[MUSIC] Frida Kahlo's small self portrait with cropped hair follows the Retablo format of many of her works. Retablo's a form of popular folk art in Mexico. Painting in a small format on tin. They are highly decorative but also strangely unsettling to the viewer, as they present ironic commentary on life's contradictions. Often representing scenes that have an ironic or shocking quality that is heightened by a disturbing homily or quote from a popular song or saying, in this small picture we see Carlo dressed in one of Diego's suits. She is seated in the centre of the composition on a yellow chair. Frida has herself represented here in the process of cutting off her hair. She is paused in the act of hacking off her crowning glory as she sits as though she has a mirror before her. Admiring the results of her labours with the scissors still in her hand. Framing the image are words written across the top of the composition. Look, if I loved you it was because of your hair. Now that you are without hair, I don't love you anymore. Hair colour has transformed her gendered identity from that of a feminized subject, to a more masculine self. She's taken away the Frida that Diego loved and made herself over into a different and almost unrecognisable Frida, who now withdraws her charms from her unfaithful husband. >> The art historian WJT Mitchell asks a very important question in an article of the same name. What do pictures want? Mitchell's is very complex, but in essence he argues that we talk all the time about what pictures do, we talk about the power of pictures over us, the way pictures make us feel, the emotions that pictures evoke in us, as if pictures were alive. He says perhaps it is time to stop talking about what pictures do and instead ask what pictures want. Mitchell says that he wants to shift the debate from one of power to one of desire along the lines of the famous questions posed by Freud, who asked, what do women want? And Frantz Fanon, who asked, what does the Black person want? Freud's and Fanon's questions thus gave power, or rather desire to the other, the subordinate figure in society. Mitchell wants in a similar way to give agency to the picture. He says that it is crucial that we do not confuse the desire that we picture with the desires of the artist. The beholder or even the figures in the picture, what pictures want is not the same as the message they communicate. Or the effect they produce. Mitchell is very critical of those who try to impose a particular school of criticism on pictures, such as one that elevates pictures as part of the great tradition, or one that democratises pictures as images or texts. Mitchell says, what pictures want is simply to be asked what they want. The understanding that the answer may well be nothing at all. Pictures want to be seen as complex individuals occupying multiple subject positions and identities. It is crucial to engage in a dialogue with pictures, to see the picture from all perspectives, to start with the picture. Let's consider the two MoMA paintings in the context of Mitchell's question, what do pictures want? Frida Kahlo's Self portrait with cropped hair and Fulang Chang y Yo or Fulang Chang and I. In both these works, Frida represents herself in a manner which challenged contemporary ideals of femininity. But what do the pictures really want? I'll now ask Professor Barbara Creed to give us her thoughts on this matter. >> I think Mitchell's, the way he's turned the debate around is really interesting and to think in terms of what do the pictures want because. It really, that, that question does ask, gives you engage with the pictures themselves, rather than perhaps imposing on the pictures what you know about the artist's intentions. Because of course the artist may well want to achieve certain things in a picture and achieve something quite different as the famous saying goes, always trust the tale, not the teller. Or trust the painting, not the painter. And in looking at Kahlo's pictures, I think this question of Mitchell's really opens the pictures up in a quite different way. Because we do know so much about Frida Kahlo's own life. It's probably tempting to want to read a lot of what happened into her paintings because they are so autobiographical. But if for example we take Fulang Chang and I, to think about what the picture wants is really quite challenging because when you first look at it you think, yes, this is a painting along the style of the Renaissance Madonna and Child, and she's setting out to be quite confrontational. But at another level, the picture, I think, it wants us to think, maybe she did too, I don't know, but It certainly wants us to think about the way in which Kahlo herself is bound to the monkey, that the monkey is an intimate companion. She has that ribbon that ties or runs between herself and the little spider monkey. She creates that sense of intimacy which the portrait very gently suffuses us with. It's hard not to escape that sense of intimacy. And I think that question then of Mitchell's helps us better understand the way she wants to construct the relationship between herself and the little spider monkey. The way she emphasises her long hair and her straight line of her eyebrows. I mean the focus on her hair, and the monkey's hair, also creates or adds to this intimacy, which the picture very simply speaks to us about. >> Mm. There's also a real sense of tranquility and calm I think in the picture that's quite almost uncanny. >> Yes I'd agree, definitely. And this is enhanced perhaps by the forest of cacti in the background. >> Yes. >> Which also has this sort of fine white hair coming off the cacti. It's as if woman and animal and nature are all unified together. >> Yes. >> Part of each other. So we get this strong sense coming from the picture. I like thinking of it in that way rather than thinking of the intimacy the artist has perhaps given the picture, but to think in terms of it, coming from the picture, the picture's desire so to speak. >> Mm. What about the self portrait with cropped hair? >> Of course in this particular work, it's difficult not to read it without the inscription that appears in top right. >> Yes. >> Of the picture in the top section of the picture. Which is apparently a quote from the folk song. Which in my poor Spanish, ‘Mira que si te quise fue por el pelo Ahora que estas pelona, ya no te quiero.’ Something like look, if you love me it was for my hair. Now that I am bald, you don't love me. So Kahlo was of course using the tradition of the Retablo here, which was a folk tradition of painting after on tin that reproduced sometimes stories of the Saints. Often stories of the Saints. These pictures were located behind small altars in usually small Churches. And they often were about the dramas relating to the lives of the Saints. That they could also relate to secular subjects and in this case, they do appear to be, they're obviously about the trials that Frida herself has recently been undergoing in her divorce from her husband Diego Rivera. >> Yes, I think. Mitchell's question here is also very pertinent and helps you look at the picture a little differently. For me, looking at it, yes, I'm aware that this is painted after the divorce, and obviously it was a time for Frida of great grief and sorrow, being separated from Diego. When I think of it in terms of what does the picture want, my feeling is the picture actually doesn't want me to enter in. I feel like I want to offer consolation of some sort, sympathy. But the look on Frida's face is so sort of strong, and there seems to be a sense that the picture won't let me enter and I'm cut off. >> Mm. >> Just perhaps as she wanted to be cut off. >> And it's quite defiant in a way, isn't it? Her stance in front of the mirror. >> Yes. >> Is quite defiant. And she's cut her long tresses off, she's almost sort of disfigured herself. In a way and she's wearing a man’s suit, which is probably we think Diego's suit. I recall that there was an earlier photograph when she was young. When she was about 13 year which her father took of her. He was a photographer. Of her in a man's suit, and she looks very jaunty by comparison in a suit on that particular occasion. >> Yes, and I think it's interesting too, because this is a fantastic example of a picture. That perhaps once the viewer to respond differently in different eras because of course today now Frida Kahlo's persona as androgynous has had enormous appeal to the gay and the queer community. And perhaps not read quite like that when it was painted, but now the picture seems to want to encourages us to see Kahlo's as someone whose sexuality is fluid. >> Mm-hm. >> She very easily can don a man's suit and cut her hair. Yet she still looks, from my point of view, incredibly beautiful. There's only one little trapping of so called femininity left there with a little earring. But otherwise she sits with the scissors, showing I've cut my hair off. >> Almost sort of castrating, it could be saying. >> Yes. It's kind of saying to Diego to, so you love me for my beautiful hair, well it's all gone now and you can't love me any more. And it's kind of also, as I said earlier, that sort of sense that's she's creating that she's not going to let you in. [SOUND]. But now, many, many spectators and new viewers of the picture In the 21st century look at this also as a statement about the fluidity of gender boundaries as well and the appeal of the sort of androgynous looking figure that Kahlo so strongly is. >> Even the right of women to stand up. >> Yes. >> Complain. So this is in the, sort of, the light of a complaint I think, sometimes, this picture. >> I think so. It's a very strong, the desire of the picture is a strong desire, because it does confront us so strongly. And particular with her look, it's very hard to get past or into the picture as well. Mitchell's whole concept of thinking about pictures in terms of what they want, I think is really important because it helps to have a dialogue with every picture we look at, rather than come to with conventional, critical fixed ideas. >> Fixed ideas. >> His approach opens up dialogue. >> He also says at one stage that perhaps pictures are like people and that they don't really know what they want. >> [LAUGH] >> And that we can always return to a picture and once again ask the question, what does the picture wants which we may decide on a different answer from the one that we came to in a previous time, with a previous engagement with the pictures. So, I think what Mitchell is arguing for is for more fluidity between the viewer and the actual work of art. And also, for. >> It's more fluidity, and it's also the idea that there's not one answer? >> Yes. >> The picture may want many things. By asking that question, you can also, therefore consider a whole range of possibilities around the desire of the future. >> Yes, and that this is something that's up for contestation all the time. That there isn't an answer that's correct. >> Or set answer. >> Or set answers right. >> It's correct answer, that's right. >> So perhaps when you're looking at these. These paintings by Frida Kahlo. Now I'm talking to all the MOOCers who were watching and looking at the two paintings by Frida and talking about it in the forums perhaps you'd like to think about that and to think about the different ways that the desire of these pictures are manifested. [MUSIC]
