Rembrandt and Kahlo: Comparing Two Iconic Self-Portraits

Introduction: Two Artists, Two Visions

Both Rembrandt van Rijn and Frida Kahlo were artists who redefined the subject matter and style of painting for their respective generations. Although profoundly different in their sensibilities, historical circumstances, and personalities, both tackled the difficult task of fashioning an image of themselves upon canvas. Rembrandt, in fact, was particularly famous for painting and repainting his image at different junctures of his life (Martin & Jacobus 93). His 1659 oil-on-canvas work, entitled simply Self-Portrait, is characteristic of the unadorned, spare style of portraiture that defined this Dutch artist's realistic approach. In contrast, the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo's oil-on-masonite Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird of 1940 is a surrealist flight of fancy that aims to create a psychic, rather than a literal, self-portrait.

Background and Compositional Space

Rembrandt's desire to focus the viewer's eye solely on his physical self is manifest in the fact that his Self-Portrait consists only of a foreground and background. There is a deliberate lack of complexity in the dark background, which directs attention solely to the artist's image. In contrast, Kahlo's foreground — her face along with the tropical animals and plants — is set against a wild array of leaves and greenery. The lighter leaves behind Kahlo's image draw the viewer's eye toward the middle ground of the painting, while the pointed leaves direct the eye further toward the background sky, thereby deemphasizing Kahlo's face and causing the viewer to focus on her surroundings.

Realism Versus Surrealism in Self-Portraiture

Despite the absence of a middle ground in the 1659 Self-Portrait, Rembrandt's painting aims to give a strikingly realistic view of the artist's own image. Rembrandt was considered revolutionary in his day because of his rejection of idealism. He paints his bulbous nose and his wrinkles without descending into grotesqueness or attempting to conceal his flaws. Rather, he is fascinated by those flaws but does not revel in them — he exposes them for what they are and transforms them into an object of objective artistic study and scrutiny. Kahlo's surrealism, by contrast, attempts a portraiture of the artist's inner dream life rather than an exterior realism. The monkey and the cat that evidently preoccupy Kahlo's mind are shown and given as much compositional emphasis as the construction of her face.

Conclusion: Control, Expression, and the Viewer's Gaze

Thus Rembrandt's Self-Portrait, for all of its radical innovation in chiaroscuro, ultimately exerts far more control over the viewer than does Kahlo's Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird. Kahlo's expansive use of middle-ground and background imagery deemphasizes the physical subject of the artist and instead draws the viewer into the mind and world of the artist. She does not simply instruct the viewer to gaze at her self-portrait and see only a woman artist in physical terms.

Martin, F. David, and Lee A. Jacobus. The Humanities through the Arts. 7th ed., pp. 93–95.