Bleeding All Over the Landscape: A View of Several Frida Kahlo Paintings

I recently wrote an article about Frida Kahlo's life and art and some intersections between the two, which can be read in its entirety here:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2360792/filling_the_emptiness_frida_kahlos.html?cat=2

For those whose interest was piqued by this article, I am now offering this special supplementary article, in which I present some brief analyses of several Frida Kahlo paintings, based on some of the common themes discussed in my previous article.

The first Frida Kahlo painting I would like to present is "The Broken Column", a work that vividly recalls Kahlo's physical injuries and especially the corsets she was forced to wear as a result of those injuries. This painting features a self portrait of Kahlo with her entire chest split open, to reveal a cracked metal column. She is being fastened together from total disintegration by the placement of white, orthopedic-looking straps around her shoulders. Large and small nails are piecing her body and face, seemingly symbolic of her pain. This is reinforced by the presence of tears coming out of her eyes. This self portrait is standing against a desert-like, barren landscape in which even the earth is cracked. This painting seems to speak about an encompassing sense of damage and of feeling painfully alone within the context of an unforgiving landscape. Perhaps the dry, barren landscape is also meant to convey lack of fertility and Kahlo's own inability to give birth.

The next Frida Kahlo painting I would like to present is "Remembrance of an Open Wound", another self portrait, in which Kahlo is sitting with spread legs, hiking up her skirt. A foot wound is displayed and also a large gash on the inner thigh. The real life Kahlo did sustain a foot wound, but according to art critic Hayden Herrera, the thigh wound is invented and alludes to Kahlo's injured sense of self as a sexual being (Herrera 115). Her partner Diego Rivera's frequent sexual flings were allegedly very emotionally difficult for Kahlo to bear and perhaps on some level she felt that his other lovers could satisfy him in ways she could not, with her debilitated body. The physical wounds conveyed by this painting are likely closely linked to emotional wounds that are not privy to very healing conditions.

"What the Water Gave Me" is another Kahlo painting that seems to incorporate elements of both her accident and her relationship with Rivera. In this work, the damaged parts of Kahlo's body are concealed beneath the water of a bathtub and there is a rope around the body's neck. One end of this rope is tied around the wrist of a lounging masculine figure that appears to be regarding Kahlo with indifference; this figure looks like Diego Rivera (Gill 104). In this painting, Rivera is directly linked to Kahlo's injuries in that he is literally bound to her body, yet he appears to feel no sympathy or love-and certainly no lusty interest, despite the concealment of the damaged parts of her.

"Memory" is a Kahlo painting in which she appears armless and flanked by two identities-one represented by a school girl outfit and one by a Tehuana costume, each equipped with one arm. Also, one foot is on land and the other at sea. In addition to the dual identity theme, this painting also includes several references to Kahlo's injuries-an apparatus on her foot and a steel rod through a hole in her chest. The hole has been left by the vacancy of Kahlo's heart, which has been removed and placed at her feet and is bleeding all over the landscape. On both ends of the steel rod are cupids, possibly representative of Diego Rivera's frolicking nature (Herrera 112). Herrera said of this painting, "The greater the pain she wished to convey-especially pain caused by rejection from Diego-the bloodier Frida's self-portraits became" (Herrera 112). This may or may not be true. Personally, I would hypothesize that Frida Kahlo's inner turmoil was her own-and although it certainly may have been catalyzed by real life circumstances, including the inadequacies of her romantic relationships, she would have harbored significant pain to work through, even in the absence of any romantic entanglements at all.

I'd like to believe that Kahlo's powerful artwork was part of an attempt to transform her pain; to take control of her pain rather than allowing it to control her. I think that asserting oneself through creative expression can be a very meaningful way to take control and make a difference in one's own psyche.

What do you think?

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http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2360792/filling_the_emptiness_frida_kahlos.html?cat=2

Gill, Michael. Image of the Body Aspects on the Nude. New York: Doubleday, 1989

Herrera, Hayden. Frida Kahlo The Paintings. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991.