1979/
[2] See here: https://www.sfmoma.org/watch/helene-aylon-midwifes-an-image/
[3] The Brooklyn Rail, Helène Aylon with Monika Fabijanska, Critic's Page, In Conversation. March 2019.
[4] Ibid
[5] Ibid
[6] Martin, Agnes, Writings. Germany: Cantz Verlag, p. 15
[7] Ibid, p. 17
Naomi Ben-Shahar, Femina Luminous, 2023, Handmade weave (kid silk, cotton, wool, alpaca and kid mohair on a custom loom), and c-print mounted on aluminum, 6'2" x 8' x 2"
Naomi Ben-Shahar is an artist and curator based in New York. She is interested in connectivity and the material interplay between photography and craft; her work poses questions about technology and intimacy, environmentalism, and feminist identity. She works with photography, weaving, painting, and video. Her work is currently on view in “Cosmologies, Movements, and Proclamations for Peace,” a two person show with Miriam Parker, at the Yeh Art Gallery at St. John’s University in New York, January 25-March 23, 2024.
