Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov • Vol. 2 (51) - 2009 Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies DYNAMICS OF BLOOD IN FRIDA KAHLO’S CREATION Florina CODREANU1 Abstract: Frida Kahlo is one of the first feminine blazes on the masculine stage of painting. Until the beginning of the 20th century, female artists were associated with water colours, thus Kahlo is a pioneer of oil painting. Moreover, her personalized style gathers elements in a surprising combination that wasn’t experienced by art before. One of these elements is blood and its attributes – national, familial, Christian, uterine, malign, sacrificial, exposed and so on, in a vibrant relation with the idea of staginess and mask. An invitation to the never-ending carnival, Frida Kahlo’s work doesn’t conceive inner transformation, but only interchangeable settings and props. From this point of view her art materializes the dynamics of death. Key words: blood, mask, self-portrait, death, identity, Modernism, Mexico. 1. Introduction artisticity; in other words she took parts of herself and exhibited them shamelessly on As a whole Frida Kahlo’s contribution to waiting canvas. Nevertheless, in the virility painting history is explosive and of her representations we see a exhibitionistic; throwing art consumers supernatural strife to keep up with the against fulfilled suffering, along with an exclusivist revolutionary masculine milieu impressionistic function that is not of from the beginning of Modernist era. straight identification, but of reluctance and identitary anxiety. 2. The Concert of Isms In the light of a cultural discourse divided into three (what is called Brought up under the exigency of Mexicaness or national conscience personal history, all the same Kahlo arises extended to stereotypy and repetition, from the meeting of some isms which political voice assuming fanatically the partially explain her artistic style. promise of Communist judgement and Humanist through education and gender revealing an impeccable feminist message, as regards life understanding and victimised identity), the artist is at the interrelation, the artist ensured herself a same time the Tehuan Indian, the party place in the world system through a strong activist or the wounded woman by the individualization. negligent lustful man. From Baroque she absorbed the allegory, Artistic value within her existence is later on visible in the act of playing inevitably descended from it: „I painted my between representation akin to kitsch and own reality...“ (Kettenmann 48) As an subliminal meaning. Also, the well-known artist she didn’t fall back on tricks of baroque staginess is reduced to a collection 1 PhD Student, Department of World and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Letters, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca. 250 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov • Vol. 2 (51) - 2009 • Series IV of masks. For that matter masking is the way it macerates the same suffering, expressed clearly by an impressive number changing only the settings. of self-portraits in which motion and During Modernism, the cultural age gestures are denied from the start. Action synchronous to the biography under is illustrated only symbolically, either as a consideration, there is a relation of partial manifesto, or as a principle, never as synonymy between Frida and experimental motion itself. Therefore, Frida’s universe, art, seeking solutions not only for art despite its bold exteriorization, is actually expression, but also for surviving. The closed, without hope, spinning the never- background consists in deep radicalism: ending vicious cycle of disease, surgeries, challenging the whole human body and infections and corsets. To malign listing carefully all the deformities of repeatability she reacts defensively with a industry and internationalism1. sort of evanescent titanic behaviour The designation of artistic vision as (excessive attitude, parties, bisexuality, dominant religion meant a concomitant alcohol and narcotics). rejection of what is of industrial origin. Predilection for portrait bares uptight Accordingly, the artist initiated a valuation inertness caused by suffering, which can of primitivism, pointing out an be neither overcome, nor ignored. Pain ethnographic interest for Mexican tradition seduction is too powerful, and the viewer and for the vigour of Aztec legacy in terms watching her painting is isolated in the of encouraging the reproductive quality of same contemplation with the artist. art. The civilization kept alive by Moreover, dramatism is just a pose, proliferating technical ramifications, manipulating the spectator by an appeal to smoke, wires or pipes contrasts with the his emotions and rewarding him, in the simplicity and emotional charge of the end, with the revelation of the main non-occidental archaic realm, the cycle of character: the otherness that suffers from nature and the regenerating strength of the centrality. Whether there is or not land. Anyone would say: a voluntary transformation in Frida Kahlo’s art insolent simplification, impregnated with represents the stake for the present study. dark humour and punitive opprobrium! In the 19th century the Realist Reaching the pinnacle of her creative conventions and standards discard was expression, she is wooed by Surrealism issued and the mirror-like world through Breton’s mediation: „The art of representation took over. The future artist Frida Kahlo is a ribbon around a bomb“ precociously felt the world as it is through (Burrus 66), being assigned to Surrealist poliomyelitis. The disease acted as a irrational and subversive matter when as a catalyst for an invalided dissimilar matter of fact Frida’s painting is category: she is going to be identified by tremendously studied. The so-called the children in the suburb as peg-leg Frida repressed creativity, sub-consciousness par (pata de palo). Later on, her creation is to excellence, is actually sought, hunted for re-embrace the world in the mirror through its redeeming value. However what drew nudity elements, anti-capitalist attitude and Frida close to the Surrealists are her virulent social critique. The relevance of humour palpitating of anti-bourgeois social emotional and social order stands at the fervour and her ambivalent attitude, centre of her artistic vision that proliferates sometimes highly negative, towards in accordance with beauty denial and women: not to be forgotten her virile emphasis on contiguous materialism. All portraits, blessed with thick eyebrows, Codreanu, F.: Dynamics of Blood in Frida Kahlo’s Creation 251 moustache and constant endurance of frog, the cannibal, women devourer, an traits! insatiable spirit that lighted up in Frida the A final historic contract is legalised with whole artistic arsenal, providing her with a the Social Realism having as subscribers: meaning against an implacable fate. Frida critique, justice, class-fighting and tested so often physical androgyny (both in declamation of inconvenient truths, such as clothing or emotions) in revenge on man unconcealed ugliness. There is a chopper for his affairs, for being caught in the pressure to look attractive and on that search and consumption of plural score chopping a woman’s hair is viewed femininity. An early desire to overthrow as a feminist manifesto: See, if I loved you, the traditional roles shared within Mexican it was for your hair; now that you’re bald, society is obvious in her revolted I don’t love you any more2. behaviour against the husband. Modern tragedian, with a well-defined 3. Becoming an Artist appetence for blood expressing metaphysical suffering and Christian Frida experienced on her own flesh the passion, Kahlo witnesses above ground her history of art through all the ordeals to own death, without ceasing to hope for a which life itself subjected her. Willingly, new birth by way of corporal dispersal. she didn’t belong to any orientation, trend Her body, hard-to-bear layer, is going to or artistic group, but she undertook from represent the easel of a medical existence – for creative purposes – experiment, reiterated and failed all along everything concerning her physiognomy of the line. Training desperately for the role crossbred sensibility, respectively her of wounded animal, inside the theatre of a acknowledgement of mixed blood, Indian barren world, with a leap in time cancelled and Spanish. by adverse nature5, the human called Frida Duality in Khalo functions as a general isn’t in the know of metamorphosis, but mark, and not only because her origin is only in the know of arrows and nails shared out between German grandparents constellation. on the father’s side and Mexicans on the Concomitantly, almost invariably, by mother’s3: in a happy onset of the world, a means of her underneath ribbons, the artist naked child keeps firm the red ribbon of reminds the viewer under homage or the blood bond. Her gesture confirms fertility silent partner under commission that she and continuance of genetic heritage. By paints for him. Dedication has a symbolic means of idyllism and exoticism, the value in what concerns her personalised representation could fall under the searing staging: I find myself here under your eyes beam of kitsch. Despite this possible for your own privilege – the artist implies. imputation, the allegory of her family hid The allegoric homage that commemorates in fact three spontaneous abortions, an event – mostly traumatizing – belongs ovarian infantilism and the case of to the 150 years old tradition of altarpiece impossibility in having descendants. Still, (retablo). Kahlo’s amendment consists in the same plate of disconcerting irony after putting aside the religious long and hard months of suffering! contextualization and getting inspiration Kahlo’s basal dualism, fundamental for from her own past, from her own panoply the development of the future artist, is at of moments and impressions: „But for constant display within the dyad feminine- having a word to say, she had to display masculine, Khalo-Rivera, the dove and the her scars and personal mythology in front elephant4 - who is to the same extent the of the audience“ (Souter 168). As painting 252 Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov • Vol.