The artist I want to talk about is Frida Kahlo. She was born on July 6, 1907, in Coyoacan, Mexico. When she was six years old, she contracted polio and was bed-ridden for nine months. The disease caused her to have a thin leg. Kahlo’s father encouraged his daughter to continue playing rough activities and sports. With her father’s support, Kahlo felt empowered and started to not care about what other people thought and began wearing suits and ties. At eighteen, Kahlo was injured in a car accident, with a metal rod piercing her body and almost every bone broken in her body. Her father built her an easel for her hospital bed, so she could paint, and Kahlo made self-portraits as a distraction from the pain. People thought Kahlo’s paintings were surrealist, because it seemed like a mixture between fact and fantasy. Sadly, Kahlo’s health deteriorated every day despite having multiple operations and she wore leather, plaster and metal corsets, but that didn’t stop her from continuing to paint. Kahlo has said that she often painted herself because “I am so often alone” and “I am the subject I know best”(Who Was Frida Kahlo?). Frida always went to her exhibitions outside of Mexico, alone, but up until April 1953 had not gone to a solo show in Mexico. Kahlo was able to go to her solo exhibition in Mexico in an ambulance on her stretcher. On July 13, 1954, Kahlo died at her Blue House, the same place she was born in 47 years earlier (We Are Artists).
There are similarities between Clarice Lispector’s novel, The Hour of the Star and Frida Kahlo. Kahlo’s story reminded me of when she used to dress up in suits and ties when she was younger. Her fashion was influenced by her father, who pushed her to do activities that would be considered masculine. However, in her later years she would start wearing dresses from her indigenous Mexican heritage. During both of these phases, she still suffered from her thin leg caused by polio. One possible reason Kahlo changed her fashion was that she potentially had questioned her identity at the time, but there was no word for it back then. It was most likely taboo to talk about it at the time (We Are Artists). In The Hour of the Star, Macabea had difficulty in her personality, because she had another unconscious persona within her, which was considered her masculine side as it indicated signs of a more confident and proud version of herself. Macabea on the outside was obedient and submissive. On the other hand, Kahlo was more open and expressed it in her art as she was an independent woman. Both of these people had different natures, but both struggled with their identities and emotions (We Are Artists). Kahlo’s identity caused her problems, as she couldn’t change the fact that she was bed- ridden for a great deal of her life, so art paved the way for her to deal with the pain. Macabea seemed to deal with her emotions through the medium of her subconscious.
Kahlo’s piece, The Two Fridas (1939), signifies how Frida felt betrayed by her husband, Diego Rivera, who cheated on her with her sister. The image shows one woman wearing “an old-fashioned white bridal dress; the other is in Tehuana garb. Their hearts are exposed and connected by a blood vessel, to signify that they are one, yet both Fridas suffer.” The imagery of exposed hearts is a bit uneasy to look at but it shows how raw Kahlo’s emotions were. The white bridal dress has a torn breast plate that signifies that the romanticized version of Kahlo is broken, yet the Tehuana clothing has not been ripped or damaged in some way, meaning that she still pushes through and still retains her own self-identity.
The Little Deer or The Wounded Deer (1946) depicts Kahlo as a deer running in a forest with arrow wounds all over her body. Kahlo’s pet deer, Granizo, served as a model for this work. People believed that it stood for the pain she suffered in her spine or a different kind of pain. Granizo was a deer companion to Kahlo and a majority of her works included her pet animals native to her hometown in Mexico. Animals were an important part of her identity as they provided comfort since Kahlo was mainly alone at her home and guests would only come visit her and never stay. In May 1946, Frida gifted this piece to her friends “Lina and Arcady Boitler as a wedding gift”. Kahlo's message indicated her saying, “I leave you my portrait so that you will have my presence all the days and nights I am away from you.” A wedding gift that depicts her as suffering doesn’t present itself positively, but it’s a form of honesty that Kahlo isn’t afraid to reveal. This piece given as a gift also depicts how much she cared for her friends despite not being able to be with them physically due to her condition.
Self-Portrait with Necklace of Thorns (1940), illustrates Kahlo fashioning a necklace of thorns poking her skin with a black monkey and cat surrounding her. A hummingbird is being hanged as a black and lifeless animal whereas the bird usually depicts freedom. Kahlo’s face is also seen as stoic and patient while enduring the pain. Kahlo was also seen having a monkey as a pet so it was more likely she included it in her painting. Butterflies are also shown on top of Kahlo, meaning the freedom she longs for but cannot grasp.
My Nurse and I (1937), depicts Kahlo’s wet nurse, wearing a Colombian funerary mask, breast-feeding her. The tone the painting sets is a cold and distant one as Kahlo and the wet nurse never developed a connection with one another. Kahlo and her mother also never had a close connection with each other. This could also be another reason for her masculine side to reveal itself, as a motherly figure wasn’t well established which would affect her identity. The biological version of a female breast also shows Kahlo’s earlier interest in human biology, as she once wanted to study to become a doctor.
My Dress Hangs There (1933), is a piece that demonstrates how out of place she felt when she visited New York with her husband, Diego Rivera. The painting shows “many people standing in line waiting for food, a building on fire and an overflowing garbage can” and a toilet, including many other representations of capitalism. Rivera loved the fame he was receiving from America, but Kahlo preferred the tranquil Mexico she was familiar with. She wanted to depict the “superficiality of American capitalism” and that “society is decaying and the fundamental human values are destructed”. Kahlo wanted to return to Mexico after three years of living there, saying, “I may be in America but only my dress hangs there; my life is in Mexico”.
Memory, the Heart (1937), illustrates Kahlo as having no hands to show how helpless she was, and expressed how melancholy she felt over the affair between her husband, Diego Rivera, and her sister Cristina. Kahlo’s hair is cropped, and two cupids seesaw on the metal rod, indicating how the pain fluctuated within her. She is seen wearing European style clothing, as they were a favorite of hers to wear besides Tehuan clothing. This indicates how much Kahlo loved Rivera; but she was so heartbroken that she decided to change her main style of clothing that made her recognizable, in order to distance herself from the pain of the relationship. She is also seen as having one foot over land and the other in the sea and a large heart bleeding out onto land.
Sources
Fabiny, Sarah. Who Was Frida Kahlo?, Penguin, 2013
Herbert, We Are Artists, Thames & Hudson, 2019
Lispector, Clarice, The Hour of the Star, New Direction, 2011
Reef, Catherine, Frida & Diego: Art Love Life, Clarion Books, 2014
Frida Kahlo: Paintings, Biography, Quotes, https://www.fridakahlo.org/, Accessed Dec 2021
Mia Alcarraz is currently a senior majoring in Computer Arts and VFX at the School of Visual Arts. Mia says: "I like watching anime and game play-throughs. My favorite game is Overwatch. I decided to write about Frida Kahlo because she is a well-known female Mexican artist. I was also interested in learning more about her and analyzing her artistic choices."