Frida Kahlo the Mexican Painter - Book Report/Review Example

Frida Kahlo (July 6, 1907-July 13, 1954 Frida Kahlo Introduction Brief Biography 1. Childhood 2. Disability 3. Marriage and Influences 2. Frida's Fame 3. Summary of 3 critics 4. Her Art 4.1. Portraits as Herself 4.2. Portraits as "The Other" 4.3. Other Paintings 5. Conclusions 6. References Introduction Frida Kahlo is perhaps the best known Mexican painter of her time. Her style is very eclectic but it can be best described as a combination of realism, symbolism and surrealism that she utilised to depict the rich indigenous culture of her country. She is also famous for her self-portraits, which often reflect her physical pain and the suffering she experienced daily. The present report is a critique of the articles "Plotting Women: Gender and Representation in Mexico" by Franco, "Her Dress Hangs Here: De-frocking the Kahlo Cult" by Baddeley and "Mestizo Modernism: Race, Nation and Identity in Latin American Culture, 1900-1940" by Hedrick, who have performed an in-depth analysis of Frida Kahlo's life and work. But to understand her art it is vital that we learn about her life. 1. Brief Biography 1.1. Childhood Frida Kahlo was born in 1907 in Coyoacn, Mexico. She was of German descent on the paternal side of the family since her grandparents, although both were born in Germany, sailed to Mexico where they decided to settle in 1891. Her mother Matilde, on the other hand, was of indigenous descent primarily but mixed with Spanish and thus a devout Catholic. Her childhood is greatly marked by the Mexican Revolution. In her personal diary she recorded memories from this period. 1.2. Disability At the age of six, she fell ill with the polio. This left her partially deformed, since now her left leg looked thinner than her right, a fact she would hide by wearing long skirts. But it was not until 1925, at the age of 18, that she suffered a very severe accident that would change her life completely. While riding in a bus, the vehicle collided with a trolley car causing her serious injuries, including a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, several broken ribs, a broken pelvis, 11 fractures in her left leg, a dislocated (and crushed) right foot and a dislocated shoulder. She also suffered a very considerable wound to her uterus, which was pierced by a metallic handrail seriously damaging her ability to have children. Eventually, she recovered from this tragedy and was able to walk again although, as can be seen in some of the photographs, often aided by a walking stick. However, she lived in continuous, intense pain that often led to her confinement to hospital for months at a time. She is believed to have undergone as many as 35 operations in her lifetime as a consequence of the accident. 1.3. Marriage and Influences As a young artist, Frida was a great admirer of the cubist muralist Diego Rivera. When she had the occasion she approached him and asked for his advice on the potential of pursuing art as a career. They were later married in spite of her family's opposition due to the age difference (ca. 20 years). Together they led a flamboyant life in Mexico and travelled to the United States in the early 1930s, visiting Detroit, New York City and San Francisco, where he was commissioned to do murals. It is through this trips and other she had taken to undergo surgery that she gained a knowledge of the Western world and especially North American society, which she would later represent (and indeed despise! She refers to is derogatorily as "Gringolandia" (Baddeley, p. 14, line 37)) in Self-Portrait on the Border Line Between Mexico and the United States (Baddeley analyses this painting in depth in p. 15-16) Perhaps as a consequence of her childhood memories of the revolution, Kahlo, like her husband, maintained a loyalty to left-wing party politics. In fact, she was a member of the Communist Party. Due to their position as artist, they were at the centre of Mexican cultural life in the 1920s and 1930s together with a group of other Mexican artists and intellectuals (Franco and Hedrick mention, among others, Gabriela Mistral and Vasconcelos). The post-revolutionary nationalist ideals meant that the old European connections were now being rejected and the ties severed. It was now believed that Mexican art should serve the Mexican masses and not a distant European elite, and a rediscovery of their own heritage ensued. Thus, the desire and development of a Mexican art resulted in part from this interest in politics. Initially, it is known from different biographies, and Hedrick confirms this, that her work as an artist was overshadowed by her marriage to Rivera (p. 161, lines 18-22), who was already famous even before they first met. Not only that but he was also relatively wealthy from his own work, while Kahlo had great difficulties supporting herself from the sale of her paintings. Their marriage was tumultuous since both possessed fiery temperaments that often clashed. However, it was loving, passionate and at times obsessive. Both are reported to have maintained several extramarital affairs. Diego Rivera is known to have been unfaithful to Frida with her own sister Cristina, a circumstance that cost them a brief divorce in 1939-1940. For her part, Frida had relationships with women (i.e. Josephine Baker) that Diego tolerated; in contrast, her relationships with men (e.g. Trotsky) made him jealous. Although they remarried in 1940, their second marriage was as turbulent as the first. After numerous operations to correct her spine, she eventually became an invalid prior to her death in 1954 at the early age of 47 (Answers.com, 2007). 2. Frida's Fame In her article, Baddeley analyses the reasons for Frida's fame. She was relatively unknown outside Mexico until the late 1930s, when she had exhibitions of her paintings in New York City and Paris, and met and associated with some of the most famous painters in the world. However, it was not until the 1940s that Frida gained international recognition for her paintings and her public persona. Baddeley's attributes the reasons for Frida's fame today to marketing. She states that Kahlo's image, like that of Che Guevara, has been heavily marketed and since the early 1990s there have been numerous documentaries, films, magazine articles, etc. that have exploited her image. Recently, the also Mexican Salma Hayek managed to "steal" the starring role in a movie about Frida's life from the singer Madonna herself. Indeed, the reason for this revival is the fact that sales of her work are record-breaking: estimates of her painting have risen from $40,000 in the late 1970s to over $1 million in 1990. This is, in part, thanks to public figures like Madonna, an avid collector who claims to "identify with her pain and her sadness." In 2007, those paintings have surpassed that mark, reaching $10 million, a value that puts Kahlo in a league with painters of the calibre of Picasso or Pollock (Mencimer, 2002). Baddeley sees this "shift" as a result of two phenomena: 1) art experts are trying to diversify and discover new more affordable artistic terrain to speculate with; and 2) the change in taste and perception by the public (p. 10). Nowadays, Frida Kahlo's image and work have been embraced by feminist groups and are associated with the liberation of women (p. 13, lines 20-27). 3. Summary of 3 critics Baddeley in her article "Her Dress Hangs Here: De-frocking the Kahlo Cult", analyses how Frida Kahlo's popularity has affected the public perception of her art. While the artist's intention was to convey Mexicanidad, revolutionary idealism and nationhood through her art and her appearance, she has instead become an icon of female suffering. Franco's critic is more profound. It analyses the role of women like Frida Kahlo and the poet Gabriela Mistral in the Mexico post-revolution and compares their work and influence with that of the men they were close to. To explain the concept of Messianism and sexual division, Franco uses the painting Moses. He concludes that men like Rivera are heroes of culture and pursue great undertakings, while women like Frida are closer to nature, more real and with no pretence of grandeur in their work. Hedrick's critic is the most comprehensive. It describes Kahlo's life and work in more detail and explains Frida's choice of clothing, her political involvement, her influences, her role as a woman artist and the Mexicanidad and iconography of her work. The classification and analysis of Kahlo's work hereafter will allow the discussion of the interpretation these three critics have made of Frida's life, work and public persona. 4. Her Art It is inevitable that Frida's work is compared to her husband's. From Franco's article it can be drawn that, unlike Rivera's murals, which were grandiose both in size and choice of topic, and filled with political and social critic and ideology, Kahlo's work was intimate and personal, highly autobiographical. It is thus noteworthy that, as a result, a total of 55 out of her 143 paintings (approximately a third of the volume of her work) are self-portraits. It is possible that this exploration of (or obsession with!) "the self" may have arisen from the need to explain and describe her physical and psychological wounds, of which she often incorporates symbolic representations. As will be analysed later, in addition to the anguish for her ever-deteriorating health, the paintings often reflect the ups and downs of her relationship with Rivera. Like many other women artists of her generation, Frida's art was initially overlooked by critics and experts. Franco, Hedrick and Baddeley attribute this to a variety of reasons: 1) she was a woman; 2) her art was unique and individualistic; and 3) her art was difficult to categorise or fit into a particular movement. Since the 1970s her political figure and her art have received more attention precisely due to opposite factors: her role as a woman artist, her uniqueness and her relevance in the revival of Mexican art. 4.1. Portraits as Herself The Frida phenomenon is highly interesting. Baddeley compares the fascination with Frida to the iconic status of Vincent van Gogh. However, the parallelism between the two authors stops there. While in the case of van Gogh it was his famous brush-strokes and vibrant colours that were admired, in the case of Frida it is herself in the first instance, and later her work, that becomes the object of admiration. A very intelligent woman, as an artist she had a very clear strategy: exploiting the nationalist feelings in the post-revolutionary Mexico, she modified her personal image and converted herself into a striking, iconic figure gaining at a later stage the same iconographic status for her artistic work. Again, if we take into account the subject matter, the parallelism drawn by Baddeley between Kahlo and van Gogh does not work. While van Gogh painted beautiful landscapes of idyllic locations, colourful flowers and beautiful portraits, the work of Frida is equally strong and exotic but somehow visceral, broken, damaged. It is, in general, less pleasing to the eye with her depiction of blood and organs but it is also less emotionally pleasing: political, controversial, full of pain and history. At the same time her paintings are colourful, alive, exuberant and mysteriously fascinating. From her work the observer can somehow feel that, in contrast with van Gogh, it is her life and not her work that is troubled. Frida's work is not art for the sake of it, but art with a political, social and emotional message. Thus, it is not spontaneous but highly contrived. Franco, Baddeley and Hedrick coincide when they state that her paintings are highly symbolic. Indeed, from their analyses it can be learned that as a highly educated, well-trained and well-informed artist, she used every object (e.g. a cigarette in Self-Portrait on the Border, a dress in The Suicide of Dorothy Hale, a pair of scissors in The Two Fridas), every animal (e.g. Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace, Hummingbird and Unibrow), every person (e.g. Christ, Marx, Stalin or Hitler in Moses) in the composition with a purpose or meaning. The uninformed spectator will be able to extract raw feelings such as passion and pain from the observation of any of Frida's paintings; however, knowledge of the symbolism used is vital for the observer to fully understand the painting. Her compositions are complex, rich and highly symbolic. Baddeley, Franco and Hedrick also agree at different points that, similarly to the content of her paintings, her self-image is contrived too. They explain that the clothes, the hair, the monobrow were all carefully and meticulously fashioned in order to attract attention. While due to her mixed ancestry she could have passed as "white", she decided to emphasise her mestiza features through clothing, hairstyle and accessories. She also wore the Tehuantepec dress, which later would become her trademark. This is an interesting choice since this attire was neither popular not well known at the time in Mexico; however, she preferred it because it represented a race of very brave and strong women and, at the same time, it conveyed an anti-colonialist message. From then on she was looked at wherever she went, "people stop in their tracks to look in wonder" (Hedrick, p. 172, lines 30-31), and her image became in this manner iconic. Hedrick continues with the clothing issue (p. 176-177) stating that although the choice of native clothing is now regarded as highly original, this was not the case at the time: Kahlo was not the only white urban Mexican woman to adopt the native attire. According to Hedrick, other influential women like the actresses Dolores del Ro and Mara Felix wore the typical Mexican costume in some of their movies. Although Hedrick cites their reasons as purely commercial, one cannot say that this was not one of Frida's aims too. Indeed, this statement may also be an oversimplification of Del Ro's personality. Although she gained her fame by working in Hollywood, she later moved to Mexico and became part of the group of intellectuals and artists that Kahlo and Rivera belonged to. It would be unfair to ignore the possibility of a political affiliation and the fact that she may have been influenced by the group's post-revolutionary nationalistic ideas. It can be agreed though that her portrayal of the Mexican native woman is full of sentimentalism. If we extend the statement by Hedrick (p.180, lines 25-27) that " while Mistral [] chose to work on the side of domesticating folk culture, Kahlo chose to work on the side of modernising it" and Del Ro chose to work on the side of dramatising it. The three authors have commented on two remarkable aspects of Frida's work: 1) she depicted real women; and 2) this women look directly at the observer. Indeed, as a woman artist Kahlo was also brave enough to depict real women. While traditionally women often appeared in the roles of peasants, goddesses, nobles or prostitutes, Frida simply painted "Woman". And who could be better than herself Interestingly, the obsession with self-portraits may be the accidental result of the fact that she started painting when she was convalescing and used to paint with the aid of a mirror. Additionally, the women in her paintings, contrary to tradition, look directly at the observer. This was mostly done in an impassive and inexpressive manner, sometimes with a slightly defiant or insolent look but it was never submissive or obedient. One quite peculiar characteristic none of the authors has commented on is that in Frida's work it is often the case that the objects portrayed have not been painted to the correct scale. This is not an accident but a recourse that Frida uses to indicate emotional rather than physical relationships. She also incorporates elements of Mexican culture and art into her paintings: a Mexican banner, exotic flowers or birds, etc. It is noteworthy that she became a feminist icon and yet, both in real life and her paintings, she did not portray herself in a manner that would appear attractive to women at first sight. Aside from the painting (Self Portrait with Cropped Hair, analysed in depth by both Baddeley and Franco) in which she is dressed as a man (wearing Rivera's suit), in general she assumes masculine postures, sitting with her legs slightly parted in The Two Fridas, holding cigarettes like a man would do, staring directly, almost defiantly at the observer (both in existing photographs and paintings), etc. Also, it is impossible not to notice her abundant facial hair, which she chose to exaggerate in her paintings to a slight moustache and a monobrow (Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace, Hummingbird and Unibrow). As aforementioned, it was Frida's appearance and not her work that became an icon. Baddeley confirms this in "Her Dress Hangs Here: De-Frocking the Kahlo Cult." Although the author does not directly address this, one must comment on the irony of the fact that Elle and Vogue photographed Kahloesque models in sensual poses, playfully showing their legs and baring their shoulders since Frida Kahlo did not show her body at all. Indeed, due to the deformation of her body and the continuous pain she suffered from her injuries she mostly portrayed herself fully clothed in her art. Certainly, there are occasions in which she paints her naked body but it is never with the intention to appear sexy or in a sensual posture. And the irony comes from the fact that, in spite of this, she still succeeded to make herself appear interesting and attractive, highly charismatic. It seems a pity that the models are a representation of Frida's physical appearance, void of the political and social connotation that her image represented. They have taken the thick long brows, the pleated hair and the strong vibrant colours and they have modernised and "glamourised" the image. However, all the "weight" that is linked to Frida's choice of image is lost. Hedrick mentions that Kahlo often shows herself smoking in her paintings (p.181, lines 31-37). While in the 1930s this was used by sophisticated and independent women as a gesture of defiance and to indicate sexual liberation, it is an act that contrasted greatly with her mestiza image. Her actions seem slightly aggressive and very masculine but, at the same time, unembarrassed, rebellious and modern. It is interesting that none of the authors (other than Franco with Moses) has analysed the nature or the quality of the composition of Frida's paintings. They are strangely static, almost timeless, very similar in their composition to photographs, posters or even murals. It is possible that this stylistic choice was influenced by the work of the people she was surrounded by (i.e. her father, a professional photographer, or Rivera, a renowned muralist). However, the simplicity of the lines and colours, the vibrancy and directness of the composition are also reminiscent of Toulouse Lautrec's posters, which were designed as advertising material for the artists performing at the Moulin Rouge. Like Kahlo, Lautrec was quite disabled and lived an exciting life surrounded by the artists and the intellectuals of the time in his native country. However, unlike Kahlo, Lautrec showed movement in his subjects and his subjects showed emotion. Additionally, he never dared use this medium to convey his feelings or as a means of self-promotion. It is also remarkable that, although the authors agree that the "making" of Frida's iconographic status was her own work, none has analysed her legacy in this area. Indeed, many artists since have exploited this phenomenon. An artist who is comparable to Frida in the iconography of both his self-image and work is Andy Warhol. A very innovative artist in his time, Warhol occasionally depicted himself and used his work as a means of self-marketing and promotion of friends, actors and emblematic public figures of the time. Like Frida, his image was unique and he exploited this factor to get himself and, as a consequence his work, noticed. 4.2. Portraits as "The Other" In very few occasions Frida chose to be photographed or portray herself in costumes other than the Tehuantepec dress. These instances seem to have coincided with events when she was not herself, the strong Mexican mestiza woman that became an icon. At times of loneliness, rebellion or betrayal she portrays herself as "the other": the Frida dressed in man's clothes, the Frida dressed in Western clothes, etc. The first example of this is a family photo taken by her father, a professional photographer, in 1926 where she appears next to two of her sisters, her mother and a half-brother. While her sisters and mothers wear typically European dresses, hairstyles and accessories, Frida is wearing is a three-piece man's suit. Her hair is combed back and her gaze and pose are masculine and defiant, looking straight at the camera. She has transformed herself into a Mexican middle-class young man. According to Hedrick (p. 165, lines 18-20), the choice of clothing is a result of the fact that at the time she was attending an elite public school where most of the students were male who believed and portrayed themselves as intellectuals and bohemians. It is noteworthy that at the time this was quite a rebellious and extravagant act (perhaps one of defiance) in the eyes of the very conservative, Catholic, middle-class society herself and her family belonged to. Interestingly, although Baddeley has suggested that this may be her very first attempt to show appropriation of masculinity, it seems obvious that she is trying to make evident her intention to enter the male-dominated world of art (p. 12, lines 25-30). Years later, in 1934, the difficulties in her relationship with Rivera seem to have spurred her need for transformation. During a brief period of separation due to Rivera's infidelity with her sister, she allows others to photograph her wearing a modern, ordinary attire, with short hair, no earrings or trace of the Mexican mestiza. These complications finally culminated with a brief divorce in the period 1939-1940. This was a time of emotional struggle for Frida and two paintings from this era are worth mentioning in relation to this and the portray of "the other": The Two Fridas (1939) and Self- Portrait with Cropped Hair (1940).In The Two Fridas, a painting she was finishing when she received her divorce papers (WETA, 2005), over a dark storm-like background she shows two very different Fridas holding hands, united in their pain. One is wearing a blood-stained European type of dress while the other wears a Mexican dress. The blood represents the physical pain for the loss of Rivera but it is also believed to be an allusion to her operations and her abortions. As Hedrick points out, this is the Frida that Diego no longer loves, the Frida that is trying to sever her emotional ties with him, represented by the scissors that stop the flow of blood (p. 174, lines 10-14). The Frida in Mexican dress represents the Frida that Diego loves. In fact, she carries in her hand a miniature with his portrait. Both Fridas have their heart on show; however, while the Mexican Frida's heart is intact, the rejected Frida exposes a broken and damaged heart. It is interesting that she decided to portray herself as two different people. Franco suggests that this shows a split in her personality, an irreconciliation between the Mexican woman, beautiful, mysterious and dressed in colourful clothes, and "the other woman", which is represented by a naked, vulnerable and often mutilated body (p. 107, lines 11-21). The latter represents the Frida controlled by modern society, victim of technology, displaying her organs to the viewer. We can see the theme of cross-dressing once more in Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair, where she disguises herself as a man by wearing her now ex-husband's suit. It is oversized and makes her look small and vulnerable. However, her expression is serious and her gaze meets the observer's. She is holding a pair of scissors which she has used to cut her hair. In the analysis by Hedrick, he states that the long hair represents the traditional woman and, thus, this act symbolises the loss of womanhood as a consequence of the loss of her lover (p. 174, lines 23-26). Thus the masculinity of the suit and the posture is reinforced by the loss of her hair-womanhood. The hair is scattered all over the floor symbolising the emotional chaos and confusion that the separation has caused (MoMA.org, 2007). 4.3. Other Paintings In "Plotting Women: Gender and Representation in Mexico", Franco analyses one of the most interesting of Kahlo's painting: Moses (or The Birth of the Hero, 1954). It is remarkable for several reasons: 1) she does not appear in the composition; 2) the topic is unusual; and 3) the composition of the painting acquired a very different structure from other works. In fact, it could be said that Moses is more a mural than a painting (except for the size, but this will be discussed later). According to Franco, this painting discusses sexual division, presenting women as nature and men as culture. It is the eternal divide between brain and heart, between reason and feelings. It also deals with the creation of gods and religions. She wanted to "express clearly and intensely [] that the reason why people need to invent or imagine heroes and gods is pure fear." So while Moses as a child dominates the centre of the painting, heaven and earth are divided, with heaven populated by the gods and earth busy with animals, skeletons and depictions of historical figures who have played a role in the transformation of religions and society (e.g. Gandhi). As aforementioned, in Moses the size of the painting is almost as important as the painting itself. At the time, male artists as Rivera were creating enormous murals which where proportional in size to the grandiosity of the author and the topics covered, e.g. race or inequality. However, Frida preferred to use smaller canvases perhaps in an attempt to miniaturize the heroes and, in this manner, ridicule her male counterparts, the heroes of culture. It is also possible that she was trying to exaggerate or magnify the content or meaning of the painting by presenting it as a miniature. Franco, in fact, confirms this and in his article he portrays the figures of Rivera and Vasconcelos (Mexican Minister of Education, 1920-1924) using quite an ironic tone, suggesting that they believed themselves to be "larger than life" and geniuses (p. 103, line 40-p. 104, line 6). Hence, the size of their undertakings: in the case of Rivera the enormous murals that covered entire walls and in the case of Vasconcelos his very ambitious plans to educate "the illiterate rural masses" (p. 102, line 15). 5. Conclusions The three articles analysed in the present study are a tribute to Frida Kahlo and her work. All three authors agree that her image was an artifice that she selected carefully in order to convey and exploit Mexicanidad. It is also agreed that the fact that a third of her paintings are self-portraits indicates a certain degree of self-obsession and a need to make her own feelings and suffering known to the observer. Her work is described as full of symbolism and exotic, often depicting women as they had not been depicted before. Again all writers noted that the women in Frida's paintings are looking directly, defiantly, confidently at the observer. In conclusion, Frida Kahlo, one of the most famous artists in the history of Mexico, had an autobiographical, passionate and visceral style that has won her worldwide acclamation and recognition. Her life was plagued by continuous surgery, chronic pain and disability, and these feelings and difficulties are palpable in her paintings. Her striking image, resembling that of the women of a remote native Mexican tribe converted her into a figure of iconic proportions. Consequently, she became a representative of nationalism, feminism and liberalism that was, is and will be admired around the globe. 6. References -Answers.com. "Frida Kahlo". Available at . Date last updated: 2007. Date last accessed: April 2007. -Baddeley, O. "Her Dress Hangs Here: De-frocking the Kahlo Cult." The Oxford Art Journal 1991; 14: 1, 10-17. -Franco, J. "Plotting Women: Gender and Representation in Mexico". London, Verso, 1989; pp. 103-112. -Hedrick, T. "Mestizo Modernism: Race, Nation and Identity in Latin American Culture, 1900-1940". New Jersey, Rutgers University Press, 2003; pp. 159-198. -Mencimer, S. "The Trouble with Frida Kahlo". Washington Monthly. Available at . Date created: June, 2002. Date last accessed: April, 2007. -Moma.org, The Museum of Modern Art. "The Collection: Frida Kahlo". Available at . Date last modified: 2005. Date last accessed: April 2007. -WETA. "Frida Kahlo's Works of Art". The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo. Available at . Date last updated: March 2005. Date last accessed: April 2007. Read More