Frida Kahlo and Surrealism Movement - Essay Example

Introduction Frida Kahlo’s paintings were first and foremost the interpretations of her broken body and heart, of a soul trapped in a painful shell trying to flee from the limitations put on it. "I paint myself because I am often alone and I am the subject I know best." - Frida Kahlo. (Andria Kettenmman, 20021) Please paste in pictures where ever mentioned on Academia Self Portrait with Monkey -1938 as the file becomes to heavy for me to upload Not being a formal student of art most of her paintings were heavily influenced by other artists, eras, and by the Mexican culture surrounding her. She depicted her every emotion and life experience, from intense physical pain of her accident to the extreme emotional sorrow of her miscarriage’s on canvas and created images using bold colors and a naive style. In Diego Riveras (a great artist and her husband) memorable phrase; her paintings reveal "the biological truth of her feelings”. (Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera: Isabel Alcantra & Sandra Egnolff 2) She was a great admirer of Diego and was influenced by his style of mural paintings. Frida unconsciously painted from a surrealist style, though not a disciple or even admirer of surrealism- a result maybe due to her dramatic nature and extreme emotional and physical pain that she suffered. She often experimented with styles, icons and motifs and her work reflected strong sexual overtones, though she had no special explanations for her methods and once said "I put on the canvas whatever comes into my mind." (Salomon Grimberg, 20033) Her paintings often shocked people due to their sexual boldness and exquisite starkness, her ruthless representation of herself in her paintings like ‘My Birth’, ‘What Water Gave Me’ ‘Henry Ford Hospital’ and ‘The Two Fridas’ are emotionally breathtaking. In 1953, when Frida Kahlo had her first and only solo exhibition in Mexico during her lifetime, a local critic wrote: It is impossible to separate the life and work of this extraordinary person. Her paintings are her biography. (Frida Kahlo, Salomon Grimberg, World Publication Groups 20034) The making of an artist Frida Kahlo was a passionate, dramatic and clever woman, the product of a Hungarian –Jewish father and a devout Catholic of Spanish-Mexican Indian decent mother. She was closest to her father who shared her interest in art but had a cold relationship with her mother. This potent cultural fusion, plus being surrounded by women (three sisters of her own and two half sisters from her father’s previous marriage) and witnessing the Mexican revolution, seems to have had a great hand in shaping Frida’s personality early on. Frida’s life unfortunately was forever plagued by medical problems; she contracted polio at age six which left her with a deformed right foot and the cruel nickname, “Peg-leg Frida”. Later at tragedy struck again at eighteen when a streetcar accident left her crippled and changed the course of her life. From an exuberant young woman on the threshold of becoming a student of medicine, she became a cripple, a pain that is depicted in her agonizing self-portraits. She sustained multiple severe injuries ,a steel rod entered her left side and exited through her vagina; her pelvis, spinal column, collarbone, and two ribs were broken; her right leg had eleven fractures; her right foot was dislocated and crushed. (www.fridakahlofans.com 5) Kahlo had not planned to become n artist and perhaps would have never become one if not for the accident, recovering in a full body cast and she tried to occupy her time by painting and drawing. She had studied art before, at the National Preparatory School, where she had met Diego Rivera when he was painting the Creation mural, but had never worked on paintings before and did not have any formal training as such.  During this covalence period of time she painted numerous self-portraits: she drew herself using a mirror across from her bed, including a sketch of what she remembered of the crash, starting a life long love affair with the canvas. Frida eventually regained her ability to walk, but had periods of extreme pain for the rest of her life and as a result of the accident could not have children and most of her paintings relate to her experiences of physical and psychological pain. She underwent as many as thirty operations in her life as a result of the accident, mainly on her back and her right leg and foot, but despite these operations, but spent the rest of her life in constant pain, finally succumbing to related complications at age forty-seven. ‘The Broken Column’ a painting portraying her battered body after the accident is a metaphor for Kahlo’s own pain. Her spine is represented by a shattered stone column. This is visible through her broken body which is only held together by a harness. She is naked and the surface of her flesh is punctured by sharp nails, recalling the painful effect of flogging on the body of Christ in Matthias Grünewald’s Crucifixion Panel from the Isenheim Altarpiece. Silent tears drop from her eyes as she stands alone in a desolate wasteland without any sign of hope on the horizon. (Kahlo 1907-1954, Pain & Passion, Andria Kettenmman, Taschen 20026) The Broken Column’ -1944 A strong and independent woman, Frida as a person and painter was influenced and inspired by many people and events, such as her father who was an amateur painter, Fernando Fernandez a friend of her fathers and a well known print maker, Diego Riviera her husband and a famous muralist, 19th century Mexican portrait painters, the Mexican Revolution, Communisms, Surrealism, Sigmund Freud, Mexican and Native American cultural influences, Christian and Aztec imagery, pre Columbian Mythology, sex & infertility. But most of all she painted from the painful experiences and events of her own life. "I drank to drown my pain, but the damned pain learned how to swim, and now I am overwhelmed by this decent and good behavior." - Frida Kahlo. (Hayden Herrera, 19 83 7) The most prominent event of her life was the streetcar accident which changed her course of life, and the second being the meeting and subsequent marriage with the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, whose approach to art and communist ideologies matched her own. Kahlo once said "There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst." (Isabel Alcantra & Sandra Egnolff , 20048) Kahlo had approached Diego asking him for advice about pursuing art as a career and it is said that had he not responded in a positive manner Frida would have not become an artist. Frida shared Diegos revolutionary philosophy, and was, like Diego, a passionate Communist. Although twenty years her senior and a through womanizer, they got married in 1929, and survived a stormy passionate relationship, infidelities from both sides, Kahlo’s lesbian affairs, the pressures of Riveras career, a divorce and remarriage, Kahlos poor health and of course both artist’s fiery temperaments. They were often referred to as The Elephant and the Dove, a nickname that originated when Kahlos father used it to express their extreme difference in size. The Elephant and the Dove-1931 Diego encouraged Frida’s development as an artist urging her to paint in the Mexican folklorist style and capture the indigenous and working class of Mexico on canvas. Subtle signs of his mural style painting are also noticeable in colour, background and stylizing in some of her paintings. Often when upset with Diego she would paint a self-portrait to express her emotions, like the ‘Two Fridas’ she painted on their divorce. ‘Two Fridas’-1939 The couple moved to the United States, to escape political persecution due to their Communist sympathies. During her stay in United States a country which she heartily disliked, Kahlo was constantly home sick wanting to return to Mexico but Diego was enchanted by this industrialist new country and would not leave. Frida expressed her disenchantment with this alien land and people in a series of paintings like “My dress hanging there”, a picture that foreruns the work full of symbols that continued later. Kahlo fell pregnant twice in the US and lost the child on both occasions, due to complications resulting from her streetcar injuries. While she was recovering from one of her miscarriages at the hospital, Rivera had an affair with her sister Christiana, which completely shattered Frida, after the incident Kahlo painted ‘A Few Small Nips ‘which represented the pain Rivera and her sister caused her. Frida and Diego divorced in 1939 but remarried only a year later, to resume their former hostilities and life style. During her divorce period Frida returned to Mexico, where she later started her most famous affaire with the exiled communist leader Leon Trotsky. The focus of her paintings during these emotional times dealt increasingly with her feelings about loss, infertility, pain and alienation such as ‘My Birth’, ‘My nurse and I’, the most profound being her depiction of her miscarriage at the Henry Ford Hospital. Henry Ford Hospital, 1932 Frida was a passionate and erotic and this showed in her numerous paintings, she was quite open about her bi-sexuality and numerous affairs, her paintings often had strong sexual references both subtle and obvious. The fruits of her paintings were shaped or cut open in such a way as to symbolize sex organs of men and women. Her obsession with not being able to bear children also resulted in paintings of sex and fertility such as ‘Flower of Life’ and ‘Sun and Life’. In the two family portraits that she painted she included an unborn fetus. My Grand Parents My Parents and Me-1936 Frida & Surrealism Frida’s paintings are often associated with Surrealism and she was inspired by the philosophies of Sigmund Freud, and her work does indeed have similar characteristics with the second phase of French Surrealism: amorphous imagery, unorthodox subject matter, use of specific icons, abstractionism, explicit sexual imagery, and horrifying themes. Though she never intentionally painted in the surrealistic style, her instinctive depiction of emotions and thoughts was very similar to surrealism. In trying to portray her emotions she used personal symbolism mixed with Surrealism like images to express her suffering through her work. "Kahlos frequent opening up or severing of portions of the human body recalls the severed heads and hands or the fallen torsos often seen in Surrealist paintings " (Hayden Herrera, 19 83 9) Andre Breton the French Surrealist poet on his visit to Mexico found the whole land and its cultural fusion to be filled with surrealist connotations and arrogantly claimed Kahlo as a Surrealist, which incensed Frida no end, she claimed, "Breton thought I was a Surrealist but I wasnt. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality." (Hayden Herrera, 19 83 10) Even though Kahlo stated that she was not a Surrealist, Andre manipulated her art to support his interpretation of Surrealism. He defined Surrealism as "a form of art that tries to discover the large reality, liberating the unconscious from repression, dreams, desires and thoughts to freely explore the unconscious lay beyond the narrow rational notions of what is real" (Stokstad 11). Though this definition essentially describes Kahlos art she once said ‘I never new I was a surrealist, till Andre Breton came to Mexico and told me I was’. So one might say she was a surrealist without knowing she was one. She did, however, show at the Julian Levy Gallery in New York, known for showing Surrealism, and she travelled to Paris at Bretons urging to show her work. Frida always vehemently denied that she had ever been a true Surrealist and ultimately renounced surrealism calling them “this bunch of coocoo lunatic sons of bitches of surrealists.”( Hayden Herrera, 19 83 12) In the painting of ‘What Water Gave Me’ which Breton included in his Surrealism and painting book, is held to be a true surrealist painting as it completely fits the classification of Surrealism because of the use iconography, which combines dream imagery with reality. But this is a pure ‘Frida style’ - the symbolic, depiction of her life’s tragedies and various significant events, her childhood, dreams, Diego, Mexican culture, infertility, sexual desires and her past and present life. ‘What Water Gave Me’, is in fact more real than surreal, but unlike her usual style there is no central image and she painted her own legs from the baths viewpoint, partially obscured by the water. ‘What Water Gave Me’-1938 Another extraordinary surreal like painting is ‘The Little Deer Root’ or ‘The Wounded Deer’ in which Kahlo used the flawed objects to demonstrate physical and emotional pain. (Erika Billeter 13). The deer with arrows piercing its body and Frida’s head seems to represents a vulnerable and victimized natural creature that Frida was. ‘The Wounded Deer’-1946 Conclusion Frida Kahlo was a bold, passionate and courageous woman overshadowed and inspired by her pain and obsessive nature. Many have classified her paintings as Surrealism or Magic Realism, but she considered her art to be realistic, which came not through dreams but through the reality of her heartbreaking and painful life. Though it can easily be understood why people consider her art surrealism she was not a conscious surrealist, but was actually a surrealist by her very nature. Through her self-portraits and other paintings the biography of her life is illustrated and till date holds many labels- feminist, communist, surrealist, artist, painter, bi-sexual and most important of all an inspiration for many. References 1. Kahlo 1907-1954, Pain & Passion, Andria Kettenmman, Taschen 2002 2. Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera: Isabel Alcantra & Sandra Egnolff 3. Frida Kahlo, Salomon Grimberg, World Publication Groups 2003 4. Frida Kahlo, Salomon Grimberg, World Publication Groups 2003 5. www.fridakahlofans.com 6. Kahlo 1907-1954, Pain & Passion, Andria Kettenmman, Taschen 2002 7. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo, Hayden Herrera, Harper & Row 19 83 8. Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera: Isabel Alcantra & Sandra Egnolff 9. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo, Hayden Herrera, Harper & Row 19 83 10. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo, Hayden Herrera, Harper & Row 19 83 11. Modernism. Part 1. Stokstad 12. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo, Hayden Herrera, Harper & Row 19 83 13. Kahlo- The blue house - The World Of Frida Kahlo, Erika Billeter Read More