| Artist: | Kahlo, Frida |
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|---|---|---|
| Title of Work: | The Two Fridas | |
| Date of Work: | 1939 | |
| Nationality: | Mexican | |
| Context: | Latin American Modernism | |
| Movement: | Mexican Surrealism | |
| Medium: | Oil | |
| Subject: a double self-portrait painted shortly after Diego Rivera asked her for a divorce. Frida was undergoing an emotional crisis. She shows herself split in two: one Frida wearing native Indian costume, the other wearing European dress. They are connected by a bloodline that runs from heart to heart. The Frida in white snips the bloodline so it drips blood directly over her lap (her womb). A graphic image of heartbreak in which Frida's inner suffering is turned inside-out. A turbulent sky fills the background. Focus is on inner identity and the desiring body. Style: representational and fantastic, symbolic and iconic. Kahlo referenes the traditional sacred altar format of a Mexican retablo painting. The doubling or split self and the contradictory pairing of an inner and outer reality being played out in the body suggests a Surreal vision. As she herself wrote, "I adore surprise and the unexpected. I like to go beyond realism." But she also reminds us, "I paint my own reality." Context: it is often debated whether Kahlo's work should be labeled Surrealist (suggesting a European influence or association) or as a form of magic realism that belongs more to a Latin American vision. Breton once said of Mexico, "it is already surreal." In 1939, Kahlo had just returned from a trip to Europe where the Surrealists celebrated her art. She met Duchamp, Kandinsky, and Picasso, who gave her a present of earrings in the form of enormous hands. This moment of recognition was a highpoint for Frida; it is on her return that Diego asks for the divorce, which sent her into an emotional tailspin. It is difficult to separate art from life (and myth) in Kahlo's case because her art is so painfully autobiographical. Her imagery is less about fantasy than about an exploration of her own personal reality; it is a quest for self-identity. That search leads her to the inner eye and psychic "I" that characterize Surrealism, only it is a search that is rooted not in the imagaination so much as in in her native Mexican reality and life experience. Kahlo's vision is her own, but it is one that has affinities with Surrealism. | ||
