An up and coming photographer though of only high school age is Aiyanna Aponte Photography (just a plug for her as I plan to hire her should my proposal for Changing the Face of Beauty works)
However, I dedicate this post to my Spanish professor Jorge Saab who has introduced us to a great many artists and information. Though I struggle in the class despite what he says, I am grateful to him for many reasons and one of which is introducing us to new cultures and films. And so for my last entry I have chosen Frida Kahlo.
Frida was born in Mexico, though she claims to have been born when the Mexican revolution began(1910) this is not the truth. She was three years old at the start of it but she wanted to be aligned with this movement so much because she believed strongly in it.
During her early life in Mexico her father, Guillermo (Wilhelm), encouraged her to be active despite contracting polio and suffering from a thinner limp right leg. He believed that it would help her recovery, however, girls playing sports was not very common at this time in Mexico
After her tragic accident where a pole literally cut through her spinal column she began painting. Bed ridden for approximately three months she was her own muse. As she would later explain she painted what she knew best and what she knew best was herself.
The image, The Column, is in many ways moving and yet in others a painful thing to view. At first the painting had Frida Completely naked however, she did not want to detract from the pain that she was feeling. She wanted to express it fully and for people to understand what had happened to her and what she was feeling. In this painting the column represents her spinal cord which was broken in a few locations. The nails representing the many agonizing surgeries she had to endure to remain alive, something the doctors never thought she would do. And the larger nail in her heart representing her broken heart. When I first saw this image I immediately saw the column as a rifle however, when I looked closer I realized what it was.
Tom Lubbok calls her “The
Great Bad Artist” who cannot paint. He
believes that she exploits the features for which she was born with and the
struggles she endured while growing up as well as her turbulent marriage to
Diego Rivera (Havard, 2006). However,
who is he to lay such a claim and even if this is true who is he to state that
the art she creates is not good? Artists
take from their life that which will invoke thought. Is it that when Frida paints she paints her
pain which he feels should be masked, “but how can we agree to let women
express herself when our whole way of life is a mask designed to hide our
intimate feelings?” (Paz, 1952)
“Her stoic gaze is assertive, even aggressive in the way it returns the
look. At the same time, she alternates
anxiously between projecting her mestiza and European identities, her
Diegomaniac and lesbian tendencies, her saldadera and weeping wife
personae. In short, the stereotype is
multiple and it provides and ambivalent mask or masks behind which Kahlo can
hide” (Havard, 2006, p. 244)
 |
| Henry Ford Hospital, 1932 |
As a woman who can at
least relate to one of her pieces of work, Henry Ford Hospital, I see her work
a bit differently. I see it as not
hiding but coming out. I see her
expressing her pain and her sadness without fear of being persecuted for
it. I see her trying to come to grips
with the life she has endured.
She was a strong woman not just because of everything she had to endure between the polio and then the accident which would leave her almost in constant pain for the rest of her life but because she was not afraid to be who she was. She didn't hide her love, her sexualism, her lesbianism, her opinions and even her pain. Though to Octavio Paz he suggests that "Mexicans are forever hiding behind social guises and creating walls between themselves and others, unable to face up to their individual or collective identity" (Havard, 2006, p. 5). But at a time when women were meant to be seen and not heard she seemed to be seen and heard and though most of her fame has taken place post mortem which unfortunately seems to be typical of many artists she is still a force to be reckoned with
 |
| Frida Kahlo |
In the two pieces I am choosing to feature here on this blog I feel they speak so loudly of the pain she went through. I feel that she survived her accident in order to tell a story in which she suffered a great deal but lived life to the fullest and refused to surrender to what society expected of women at the time. In her last entry into her diary she writes "I hope the exit is joyful - and I hope never to return - Frida."(http://www.fridakahlofans.com/chronologyenglish.html)
Whether this is refering to her death or to her visit to the hospital is one that is argued due to the way people translate from Spanish to English. However, these words are still powerful either way. She had spent so much time in and out of hospitals as her health was never 100%. If it indeed was about life in general it only seems to support her paintings which were filled with pain.
Interesting videos about Frida:
Bibliography for Images:
Frida and Diego: http://chagalov.tumblr.com/post/1140161561/frida-kahlo-and-diego-rivera-mexico-1933
Henry Ford Hospital: http://arthistory.about.com/od/from_exhibitions/ig/frida_kahlo/fk200708_03.htm
Bibliography:
Havard, Lucy A. (2006). Frida Kahlo, Mexicanidad and Mascaras: The Search For Identity In
Postcolonial Mexico. Romance Studies,
24(3), 241-251
Latimer, Joanna (2009). Unsettling bodies:
Frida Kahlo’s portraits in/dividuality. The
Editorial Board of the Sociological Review, 46-62
Lent, Tina, (2007). Life as Art/Art as Life:
Dramatizing the Life and Work of Frida Kahlo. Journal of Popular Film and Television, 68-76
McCaughan, Edward, J. (2007). Navigating the
Labyrinth of Silence: Feminist Artists in Mexico. Social
Justice, 34(1), 44-62
Rankin, Gwenyth (2006). Rethinking The Creative
Space, Feminism and the ‘Forgotten’ Artist. Australian
Feminist Studies, 21(51), 379-388
Reis, Levilson C.(2011). Paratexts To Frida
Kahlo’s Oeuvre: The Relationship Between The Visual And The Textual, The Self
And The Other From The Self-Portraits To The Diary Entries. Forum for Modern Language Studies,48(1),
99-111, doi: 10.1093/fmls/cqro40
Ruiz-Alfaro, Sofia (2012). From Chavela to
Frida: Loving from the Margins. Journal
of Homosexuality,59(8), 1131-1144
(Link
to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2012.712818)
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