During the brightest day, a shadow will be casted through the objects and individuals that people will not notice nor seem to care about. It's just a shadow, after all... Eventually when the objects and people disperse from the light, the shadow will vanish and it will be then when people become curious about its significance. This short metaphor is symbolic of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo's life between birth through marriage and death. The shadow is Frida. It hiding behind objects/people represents her hiding behind her famous artistic husband, Diego Rivera and when she passed away (shadow fading away) is when her work began getting noticed leading to her popularity.
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Frida Kahlo, Self Portrait with Monkey, 1938
The leaves in the background and uses of
natural coloring relates to the
Mexican heritage. |
Born in Coyoacán, Mexico, 1907, Frida Kahlo de Rivera (de Rivera is after her marriage) was born to a father and mother of a Jewish and Spanish decent, but clearly focused only on the Spanish as noticed throughout her self portraits. Roughly around the age of 18, Frida suffered a devastating accident involving a trolly and bus that almost took her life away with a pole being impaled in her body. She survived and through the process of her recovery is when is she began drawing. Originally her art was how she viewed herself from the accident and then evolved into a more artistic view of herself. Years later, Diego Rivera, a famous artist noticed her work, motivated her artistic ability, and eventually they got married. Although they had an off and on relationship/marriage and her being bisexual, she had deep, unconditional love for him. It was right before her death in 1954 that people began noticing her work and it contributing to future feminist movement, inspirations, etc.
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Frida Kahlo, My Birth, 1932
Frida's depiction of how her mother gave birth to her |
In the 20th century, at a young age, she lived during the Mexican Revolution in 1910, which probably helped made Kahlo so strong and created her own will in her art work. When her and Diego moved to the United States she lived through the time where the 19th amendment was ratified, therefore granting the right of allowing women to vote. Yes, men where still superior and women were inferior, but it gradually began to change with the Frida being one of the contributors. Take her unibrow for example: many people would consider it unfeminine, but to her, she does it to represent that she is different, that she does not follow the male gaze with their preferences. She can be defined as reckless, doing what she pleases such as going to bars, engaging in sexual relations with the opposite gender, clearly abiding to her own standards. Julio, an author who wrote in the Feminist Art Archive for the University of Washington wrote "These acts were all seen as rebellious behavior back in the early 1900's, but after analyzing these acts with modern feminist perspective we can see them as unconventional/revolutionary feminist acts of her time," (1).
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Frida Kahlo, Henry Ford's Hospital, 1932
Frida Kahlo on a hospital bed with the city in the background. |
Despite Kahlo only having one form of a medium which is painting, she is highly skilled in this category which allows her to sharpen her artistic abilities having only one focus. Take a look a her photo Ford's Hospital, 1932 [shown on the left]. Frida draws herself on a hospital bed with items attached to her via a string. Attached is a dead flower, a remodeled pelvis, a snail, an x-ray, some technological contraption, and lastly a fetus representing the 2nd miscarriage Frida had. Despite the use of the city background, she does not like the city life, usually prefers the scenery from her home in Mexico. It is easy to see the resemblance of the of some of the items such as the fetus, the pelvis, and flower, but for an item as the snail is a little unknown. Pirkko Siltala in The Life of the Body in the Pictures and Writings of Frida Kahlo, analyzes the uses of the items by quoting Kahlo. He writes "The snail, Frida explained, referred to the slow miscarriage, which like a snail was 'soft, covered and the same time opened,'" (147). It is with the quote that you can then fully understand the concept of how all the items in Frida's photo synthesize into one. It all reveals her inner thoughts, how she is different from other female artists which is why she is well known. Whitney Chadwick, author of Women, Art, and Society, also states "The duality of Kahlo's life... invests her painting with a haunting complexity and a narrative quality disturbing in its ambiguity," (313). Chadwick's statement summarizes the art that Frida creates. It is always unknown, yet it always holds a deeper meaning than usual that relates to her life in various ways.
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Frida Kahlo, The Wounded Table, 1940
A form of a self portrait that was created when the divorce between Diego
and her was finalized. You can see the type of emotion and message she is
trying to convey: a broken family. |
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Frida Kahlo, My Grandparent, My Parents, and I, 1936
Frida's depiction of her family tree despite showing Mexican
Heritage in the background. This is one of the photos that were
included in her first exhibition. |
Unfortunately for Frida, her work was becoming known around the time of her death. Around 1938-40, Frida had her first art exhibition held in SoHo, New York, where roughly 12 of her paintings got sold, which included
Henry Ford's Hospital and even
My Birth. Her work was used for the feminist movement that began around early 1970s and in the 1980s, a book was written about her by Hayden Herrera called
A Biography of Frida Kahlo. In 2002, actress Salma Hayek starred in a film called
Frida, a movie created to show the life of Frida Kahlo and one that she enjoyed playing in. Kahlo left a legacy that helped continue the feminist movement and led to be one of the most well known artists that created an impact to the female art world.
Bibliography
Mike Brooks. "Frida Kahlo Fans Chronology." Frida Kahlo Fans. n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2015.
[Website: http://www.fridakahlofans.com/chronologyenglish.html]
"The Revolutionary Artist: Frida Kahlo." Feminine Art Archive. University of Washington. Web. 29 Mar. 2015.
[Website: http://courses.washington.edu/femart/final_project/wordpress/frida-kahlo/]
"Frida Kahlo." Bio. A&E Television Networks. Web. 29 Mar. 2015.
[Website: http://www.biography.com/people/frida-kahlo-9359496]
Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art and Society. New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson, 1990. Print.
The following citation requires access from the Rutgers Library database:
Siltala, Pirkko. "I Made A picture Of My Life- A Life From The Picture: The Life Of The Body In The Pictures And Writings Of Frida Kahlo." International Forum Of Psychoanalysis 7.3 (1998): 135-155. Academic Search Premier. Web. 29 Mar. 2015.
[Website: http://tinyurl.com/qfbqzuo]
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