2 TO 3 Pages writing in 3 hours

and political chaos. Frida Kahlo, now regarded as one of the greatest artists of all time

was not always viewed as such. For many years after her early death, she was completely

forgotten. Her husband Diego Rivera remained and continues to be a well known figure in

the art community and enjoyed great popularity throughout his career. As a male artist

Diego would never have to face the kinds of personal scrutiny that Frida would. Even in

death Frida continues to have her work viewed as a personal reflection when in fact it is

exponentially more complex. Even now “myths about Frida Kahlo continue to be repeated

and their use as points of departure for autobiographical readings of Kahlo's visual

imagery still seems to be the common way of framing the artist” (Zetterman 3). Frida’s

life, always tumultuous laid a foundation for a mind alive with a fiery passion for artistic

exploration and representation. She was a master of presentation, a master at remaking her

broken body into something beautiful. Frida’s work is the epitome of keeping the viewer

out while letting her in, a perfect avenue to be in two places at once, and to experience all

things. We now realize that Frida was indeed a very important artist, but questions remain

as to why we see her in such a way. Was she simply successful because of her life’s events

or because of her own groundbreaking artistic accomplishments? How far have we come

in our appreciation for what she has given us, are we even capable of truly understanding

her art or do we still have only a surface level understanding of it?

Frida Kahlo remained largely ignored in the art world for decades after her death in

1954. She remained not only a casualty of her own tragic life but of the tragic

circumstance of a male dominated art community. Her work was not seriously studied

until the early 1980s when “years of quiet study, mainly by feminist writers, were

suddenly boosted by Madonna's interest in the painter, and a $1.5 million purchase”

(Winterson 1). As 2002’s “Frida” movie hit theatres “Serious art critics feared that the

movie would push appreciation of Kahlo's work further into the frustrating territory of

autobiography, and away from the achievement of her art” (Winterson 1). Indeed, this was

a valid concern as people had come to recognize her mono-browed image, she had become

famous. As a “society obsessed with celebrities” we show a tremendous thirst to delve into

the “the personal lives of those who achieve something that affects both celebrated men

and women alike” (Winterson 1). There exists a disconnect from the quality of Frida’s art

and her personal life. The underlying theme of Frida’s life has become her shakey personal

life and not her groundbreaking works of art.

As a young woman in 1925 Frida suffered a terrible accident. While riding on a tram

she was severely injured when the vehicle she was in crashed and caused a flying metal

rod to become lodged in her abdomen, destroying her ability to have children. In addition

to irreversible damage to her womb this accident also broke her spine, causing her to suffer

from intense back pain for the rest of her life. Ultimately “she had 32 operations during her

lifetime, and had to wear a steel corset to stand upright” (Winterson 2). Frida, for the

duration of her life would have difficulty walking and would remain unable to properly

support her own body. Her physical appearance and indeed her internal appearance were

drastically altered by this event. “When Kahlo looked into death's dark mirror, she saw

herself” (Udall 1). Frida “In the act of painting and in the resulting canvases” had

“documented her own attempts to survive pain, to make sense of it, to act out through

images layered with fantasy, irony, and allegory” Udall 1).

While this accident had a tremendous impact on her personal life it has taken on a life

of its own in describing Frida as an artist. “Critics have sometimes talked about her work

as compensation” which fundamentally distorts what Frida was attempting to do

(Winterson 2). Compensation for what exactly? Frida was an artist who happened to suffer

at the hands of a terrible accident; this had not changed her ideals or the core of who she

was. She had no intention of compensating and in fact was retaliating against this

debilitating turn of events in her life and the world at large. Frida’s “painting herself as

obsessively as she did was a way of regaining control over a body that belonged to

doctors” (Winterson 2). She strove through art to recreate herself on canvas by elaborately

“dressing up”, through her ”stylized hair and face” and “the ritual of posing” all of these

being “formalized ways of breaking free” (Winterson 2). Frida realized that “she could

never free herself from her corset or from her injuries, but she could free herself into her

own image” through her life and works that is exactly what she did (Winterson 2). A close

examination of her work shows clearly that she is never attempting to compensate, she is

actually showing us who she was, recreating what she had so terribly lost in her accident.

She “abandoned hope in her daily life” and “embedded her despair within paintings,

which, by virtue of their very existence, act as the artist's envoys in search of salvation, or

something like it” (Udall 1).

2002’s the movie Frida followed this trend of focusing primarily on the artist’s personal

life instead of her art. From the very outset of the film, Frida is painted as a deep spirited

artist who seems to not be very interested in the pursuit of art. This portrayal is of course,

incorrect but the movie goes on. The film shows Frida having her accident and then

suddenly as if a lucky act of god, becoming interested in art. Images and ideas like these

only serve to fortify the notion that Frida was compensating for her ravaged body through

her art. Throughout the film as well, Frida is shown chasing Diego Rivera, a famous

Mexican muralist, madly in love with him. While this portrayal is in many ways true, this

idea of their tumultuous love was only one aspect of her life. The film adds weight to the

idea that Frida was not a complete artist but merely a suffering shadow of a male

character. Frida emphasizes the art produced by Frida for a total of a few minutes in a

three hour film. Clearly there remains a decoupling of the truth and legend in Frida’s

history.

After her accident Frida “lay in a four-poster bed with a small mirror hanging from it”

(Winterson 3). She gazed into this mirror and saw only herself. What she saw she painted

and continued to paint for the rest of her life gaining a distinct perspective. She was unable

to “look outside, and so she looked inside” (Winterson 3). In her bed nothing passed Frida

by but “she could not be a young man up a stepladder painting the world” and so she

would have to make art in a way that was indicative to her. (Winterson 3). Her perspective

did not produce art to be used to compensate for her predicament; it produced art to

retaliate against it. Just as her husband Diego would be out in the world climbing step

ladders to produce world class works of art, Frida would climb out of her bed to do the

same. Frida gave us a unique perspective, one that only she could provide us with, she

looked very personally inside while all others had been looking outside. She made smaller

personal paintings as the world focused on larger format paintings, but her size format

made the works more intimate and indeed much more personal.

Time Flies Painted in 1929, Kahlo’s Time Flies is a self exploratory piece. One of the

many portraits that she would produce in her life, it explores the many aspects of herself

and is a reflection of events occurring in her life at the time of the painting. In this as with

many of her pieces there are ”several ironies involved” (Udall 2). Appropriating “elements

from an Old World, Old Master painting in the New World; she is neither old, nor (being

female) a "master," nor is she clear at this point in her life about her own artistic heritage”

(Udall 2). Always an artistic explorer she dabbles in the intricacies of personal identity,

“personal and artistic” (Udall 2). In this piece there is a clock resting on a wooden column,

similar in length to Frida’s own spinal column, “further reinforcing the interpretation of

the clock and its pedestal as some kind of mechanical alter-ego, looking over her shoulder

and marking time” (Udall 2). Kahlo, “whose own shattered spinal column supplied only

fragile support, could rely on these other columns for metaphorical support” (Udall 2).

Other references in Time Flies carry double meanings. The center stone of her necklace is

inscribed with the Aztec glyph for movement “with connotations of beginnings or

newness” (Udall 2). This symbol was also appropriate for another new beginning in her

life, with her marriage to Diego Rivera in that year.

Frida Kahlo had a desire for her paintings to be substantial or “modern, original” and,

“without precedent” (Udall 7). Frida wanted her work to exist throughout time without its

interpretations being changed by its passage. Her work would exist “outside time, like

some ancient, essential truth”, a cornerstone of art itself (Udall 7). For Kahlo to achieve

such monumental duality she incorporated elements from “her nation's ancient past” that

“unequivocally announced the 20th century” (Udall 7). This is the real basis of her work,

to create a new reality. Kahlo's self-portraits are typically “reduced to being created out of

vanity” when this perspective is taken, the “relationship of these works to the ideological

context in which they were made is ignored” (Zetterman 7). Frida took art from the

representation of the outside world and brought it inside, to the representation of self and

beyond. She took this new idea further by extending it into the past and throughout the

entirety of her life to touch upon everything. In the world of art almost for the first time

Frida had change the very meaning of art itself. What her art ultimately does is “to

condense other realities--historic, nationalistic, mythic, and symbolic--into its own”

whereby her art “finally becomes its own reality” (Udall 7).

Frida Kahlo who produced “only about 200 paintings” throughout her life has been

incorrectly labeled as an artist with limited vision (Tuchman 1). Her 200 paintings

consisted primarily of “still lifes and portraits of herself, family and friends” (Tuchman 1).

With her technique she “created haunting, sensual and stunningly original paintings that

fused elements of surrealism, fantasy and folklore into powerful narratives” (Tuchman 1).

Bucking against the “20th-century trend toward abstract art” Frida Kahlo’s work “was

uncompromisingly figurative” a definitive departure from what the world was producing

(Tuchman 1). Now regarded as one of the greatest artists of all time she is beginning to be

seen for what she was; a forward thinking artist capable of much more than simple

personal presentation. Frida’s tumultuous life produced an ability unparalleled for artistic

exploration and representation. She became a master of presentation, a master at remaking her broken body into something beautiful. We are now just beginning to understand

Frida’s capabilities as an artist. By continuing to view her as complete artist and not just an

effect of a string of unfortunate events we can truly appreciate her contributions to the

world of art and culture.