[MUSIC] Here we have two wonderful self portraits by Frida Kahlo. Her Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair of 1940, and Fulang Chang and I of three years earlier. Today we're going to consider how she presents different aspects of her femininity. >> Frida Kahlo is famous for her beautiful yet confronting self portraits. Kahlo was a Mexican artist who was born in 1907. Married to the famous muralist, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo painted over 140 works of which 55 were self-portraits. Famous for her self-portraits, Kahlo once said, I paint myself because I am often alone and because I am the subject that I know best. She's also a major figure for many feminists because she painted her own experiences as a woman with amazing honesty and directness. Many of these painting focus on her body, and the physical and psychological pain she underwent as a result of a serious accident when she was a young woman. Many of her paintings are emotionally confronting and noted for their vibrant intense colours and exquisite use of line and form. Her work is sometimes described as naive, sometimes as surrealist. When Andre Breton, the famous French surrealist declared that Frida was a surrealist, she rejected this idea on the grounds that she did not paint dreams. She said, they thought I was a surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams, I painted only my own reality. In 1938, Breton described Kahlo's work as a ribbon around a bomb. A number of Kahlo's self-portraits depict her with a monkey or monkeys peeping from behind her shoulder, as in Self-Portrait with Monkey of 1940 and Self-Portrait with Small Monkey of 1945. Kahlo's Fulang Chang and I, which hangs here at MoMA, depicts Kahlo with one of her pet spider monkeys, a gift from Diego. At first glance, it seems innocent and charming. As we will see, animals formed an essential part of Kahlo's world as an artist. Various critics have argued that in Frida's self-portraits with monkeys, the monkey symbolises a surrogate child. The one she was unable to conceive with her husband, Diego as a result of her accident. Kahlo certainly paints her monkeys and other animals with respect and tenderness. Her treasured animals played an important part in her life, and she kept a large number of them. An eagle, parakeets, macaws, hens, a dog, and even a fawn, many of which she incorporated into her paintings. The question of whether or not her monkeys symbolise surrogate children is in many ways quite sexist, as well as anthropocentric or human cantered. It undercuts the more important fact that Kahlo had a very close relationship with animals. She did not use her art to define animals and humans as separate, but rather to dissolve the barrier we have erected between human and non-human animals. Much writing and philosophy, religion and literature is devoted to representing animals as other. In order to define what it means to be human, not so for Frida Kahlo. She is in many ways a forerunner of the present movement amongst many artists to use their art in order to emphasise the similarities not the differences between human and animal. If we look closely at Fulang Chang And I, we see a lavender ribbon that links the two figures. Here her bright colours and primitive style reveals the influence of indigenous Mexican culture. In Mexican culture the monkey is said to symbolise lust. But Kahlo painted them with affection and a focus on the interconnectedness that existed between herself and other creatures. In Fulang Chang and I, Frida paints herself holding the monkey close to her own body. The colour of her long, dark hair is similar to the colour of the monkey's fur and the colour of her trademark eyebrows, which she drew almost as a long unbroken line. Art curator, Veronica Roberts suggests that Fulang Chang and I is, among other things, a reverent ode to hair. The hairy body of the monkey and the woolly white haired cacti surrounding Kahlo accentuate her famous monobrow and her moustache. What other artists, Roberts asks, would draw attention to the way her facial features resemble an animal's? Roberts' observation emphasises another technique Kahlo used to emphasise the bond she felt between herself and her animals. The lightly painted background of tropical plants enclosed the two figures as if in a forest. What other aspects of the painting stand out for you? Kahlo gave this painting to her close friend Mary Schapiro Sklar, who was a sister of the noted art historian, Meyer Schapiro. At the same time she also gave Mary a mirror which possessed a very small similar frame to that of the painting. Frida said to Mary that she wanted her to hang the mirror next to the painting, so that whenever Mary looked at her own reflection in the mirror she would see herself and Frida together. Frida's gift of the painting and the mirror connected through their frames tells us a great deal about Frida herself. If the surrealists tried to break down the barriers between reality and dreams, Frida literally did so through her artistic practice. Her friend Mary would see Frida, the monkey, and herself, together bound by the two frames hanging on the same wall. In her work Frida often found creative ways to link her subjects together, as here in the painting of Fulang Chang and I, where she uses a ribbon to tie her body to that of the spider monkey. Although the mood of the self-portrait is calm and composed, it nonetheless captures an emotional depth through her steady, unfathomable gaze for which Kahlo was famous. She looks at us as much as we look at her. As many critics have remarked, Kahlo's work was characterised by the tempestuous events of her life, and of her marriage and relationships with men and women. So much so that her paintings cannot be fully understood and appreciated separately from her life. Although the spider monkey sits quietly, and Frida has a pensive expression, there is a slight sense of unease suggested by the way the artist has portrayed herself as a part of nature rather than apart from nature. This suggestion of a closed world, of an intimate bond between Kahlo and her various monkeys, is central to these self-portraits. These portraits also go against traditional notions of what constitutes the proper subject matter of what it called high art. The sense of unease is much more direct in Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird of 1940. Here Kahlo's self-portrait is more heavily symbolic. The artist, her brows and moustache accentuated, again looks out at the viewer. This time a monkey on one shoulder and a black cat on the other. Around her neck hangs a thorn necklace in which the fragile body of a dead hummingbird has been caught. The cat appears to be waiting to pounce on the bird. The thorns that dig into her skin perhaps signify the pain she still feels after her divorce from Diego. In the background we see tropical plants, leaves, and fragile butterflies. The symbolism of the work portrays themes of entanglement, pain, and death. It is only her animal companions whom she lets share her life and torment. Kahlo encircles herself with creatures, who are represented as an intricate and essential part of her world. Kahlo uses her self-portraits as a form of personal expression, in which this expression itself becomes her art. She does not sexualise or eroticise herself. Rather, she uses her art to undermine conventional expectations of femininity, as we see in Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair of 1940 and the constructed nature of the image. The way in which she returns the gaze, defiantly in some works, also emphasises her defiance of the normal conventions of sect-portraiture. Jeanette Winterson writes, Kahlo's gaze is not just a pose, it poses questions. How do I see myself? How do I look? What do you see? How do you see me? We could also add, in relation to this portrait, and how do you see my spider monkey? Winterson writes that Kahlo did not try to provide answers. What do you think? [MUSIC]
