![]() I still don’t know shit about Frida Kahlo. Well, I’ve done it all and I’ve learned and talked about it to many people in my capacity as a trained guide. An artist to stroll through and contemplate. I figured Frida would be just another famous artist to talk about. I just stroll through the galleries and talk about what I see. I am lucky because I can tell them about the art. They are lucky because her art is never seen. They are children from fifth grade to seniors in High School. Many of the patrons I guide through the exhibition don’t know much about art or even themselves. It is only about a painting and about me and how I finally Saw a painting. It was a photo of “The Little Deer” which is a Frida head on top of a deer body pierced with many arrows in a dying forest with a horizon of blue water in the background. Before, my only semblance of Frida Kahlo was a little page in my freshman year of College art history course. You ever seen a Frida Kahlo painting in real life? I hadn’t until the museum I volunteer guide for brought her work for an exhibition. Frida Kahlo: Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird by Frida Kahlo. Frida Kahlo’s Mexican Body: History, Identity, and Artistic Aspiration. In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States | LACMA. I painted my own reality.’ – Frida KahloĬhicago, J., Borzello, F. Givenchy’s 2010AW catwalk had a similar necklace which could have drawn inspiration from Kahlo’s painting, as well as the obvious referral to Jesus Christ.įig3 “They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. The thorns are also a direct reference to Jesus Christ and his pain and suffering. The fact that the monkey is pulling on the thorns as if to chock her, this could symbolise her entrapment and pain he caused her throughout the marriage and as the painting depicts, drawing blood from the physical and emotional pain. The monkey is a sign of evil in Mexican culture (Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil(Hidari Jingoro)) A spider monkey was once given to her by Rivera and thus the monkey in the painting could represent him. Around her neck, she wears a necklace of thorns being pulled by a monkey on her shoulder. The butterfly hair accessories and crown could represent new life and happier times upon the horizon and could possibly be alluding to resurrection in the form of transformation (GalleryIntell,2012), as Kahlo believed in this. The colour white is symbolic of purity, innocence, wholeness and completion(Scott-Kemmis,2009) Kahlo could be expressing how she truly sees herself as being innocent throughout the divorce, even tho she was the one who had an affair. Kahlo has painted herself in a plain white tunic. Fig2: Image created to show both the artist and the painting. Udall,2011) in the painting, the eyebrows that made her portraits so iconic and in 2018 a symbol of feminism. ![]() As well as this the Hummingbird represents herself as the shape of the birds’ wings mirrors the curvature of Kahlo’s eyebrow (Sharyn R. This implies there was no luck in her marriage or love affair, both relationships are dead. The hummingbird that hangs from her necklace is lifeless and has dark colouring, whereas a living hummingbird that is rich and beautifully coloured. In Mexican folklore, a bird is considered a sign of good luck with falling in love (Kahlo,2005). Throughout all her work, there is strong indigenous Mexican imagery and symbolism. Kahlo’s indigenous Mexican and Aztec culture has greatly affected her paintings and her their aesthetics. The raw emotion and symbolism of pain can be seen in her ‘Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird’ through the imagery of the dead hummingbird and her blank facial expression, whilst the trickling blood around her neck can be interpreted as her own emotional crisis. Losing her two loves led her to paint her most influential and compelling portraits. Kahlo painted this piece in 1940, after her divorce from husband Diego Rivera in 1939, the same year her affair with photographer Nickolas Muray ended. This is perhaps most relevant in her ‘Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird’ or ‘Autorretrato con Collar de Espinas’. Frida Kahlo once said her paintings carry pain with them.
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