Frida Kahlo: Perspectives

ROMA: Scuderie del Quirinale FRIDA KAHLO (20 marzo 2014- 31 August 2014)

Frida Khalo: Perspectives

    

Self Portrait with Monkey, 1938, oil on masonite, Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo                         
 Itzcuintli Dog and Me, 1938, private collection, Dallas.

Frida Kahlo is an artist that some argue emerged during the feminist movement as women turned their attention to female artists. Though this theory does not explain Frida’s international popularity. She is the highest selling female exhibition artist worldwide. Frida will unfortunately not be aware of her international fame. When she painted, she was not famous and she has been quoted for even saying she paints for herself. Whether scholars and critics agree to her insertion into the history of art, her paintings are an expression of Mexican culture, during a time of transition, through the interpretive eyes of a flamboyant and unique female artist. She has significantly helped bring art of Central America into the category of modern art and the field of western art history. The artist grew up in the early 1920s during Mexico’s revolution, when the government was forming a new identity that relied heavily on its working class and ethnically ‘indigenous’ peoples. The ‘Mexicanization’ of the country occured right after the end of the revolution and art provided a visual source for the new cultural and political identity of Mexico. (Bakewell, 1993, p. 170) Frida was ‘part of a group of artists and intellectuals in Mexico during the first part of [20th ] century who were both proud of their Mexian heritage and wedded to social reforms through Communism’. (Garber, 1992, p. 42) Frida’s art is connected not only to her role as a female artist practicing in the time, but also related to the political ideologies emerging amonst artists and intellectuals. She was able to create a recognizable persona and her self-portraits opened ‘a small window onto her world, a kind of case study methodology’. (Bakewell, 1993, p. 171) Her works focused on the vision of mexicanness, colonization, and sexuality. (Bakewell, 1993, p. 177)

  

Self Portrait as a Tehuana, 1943, oil on masonite, Gelman Collection, Mexico City. 

Self portrait with Braid. 1941, Jacques and Natasha Gelman collection, Mexico City.

Portrait of Diego Rivera, 1937, oil on wood, Gelman collection, Mexico City

Her figures and colors utilized in her paintings appear ‘deliberately naive’ (Garber, 1992, p. 42), Frida’s paintings were expressions of interior turmoil effected by injury, infertility, and marital stress. Gloria Orenstein, in 1973, writes ‘Frida Khalo: Paintings for Miracles’ in order to combine icongraphical and psychological analyze of the artist’s life represented in her paintings. This approach is often called ‘female sensibility’. (Garber, 1992, p. 43) According to Orenstein, the fact that Frida is a woman automatically establishes a condition of expressing femaleness in her art; and by default different from the dominant male painters. In this case, her role as a woman transforms the artistic expression of her art. Whitney Chadwich in 1985 explains further that Frida’s role as a female artist practicing in surrealist style separates her from her male peers. The artist articulates the female consciousness unique to her sexuality, biologically different from men who represent the movement and style globally. (Garber, 1992, p. 44) Hayden Herrera takes the analysis one step further in 1983 to include a psychological profile of the artist in ‘Frida Kahlo: The Palette, The Pain, and The Painter’. (Garber, 1992, p. 46) Rather than expressing a difference for simply being a woman, Herrera singles out the artist for her ability to use painting as a type of therapy, a means to healing inner termoil. Although being a woman is important to the analysis, Herrera relies on her forms of expression within her art as a way of discussing the psychology of the expression, the direction of art therapy. Each discourse utilizes Frida in diverse feminist theories of art analysis. The fact that Frida is a woman cannot be negated in her art. Critics and scholars battle the limitations of the approaches used to explain the artist’s paintings.

  

Portrait of a Woman in White, 1930, oil on canvas, private collection, Berlin.

Self Portrait, 1940, oil on canvas, Harry Ranson Humanitie Research Center, Austin.

Self-Portrait Along the Border Line Between Mexico and the United States, 1932, oil on metal, Maria Rodriquez de Reyero Collection, NYC.

Rebecca Block and Lynda Hoffman-Jeep in ‘Fashioning National Identity: Frida Kahlo in ‘Gringolandia’, written in 1999, look to the political statement of the artist’s painting in a post-revolutionary ideology. According to their analysis, Frida’ s use of traditional dress identifies with the government’s new programs to cultivate a Mexican nationalism. Part of their idea was to bring forth the country’s uniqueness identified by its indigenous culture, once socially and politically isolated. Frida’s Mexican ‘look’ consciously utilizes symbols in both ancient and contemporary cultures as she paints her self-a well known public figure, to her physical handicaps. Her art no doubt illustrates her phases of self-examination and self-definition (Block and Hoffmann-Jeep, 1999, p. 11) which connects to the political, social and cultural phase of Mexico, a country developing an identity after a revolution. Frida knew how to utilise dress in order to communicate her ideologies. Not only did she become a symbol herself, dressing in the manner of her portraits, but knew how to utilize their attributes to create meanings that also portray international connotations.

The Love Embrace the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Me and Senor Xolotil, 1949, oil on canvas.

Frida’s art is filled with color, symbols, techniques, and subjects that make it an appealing to scholars and critics as a study of a diverse theories of art. It is interesting to look to her art in order to understand the culturally specific period to which they belong. Her works draw a fine line between politics, culture and feminism. Currently, her works represent a way of depicting and representing a personal identiy, a way of being singled out from the mainstream and yet being able to appeal and communicate cross culturally.

For more on Frida: 

Frida Kahlo in Rome: http://english.scuderiequirinale.it/Home.aspx
Frida Kahlo fan page: http://www.fridakahlofans.com/
Frida Kahlo foundation: http://www.frida-kahlo-foundation.org/biography.html

Self Portrait, 1926, oil on canvas, private collection, Mexico City.

The Broken Column, 1944, Collection of Dolores Olmedo PatiñoMexico City, Mexico

Bibliography

1. i. Bakewell, Liza. ‘Frida Kahlo: A Contemporary Feminist Reading’ in A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 13, No. 3, (1993), pp. 165-189.
2. ii. ‘Biography’ in Frida Khalo Foundation (online) http://www.frida-kahlo-foundation.org/biography.html last access: 30/3/2014]
3. Block, Rebecca, and Hoffman- Jeep, Lynda. ‘Fashioning National Identity: Frida Kahlo in ‘Gringolandia’’ in Woman’s Art Journal, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Autumn, 1998- Winter, 1999), pp. 8-12
4. iii. ‘Chronology’ in Frida Khalo (online), http://www.fridakahlo.com/chronology [last access: 18:30, 30/3/2014]
5. iv. ‘Frida Khalo’ in Artachive, http://www.artchive.com/artchive/K/kahlo.html [last access: 18:50, 30/3/201]
6. v. ‘Frida Khalo (1907~1954): Biography ~~a Woman in Rebellion’ in YouTube (online). Project Dystopia, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5c7Sp9iy4A [last access: 18:20, 30/3/2014]
7. vi. ‘Frida Khalo’ in Scuderia del Quirinale, curated by Helga Prignitz-Poda, 20 March - 31 August 2014. http://english.scuderiequirinale.it/categorie/exhibition-frida-kahlo [last access: 19:00, 30/3/2014]
8. Garber, Elizabeth. ‘Art Critics on Frida Kahlo: A Comparison of Feminist and Non-Feminist Voices’ in Art Education, Vol. 45, No. 2 (March, 1992), pp. 42-48
9. vii. Lucie-Smith, Edward. Lives of the Great 20th Century Artists, 2nd Edn., (London: Thames & Hudson,1999)
10. Miller, Carol. ‘Self-Portrait on the Border Line between Mexico and the United States, Frida Kahlo, 1932’ in A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 17, No. 3 (1996), p. 101