I have been lucky to see this wonderful complete exhibition of Frida Kahlo at the Palazzo Quirinale in Rome. From the exhibition I extracted several key ideas in Frida Kahlo's work.
Firstly she had her own personal vision of the world, she portrayed herself and people she knew, she was open about her sexuality in her painting. Through her work we can see she was questioning ideas of self love, the importance of gender, her strong link to Mexican history, ancient history and folklore; she was very much linked to the environment that surrounded her but also used Catholic iconography in her paintings and was inspired by Italian artists. In her paintings she often used an inscribed banderole (a ribbon-like scroll) and tied-back drapes as used by 19th century Mexican painters at the bottom or top of the paintings to describe the sitter in the portrait or the meaning or purpose of the painting. Also she used tied-back drapes in the background like them as you can see below. Adolfo Best Maugard and his book about bringing back Mexican art to it's native roots in 1923 influenced her strongly.
Her background is very interesting; her father was a Hungarian Intellectual from a Jewish family ( his family moved to Germany), her mother was part Indian from Oaxaca; she was a combination of European and Indian known as mestizo, meaning mixed, and most of her life she lived in the Blue House where she was born. The colours in her work are very vibrant, but there is pain in her work as in her life. I did wonder if this 'pain' aspect in her life was actually being played by her, did she see herself as a martyr or was she playing a part or was it actually how she felt? I feel more inclined on the last option as the genuine one, but I felt a discrepancy between a lot of her work, where there is strong sorrow and pain, and the photos of herself in the exhibitions, smiling and surrounded by friends - it seemed in contrast with the paintings. In her work she writes her own story. I see her portraits as visual illustration books where she shows all the important things that happened in her life or that have badly affected her, and also the people that influenced her, while also engaging with her country, Mexico, and it's past history.
She, like Diego, loved buying Mexican artifacts; she collected Indian crafts and art pieces; also she was the first woman to have tried psychoanalysis. There are drawings in the exhibition (art therapy drawings suggested by her practitioner to help her with her depression) made by Frida in her later years depicting this period. She had lots of mirrors in her house where she would observe herself as an object; reflection and duality are shown in her paintings, reflecting herself in the mirror to affirm her existence, which then gets used in the portrait as self defence; even the costume, the jewellery, the animals in her painting seem to me to show her way of affirming herself and protecting herself with things or animals she loved, as she felt lonely. I do find that her work is open to interpretation due to the different strong symbols in her paintings and one might even project one's own interpretation on the paintings, for example in the painting My Nurse (oil on metal 1937) there is a mother and child theme; some people find this moving, others think it's predominantly about fear; others think it's based on Christian iconography of the Madonna and Child. I do think too she was inspired by Italian art and Christian iconography but she turns it on its head making it her own.
One of the most important events in her life was on the 17 of September 1925 when the bus she was on with her then boyfriend, Alejandro Gomez Arias, crashed and she suffered terrible injuries. Arias discovered that Frida had a metal rod going through her abdomen. I have read that it was taken out by someone on the spot with no anaesthetics, awfully her spine was shattered in multiple areas, but I don't think she lost her virginity from a rod in the accident, as is suggested in some books; I think this happened earlier but she might have associated death with sex. Frida had to undergo 32 operations in her life and had three miscarriages.
In the exhibition there is a painting of Arias, and one of the buildings outside the hospital that she saw from her window. There is a self portrait from 1926, her first self portrait which she painted after her accident as she was confined to a bed and was said to be feeling bored and obviously painting would have helped her, taking her mind away from the pain. The portrait is influenced by Italian Renaissance artists such as Botticelli & Bronzino's Eleonora di Toldeo. It has strong European influence due to the longer features, the dressing gown, and smooth skin; this is in contrast with the later portraits which show a strong connection to Mexico and the Aztec culture. But one thing is unique in this portrait from Renaissance painting, firstly it was done by a woman painter, secondly the deep gaze of her dark brown eyes which is in opposition to the languid looks of the Renaissance paintings.
After the accident Frida met Diego, a communist who had serial affairs, a womaniser throughout his life, but then again she had them too, they married in 1922. Diego will be her guide in paintings, also telling her to look in the past history of Mexico for inspiration. In the exhibition I felt his strong presence both inside Frida Kahlo's painting and also in the photographic exhibition of her; he is always present and there are also his paintings, including one of them which is at the beginning of the exhibition and is called Cactus. Ella Wolfe said of Diego 'that for him sex was like urinating' so while Frida had countless operations, both skeletal on her spine and also gynaecological, Diego was continuously having affairs but it's been said he was also very affectionate, generous, and warm but ultimately I don't think she was ever able to get rid of him emotionally, to separate herself from him, although his positive remarks at the beginning pushed and encouraged Frida to paint more.
Another thing I noticed in the exhibition, and this is about her paintings, is that she liked to paint on metal, meaning a smooth hard surface rather then a canvas which is woven; this is due to the fact that her paintings are very small. I think a larger canvas is more suitable for larger paintings. I was actually shocked about how small some of her paintings actually are, for example Henry Ford Hospital 1932 oil is done on metal during her period in the States she spent 4 years there there is one painting that shows more clearly the duality between life in Mexico and the USA where she is wearing a pink dress.
There is also a surrealist influence in her work which is clearly noticeable in the painting 'What the Water Gave me', 1938 oil on canvas, combined with elements of Hieronymus Bosch. Her work is detailed, the iconography in the painting is sexual (two women on a mattress), combined with a bit of Gothic horror (silent expression horror movies Nosferatu maybe?1922) where her feet are in a bathtub of nightmares, a Tehuana dress is floating in the water, there is a lot of personal information but at the same time it's also self referential- is it giving a hint about her bisexuality?
One of my favourite paintings in the exhibition is the Self -Portrait with Thorns and Hummingbird 1940. Frida is looking out with sad eyes with her pet monkey (on one shoulder), called Caimito de Guayabal and her black cat. The hummingbird on the necklace stands for the reincarnation of dead soldiers, the butterflies seem more unearthly due to their light colour and are to do with mythical imagery from the Aztecs, but it has vivid colours ( see picture below on the left) unlike Self Portrait with Monkey 1945 (picture below on the right), where the tones are muted to show depression: the vegetation is dense and claustrophobic, it's dry, dead, there is no nourishment inside the painting unlike previous paintings, in this painting the monkey clings to her, she has a sad expression in her eyes.
.jpg)
In the 1940's Frida was ill and spent a long period in bed when she reacted by painting the Little Deer in 1946. In Aztec mythology the Deer stands for the right foot and hand; these were the parts of Frida's body that were in pain.
Again with this self-portrait she is affirming herself in the world and leaving a legacy of her story for posterity.
In the middle of the exhibition there are many photos of Frida with her friends. Between the portraits made by her and the photos I noticed she wore a lot of ruffled skirts and embroidered blouses which were from Isthmus of Tehuantepec, to show her Mexican identity, but also to hide her limp on the injured right leg.
Another powerful image is that 'Of me and My Doll,' painted in 1937, when she had another miscarriage. In the painting she is not holding a baby in her arms but is sitting next to an ugly ceramic doll. She is smoking with her hand in her lap (defiant posture) and looking straight at the viewer, a sad expression in her eyes. Another similar painting to this one which I liked a lot is that of her and her pet dog called 'Itzucuintli dog with me', 1938. Here again she is not touching her dog but is separated from him, has a sad expression, alone smoking. One gets the feeling by the way the animals are positioned on the canvas in her paintings that 'they can move' or leave unlike her and they offer her companionship while she is always shown as fixed, immobile, like a Goddess.
Frida's still lives which were also on show in the exhibition are full of sexual references eg 'Still life' 1942, where the papaya is half slashed and seems again a portrait of her physical body. There are also allusions to the life/death cycle, and to earth. Frida also shows flowers as female or male genitals to do with fertility, there is a yin yang presence in her work, light and dark, male and female, life, death which define the world, the sun and the moon. Duality is predominant in her work which goes back to the PreColombian notion of the sun and the moon, between light and dark, sun as in the masculine element and the moon the feminine element..
The self portrait of the 'Border Line Between Mexico and The United States 1932', where the sun and the moon are both present in the painting and where Frida is seen holding the flag of Mexico, shows that her heart is not with the industrial, fast mechanical USA (the American flag is covered in smoke). Mexico and America are shown as separate spaces but the sun and the moon of Mexico are real. Mexico is shown with rubble, exotic plants with pre-Colombian fertility idols, a country rich in history, while the USA is shown covered in smoke and machines with Ford written on it. The painting is ironic, she is shown as a statue attached to two rods one to Mexico the other to the USA but the generator goes to her and to the exotic plants.
She is wearing a sweet pink dress (the painting is very small) but her nipples are showing through the dress and she is holding again a cigarette in an act of defiance...
Frida Kahlo in one of her diaries talked about the use of vibrant colours and she described them in different ways: Cobalt blue standing for purity of love and electricity.. Magenta: the Aztec colour old Tlapali, the blood of the prickly pear, the oldest and brightest. Leaf Green: science, leaves, sadness, Germany. Yellow: madness, sickness, fear. Green: good warm light then she describes dark green as the colour of good business and bad advertising. Greenish yellow: more madness and mystery. Red blood? Navy blue, distance but also tenderness.
I will end with a picture of Kahlo's Blue House now a Museum and one of Kahlo's prose poems taken from her diary.
My Diego:
Mirror of the night.
Your eyes green swords inside my flesh,
waves between our hands.
All of you in a space full of sounds –
in the shade and in the light.
You were called AUXCHROME the one who captures color.
I CHROMOPHORE - the one who gives color.
You are all the combinations of numbers. life.
My wish is to understand lines form shades movement.
You fulfill and I receive.
Your word travels the entirety of space and reaches my cells
which are my stars then goes to
yours which are my light.
Ghosts.
No comments:
Post a Comment