| Artist: | Kahlo, Frida |
|
|---|---|---|
| Title of Work: | The Little Deer | |
| Date of Work: | 1946 | |
| Nationality: | Mexican | |
| Context: | Latin Amercian Modernism | |
| Movement: | Mexican Surrealism | |
| Medium: | Oil | |
| Subject: a self-portrait that reflects dream logic in the condensation of Frida's head on a deer's body. Kahlo depicts herself as a wounded creature that is "marvelous" in that surreal sense: fantastic and horrific at one and the same time. A calm, serene Frida looks out at us while the deer's body drips blood from the many arrows that have pierced it, shot by some unknown hunter. She thus emphasizes the hurt body, once again referencing her own history of illness and psychic distress played out on the body. Stricken with polio at age 6, her right leg was noticeably thinner than the other leg. On Sept. 17, 1925, during the Mexican National Day celebration, an eighteen year old Frida suffered a horrible accident when the bus she was riding in collided with a streetcar. Frida was impaled on the rod of a metal handrail; she almost died. While recuperating, she started painting and re-defining herself. This iconic self-portrait reflects the lifelong pain Frida endured (she suffered miscarriages and later her right leg had to be amputated). The fantastic, wooded setting seems to have trapped the deer-woman; the only exit or way out is behind her, seemingly beyond her view, but even there lightning breaks out across the sky. It is as if nature were acting out her own inner hurts and feelings of being trapped within a wounded body. Kahlo always references the hurt, desiring body, whose wounds are both physical and psychological. Style: representational and fantastic, symbolic and iconic. This frontal image is placed on a strong, central axis, like an icon or the traditional sacred altar format of a Mexican retablo painting. Using dream logic strategies of displacement and condensation, Kahlo sets out to create a mythic identity for herself; the self-portrait thus becomes a format for enacting her own identity as myth and martyr. 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. | ||
