Prebles Artforms Eighth Edition by

Prebles Artforms Eighth Edition by Patrick Frank Art Criticism/Evaluation: Frida Kahlo's the Two Fridas Frida Kahlo's the Two Fridas is a startling and intriguing self-portrait. The flat texture of the work in the style of primitivism reveals two images of the artist, both of whom are holding hands, both of which have similar facial expressions (including Kahlo's signature unibrow and bun) yet are dressed entirely differently, in a different color palate. One of the Fridas wears a white gown with a high neck.

The dress has the appearance of a highly conventional, almost Victorian traditional style of garb. The other Frida has a similarly impassive look upon her face and wears earthy, peasant clothing. Yet there is an immediate shock upon viewing the painting -- the more conventional Frida holds a pair of surgical tools, and the skin above her heart is cut out. Tendons link the exposed heart connected to the heart of the other Frida.

The work is striking symbolic, even on a first glance The painting was painted by Kahlo in 1939 soon after the divorce from her husband, her fellow Mexican painter Diego Rivera. The Two Fridas is believed to be an expression of Frida's feelings at the time. The painting indicates Frida's sense of being torn, and feeling like two women, one emotionally destroyed, one a survivor. The conventionally dressed Frida in bridal white has her heart ripped out and bleeding.

The heart of the peasant Frida, which may represent her connection to her heritage, still remains whole. This Frida has its heart exposed, but the heart is not bleeding. It represents Frida's sense of self and integrity that has not been harmed by the break-up with Rivera. The peasant-woman lives on, the woman with more conventional ideas about love and matrimony bleeds.

The painting is realistic in the sense that it is not in the abstract expressionist mode of some of Kahlo's contemporaries, but it deliberately lacks shading and perspective to create a symbolic, primitive image. The texture of the painting is flat, although Frida's gaze is oddly haunting. The color palate is mainly composed of earth tones, except for the stiffly dressed Frida's white gown. Even the blood from the heart is brownish, as are the colors of Frida's skin.

The painting is drawn from the primitivist palate embraced by both Diego Rivera and Kahlo, but the shocking images are surreal, even though the heart is painted in minute anatomical detail. The cool expression of the maimed Frida and the mirroring of this expression in the peasant Frida also create a sense of surreal disturbance, as neither Frida seems to feel physical pain or spiritual pain. They hide what is bubbling beneath the surface, a pain only made manifest to the viewer through the medium of art.

The shocking yet realistic image of surgery through the feminine implements of scissors (which are in fact surgical pinchers), the symbolic mirroring of the two women with the exposed hearts, are clearly designed to arrest the eye and draw the viewer's initial focus. The symmetry, balance and flat presentation of the two women makes the matter-of-fact dominance of the mutilation all the more jarring. The viewer feels as if he or she is being confronted with something intensely personal, a self-portrait of a woman's soul, not simply the artist's image.

Also, the idea of double nature of the artist uncenters the viewer's perception of him or herself -- it raises the question if we are all not simultaneously two people, if we embrace more than one identity within ourselves -- jilted lover and artist. Frida's use of her unique style of primitivism makes the work uniquely self-expressive. Yet there are many points of access of the work for the gazer, most notably the sense of heartbreak literally rendered.

One interpretation of the work suggests that Frida is both loved and unloved -- the more conventional Frida bleeds, and tries to staunch her wound with surgical pinchers, while the Frida in peasant dress, the artist with the connection to her Mexican heritage is still loved by herself, and does not bleed. Anyone who has ever experienced a loss, or been in a difficult relationship with mixed emotions can relate to Kahlo's sense of division.

This work is powerful testimony to the fact that self-portraits of events in the artist's life can still be rendered relevant and timeless. It also demonstrates how surrealism and primitivism can be made into personal psychological expressions that transcend cleverness or mere replications of old styles. The work should be viewed as one in a life series of self-portraits, as again and again Frida Kahlo painted self-portraits that used symbolism to express her moods and emotions.

Biographer Hayden Herrera writes in an interview: "I think she, I think part of it was a needing to know herself and to sort of make herself feel real, and in the world, and like a solid person in space somehow, that to get, not to feel so fragile. This was sort of a concrete thing. If you paint yourself, you're permanently there. And.