| Artist: | Kahlo, Frida |
|
|---|---|---|
| Title of Work: | Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace | |
| Date of Work: | 1940 | |
| Nationality: | Mexican | |
| Context: | Latin American Modernism | |
| Movement: | Mexican Surrealism | |
| Medium: | Oil | |
| Subject: a self-portrait painted the year she and Diego remarried (on his 54th birthday; she was 33). Determined to maintain an independent life for herself this time round, Frida now set up her own separate residence to suit her unique personality. The floor was painted a strong yellow; she displayed assorted curios, including a jar containing a fetus in formaldehyde, which she presented to visitors as her own still-born child. A paper-mache skeleton lay on the canopy of her bed; Diego called it her "lover." This iconic self-portrait reflects a strong assertion of her own self-identity. Frida owns her own gaze here. Wearing native dress to assert her cultural identity (her mother was part-Indian), she is flanked on each side by monkies with a jungle background that further references her native Indian heritage. A necklace of thorns is worn around her neck, its thorns pricking her skin and making her bleed. Kahlo always references the hurt, desiring body, whose wounds are both physical and psychological. Style: representational and abstract, symbolic and iconic. This fully frontal image is placed on a strong, central axis, like an icon or the traditional sacred altar format of a Mexican retablo painting. Kahlo sets out to create a mythic identity for herself; the self-portrait thus becomes a format for enacting her own identity as myth. 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." 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." 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 in her native Mexican reality and life experience. Kahlo's vision is her own, but it is one that has affinities with Surrealism. | ||
