Vargas Gmez, Daniela

Matr.Nr: 2720683

Bachelor Ethnologie

Johannes Gutenberg-Universitt Mainz

Institut fr Ethnologie und Afrikanstudien
Sommersemester 2015
Seminar: Einfhrung in der Kunstethnologie
Seminarleitung: Cassis Kilian

Frida Kahlo: Figures and

Habitus.

Daniela Vargas Gmez

Teplitzer Str. 23
65795 Hattersheim am Main
+ 57 312 538 9588
danvargasgom@unal.edu.co
Matr.Nr: 2720683
Bachelor Ethnologie
Modul: Basismodul Ethnologie BF (Rev.)
Modulnummer: M.07.798.140b

Index:

1. Introduction
2. Brief description of general information
2.1 The Paintings: Las dos Fridas (1939) and Mi nacimiento (1932)1
2.2 Important biographical facts
3. Figures and Habitus
3.1 The concepts in Frida Kahlo
3.2 Case of study: Las dos Fridas (1939) and Mi nacimiento (1932)
4. Conclusions
5. Bibliography

1 The two Fridas (1939) and My birth (1932)

1. Introduction
Frida Kahlo has been an iconic figure in popular culture and in the academic
world. She has been analyzed from several points of view, not only for her
paintings but also for her personal and public life. Often the two are linked
together undisputable in order to interpret her work. Feministic studies, art
theory, anthropological studies and folklore have drunken from her. All the
above reasons contributed to make her a figure almost mythological, whose
name resounds in places far away from her origins country. However, even if
one can say that posterior studies make her even more relevant, one should
admit that during her life period, her figure already had a resonance not only in
the art world.
However much of the analyses, which center in her biography to explain her
work (Fuentes, Carlos 1995 quoted in Del Toro, 2007) provide an image of
naivety about of the world that surround her. Many allusions to the vanguards
are present; other relevant figures present themselves as obligatory extras in
the Frida Kahlo performance stage person. For me, and I try to present in this
paper, Frida Kahlo was, not only a tormented woman who fought against the
pain and physical injuries, but also a woman who portray herself in a certain
way, sometimes consciously or sometimes unconsciously. Yes, she was unique
in many ways but it doesnt mean that the influence in her work came only form
her personal experience. That was I consider useful to incorporate tools as
Habitus and Field (Bourdieu, 1999) To understand not only the elements of the
outside world that were incorporated in her body of work, but also the way in
which this her paintings were part of a socialized Field and how these ones
make an impact on the viewers. Most the studies related on the impact of
Kahlos work of art are based on her deep use of Folklore and traditional
figures. I proposed that their influence can be explained not only by the use of
common shared visual imagery, but also by the meanings and the common
narratives of the subject of Frida Kahlo.

On the other hand I will try to linked the arguments above to the concept of
Transmediality, in which nomadic meanings (Del Toro, 2007) are represent in
numerous mediums, which in most of the cases participate in a dialogue,
relating it with the figures as exposed by Barthes in Loves discourse:
Fragments (Barthes, 1985). The paintings of Frida Kahlo that I have chosen
make statement, at least in my opinion, because of the period of her life in
which they were painted the themes she chose in consonance with a global
tendency and the opposition between a renowned painting and other less well
know.
2. Brief description on general information
Before any further analysis could be made, I consider important to present the
picture I will refer in this paper, not only the description of their physical
appearance but also in the elements that I find relevant for the argumentation
about the habitus. For the biographical facts, which are part of this brief
description, the criteria of selection were the facts that most of the biographers
and art studies cited as relevant to understand the symbolism behind her
paintings.
2.1 The Paintings: Las dos Fridas (1939) and Mi nacimiento (1932)2

2 The following fotographics are taken from (Del Toro, 2007)

I will begin with the painting titled Mi nacimiento (1932). With a high of 30.5 cm
and a width of 35 cm, this painting made of oil on metal is one of the paintings
Kahlo produced after her first miscarriage in Detroit, USA. It represents a room
with wood floor and a blue wall. A bed lies on the floor and is focus in center of
the painting; above hanging from the wall there is a picture what it looks like a
woman with a veil, which resembles to the pictures of saints. In the middle of
the bed, one with white sheets, a woman is covered from the waist up with a
blanket in delivery position. Her legs are wide open to reveal a head that
comes out of what it looks like her vagina. However the face is surrounded by
blood, and the expression resembles to the one of a dead person. A uni-brow, a
trademark of Frida in her own self-portraits, appears in this head. I found that
the aseptic of the room captures the attention on the woman, on the head and
on the blood. In focuses on the body, but not a idealized body, or not at least in
the traditional way, its a body turn outside out (Del Toro, 2007)

On the other hand las dos Fridas (1939) is portray, for some people it fits more
in the self-portrait category, presents two human figures, both of them share
similarities in body type and facial expressions. Where they look different are in
clothes, on wearing a white dress resemble more the traditional (in the sense of
folklore) and the other one dress in a more modern dress. Connected by her
hands and a vein, the two women sit looking to the front even when her bodies
are inclined to one and other. The background displays a sky full of clouds, a

little grey it doesnt make much contrast to the floor, painted with a light brown,
it doesnt allow me to make a statement of the material, maybe dirt. This oil on
canvas measures 173.5 x 173 cm, its pretty much a square. This probably one
of Kahlos most renown works. Personally I found the punctum (Barthes, 1981)
of the image in the hearts display air open in both bodies.
These both paintings make the invisible visible, put the point in a almost a
scopic drive (Lacan, quoted in Brea, 2005) in which the body is not just an
object to be seen but also the seen, and the desire to be seen overpasses the
boundaries of the skin and the social places where what is possible and
desirable to seen is enunciated. But even when Kahlo made a statement about
her personal life, which later in this paper I will try to translate in to habitus, her
themes and explorations are not one of a kind, even if they are a deeply
personal representation. I need to clearify that Im not by any meanings
simplifying Kahlos personal experience, or generalizing it to embrace al
autistics occurrences, or even making Kahlo a stereotypical figure. Im putting
a perspective in which even if the stories change the form in which they are
adapted, even with nomadic meanings, the move its not random, but respond
to a dynamic understructure.
2.2 Biographical facts
Frida Kahlo was born in the 6th of July, 1907 in Coyoacn, Mxico. Daughter of
a German photographer and Mexican woman, had three sisters, two older and
one younger. With the last one, named Cristina, she maintained a tense but
strong bond that lasted a long period of time (CASAS,123). Her father had a
previous marriage, from which Kahlo had three more sisters. During her
childhood she suffered poliomyelitis, which cause her a thinner leg, the right
one.
On September 17, 1925 Kahlo suffered an accident, many historians have
declare as a breaking movement in her life and a key to explore her art (Souter,
2005). A metallic bar went trough her body, piercing her abdomen, uterus and

vagina, besides this injury she had multiple broken bones in several parts of
her body, which caused her pain for the rest of her life. She also had many
procedures following the accident and during her life period. While she was in
bed recovering, she started to paint and abandon her medicine studies.
Her relationship and marriage with Diego Rivera, his and her infidelities, and
the influence that he put into her style and her presentation in public are well
known and an important part of her life, as well as her multiple miscarriages,
many of them leading her to periods of her life in which she was prostrated in
bed, her trips to Europe and Detroit and her affiliation to the communist party
and her sexual orientation. She was involve or got to know many famous and
important characters of the public sphere of her time (Souter, 2005).
3. Figures and Habitus
In Barthes the concept of figure distance itself from the rhetorical context, and
evoke a much more dynamic approach to language. But visual imagery can be
analyzed with concepts extracted from language theory, because of it posses
also a internal structure and a social component. The figure has the capacity of
being appropriated because of its unfinished meaning but the effect is on the
opposite complete (Barthes, 1989). While the Figure advocate to meaning, to
the social construct that allowed the possibility of persona reinterpretation, the
transmediality speaks about the discussions between cultures an medias (Del
Toro, 2007), speaks about a visual syncretism in meanings within the rigorous
canon of social interpretation. It explains how not only the medium can be
fluent but also the meaning, however it doesnt postulate that the medium have
no value what so ever, as Belting (Belting, 2005) put medium is always in
relation with image it carries and also with body, not only the pictorial body but
the boy of the observer.
The observer is also a fundamental part of the art experience, as Brea explains
an image, or the performance in which the images participate, is not complete
until it is observed (Brea, 2005). But in order to identify yourself with the

feelings exposed in an image, one need to share some of the background

meanings, but more even a socializing experience that is incorporated in to
ones body that share some aspects with the artist habitus or his space in the
Field, to put it in other way a habitus (Bourdieu, 1999). Art per s needs to
create a particular Habitus in order to maintain the difference between art and
other type of images, even when in a world were images surround the people
in it, and images have the power to move emotions in each individual even if
its not an artistic kind of picture, art need an habitus to understand the aura
(Benjamin, 2003), that the work of art invokes.
3.1 The concepts in Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo used different mediums to mold her work, her paintings most of the
time used different type of bases and materials to paint, but also she mixed
letters and photographs. She used many ways to transmit same messages. But
also the transmediality incorporated in her works were not limited to inside
materials, it was also a dialogue with more paintings from different artists and
between topics and ways of representing them. These topics became the figure
in bigger movements and also a reflection of the worries of the societies in
which they lived. Some of the most present themes in her works, such as
death, blood, transformed bodies and nature were treated in similar forms by
artist in similar periods of time.
As long as the habitus in Frida Kahlo work it needs to be tided up with her life,
but not in the way of trying to explain her life experiences. It needs to be
analyzed within the context, for example, even thought that she has been
portrayed as a feminist and a communist, these were encourage for her
husband and supported by her social environment (Del Toro, 2007), she was in
a privilege position in which such personal decision were judge but with
another type of social cannons.
3.2 Case of study: Las dos Fridas (1939) and Mi nacimiento (1932)
Mi nacimiento (1932)

In image above I can see the similarities between the images and the figures
they speak about. There is a transmediality that exceed the barriers of time
keeping some similar motives: violence, the place of women within sexuality
and reproduction, the focus on the legs and the vagina in visual matters. It
understands, for me, the body as territory in which that tragedy takes place.
The meanings are nomads between some rules, the body as sexual objet to
contemplate and to embrace passions and emotions in tone of the animal
instincts, classical dichotomy in the occidental and Occidentalized thinking of
the understanding of the world as a separation of rational and irrational,
exemplified in the woman genitalia3, but its personal take over are different. In
Kahlos work the chaos is controlled, in contraposition with the one in Grosz
painting, sex is also a killer, as in Dix piece, but not by itself, by its
consequences. Reproduction in her work makes a statement of pain and
violence but its with the same connation and the same figures in the position of
body, and the place of ambiguity.

3 The woman genitalia as an animal who needed to be control was part of the
medical discourse for hysteria. (Didi-Huberman, G. 2007)

Kahlo grew up in a society were having children marked the culmination of a

womans life. A person with a common background of disability to full fit the
society requirements of the society in which that person is part of, can and may
understand Kahlos Mi nacimiento and the pain behing it. Not just because
his/her a traumatic experience is the same but because of the background of
the same goals in society. The world in which she lived form her in that way,
she corporalized that experiences, and was able to represent them in an
anatomic way also. Her habitus is also present in her medical knowledge
throught its representation of death. Medical death is declared and followed by
the cover of the body.
Las dos Fridas (1939)

Making visible the invisible and exposing the inner body while conserving the
facade appears a long the three pieces show above. Again the transmediality
shows in different times, and can be appreciated; here it seems to make me
think that it shows a common interest in the change of locus for the origin of life
and the introduction to science where exposing more flesh and exploring the
deepest parts, at least becomes more important to understand the human and
also makes a connections between the inside as an allegorical figure 4 for the
private and the unreachable.

4 This expression is used by its rethorical meaning.

Contrary to trying to show the figure of the multiplication of one being, or the
facets of the personality, figure that has been used to represent great
personalities especially in politics (Nelson, 2013), I tried to put on the desk a
figure that juxtaposed to the previous one, here the blood doesnt have quite
same meaning, but immobility between the body figures still implied some
violence. The three backgrounds make no real statement beyond making it
obvious to concentrate the attention on the exposed.
As far for the habitus, I take what I said above a bout the dislocated personality,
but not just Fridas. Its congruent with a subcontinent, Latin America, were
identities concerning terms as race, tradition, Ancestors, are mixed, fluent
and dislocated even in official imagery, connected on the grounds of solidarity
but without a real execution in categories.
4. Conclusions
Kahlo always expressed that she didnt considered her paintings as surrealistic
because she didnt paint her dreams, according to her she painted her reality
(Del Toro, 2007; Nelson 2013). Most of the people who have worked with her
art considered this phrase as just a statement, which corroborates the
important path of mixing the work and the life. I personally consider that this
phrase can and should be stretch out, she painted her reality but not only from
her life experiences, but also from the underlying meanings of her society. Her
figures are unfinished and can be adopted in the several other media because
of the ambiguity of the reason behind the well-defined symbols, when the
observer is not that familiarized with her biography. The figures or
trasnmediality can be exposed only as a product of folklore (argument purely
social) or to a biographical one (argument which I considered entirely
individualistic) even in just her body of art.
5. Bibliography

Barthes, R., & Molina, E. (1997). Fragmentos de un discurso amoroso.

Siglo XXI de Espaa.

Barthes, R. (1981). Camera lucida: Reflections on photography. Macmillan.

Belting, H. (2005). Image, medium, body: A new approach to iconology.

Critical Inquiry, 31(2), 302-319.

Benjamin, W., Weikert, A. E., & Echeverra, B. (2003). La obra de arte en la

poca de su reproductibilidad tcnica. taca.

Brea, J. L. (2005). Estudios visuales (Vol. 1). Ediciones AKAL.

Bourdieu, P., & Kauf, T. (1999). Meditaciones pascalianas (Vol. 1).

Barcelona: Anagrama.

Didi-Huberman, G. (2007). La invencin de la histeria: Charcot y la

iconografa fotogrfica de la Salptrire.

De Toro, A. (2007). Dispositivos transmediales, representacin y antirepresentacin.

Comunicacin:

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revista

Kahlo:
Internacional

transpictorialidad-transmedialidad.
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Comunicacin

Audiovisual,

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Del Conde, T. (1976, March). Lo popular en la pintura de Frida Kahlo.

In Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estticas (Vol. 13, No. 45, pp.
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Miller, Chelsey Rae. "FRIDA KAHLO: An Exploration of Art Themes and

Symbols." Thesis. University of Wisconsin, 2012. FRIDA KAHLO: An
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Nelson, B. A (2013). Kennedy and Kahlo: identity and gender issues in

biography. HyperCultura, 78.

Souter, Gerry. Frida Kahlo: Beneath the Mirror. New York: Barnes & Noble,
Inc. 2005

Portelli, A. (1989). Historia y memoria: la muerte de Luigi Trastulli. Historia y

fuente oral, 5-32.