The Art of Art:
Frida Kahlo’s The Broken Column
• Elements of Art
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Line
Shape and Form
Space
Texture
Value and Light
Color
Time
• Organizing Principles
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Repetition
Variety
Rhythm
Balance
Compositional Unity
Emphasis
Proportion
Relationship to the
Environment
Frida Kahlo’s The Broken Column, 1944
• In order to make these art
pieces fit into our format,
we need to select art from
which we can readily draw
a theme.
• In The Broken Column, we
might conclude that “For
women within patriarchy,
life is painful and fraught
with vulnerability” is a
potential workable theme.
Image from: http://www.urtonart.com/history/frida-y-diego.htm
Frida Kahlo’s The Broken Column, 1944
• Line
– Lines of woman
– Lines of straps
• Hold her together
• Dissect her, as well
– Lines of Ionic Column
• Represent her spine
• Associated with ancient
Greece, an extreme
patriarchy
• Direct our eyes upward
– Lines of background and
Skirt
• More subtle
• Depict terrain as dry and
harsh
Image from: http://www.urtonart.com/history/frida-y-diego.htm
Frida Kahlo’s The Broken Column, 1944
• Shape and Form
– Illusion of Form
• Female figure appears to
be placed before the
background, skirt swirls
before her legs
• Shapes are clearly
distinguishable, hardedged, and concrete
– Only skirt, hair, and
breasts depict softness
– Shape
• Shapes suggest this woman
is alone, vulnerable, and in
pain, but also that she is
strong.
Image from: http://www.urtonart.com/history/frida-y-diego.htm
Frida Kahlo’s The Broken Column, 1944
• Space
– Figure-Ground
Relationship
• Woman as figure:
– Emphasizes the woman’s
object status
• Horizon Line
– Begins at her neck,
further emphasizing the
column and the tear in
her skin as the main
subject of the painting
• Direct Point-of-View
– Shows us the message is
clear, accessible, and unobscured
Image from: http://www.urtonart.com/history/frida-y-diego.htm
Frida Kahlo’s The Broken Column, 1944
• Texture
– Simulated Textures
• Hair, skin, and fabric
are smooth
• Terrain is made up of
varying rough-seeming
textures
• Details of the nails/pins
suggest sharp metallic
textures
• Ionic column texture is
rough, crumbling, and
broken
Image from: http://www.urtonart.com/history/frida-y-diego.htm
Frida Kahlo’s The Broken Column, 1944
• Value and Light
– Value
• Interpretive and dark,
lending an air of
depression and/or
desperation
– Lighting
• Appears to be
simulation of sunlight
on a cloudy or overcast
day
• Source is before and
above the female
subject
Image from: http://www.urtonart.com/history/frida-y-diego.htm
Frida Kahlo’s The Broken Column, 1944
• Color
– Limited Palette
• Majority of work, object and
terrain background, are warm
colors in the yellow,orange,
brown, red spectrum.
• These are used locally, to
represent what we think of as
the reality of the situation.
– Woman’s skirt/bandages are
pastel pink and white.
– Ground is a sandy and rocky
brown
– Her skin is dark but with
elements of pink, to
resemble the skin of humans
who live is warmer climates.
Image from: http://www.urtonart.com/history/frida-y-diego.htm
Frida Kahlo’s The Broken Column, 1944
• Color, continued
– Warm vs. Cool Colors
• The warm skin and
terrain colors are broken
up by cooler colors
– By the white color of
the bandages, that
dissects the female
– By the bluish-purple
sky, which appears to
be the second
dominant, weighing
down on the female in
the painting, pulling in
or limiting our view to
her figure.
Image from: http://www.urtonart.com/history/frida-y-diego.htm
Frida Kahlo’s The Broken Column, 1944
• Time
– Illusion of Movement
• The only hint of movement we
get from this painting is the flow
of the skirt before the female
figure.
• Otherwise, the painting, and the
woman, is very static. The
ground seems unchangeable, the
woman herself, as one might
expect with the stiff rocky
column of her spine, does not
seem very mobile at all.
• She is trapped by her very body
into a life of little movement,
pain, and harsh realities.
Image from: http://www.urtonart.com/history/frida-y-diego.htm
Frida Kahlo’s The Broken Column, 1944
• Final Analysis of Frida Kahlo’s The Broken
Column, 1944: Teaches us that life for women under
patriarchy is destructive and painful.
– Lines hold her together while simultaneously dissecting
her, much as patriarchy defines and destroys women
– Concrete shapes define her rigid place in the world
– Her position emphasizes her object status within the
painting and within patriarchy
– The sharp and harsh textures show how vulnerable the
softer aspects of the woman are in the given environment.
Frida Kahlo’s The Broken Column, 1944
• Final Analysis, continued
– The darker subtle values and the absence of bright
lighting on the subject show the entrapping nature of the
woman’s position within patriarchy.
– The warm colors of the subject are interrupted and
segmented by the brilliant whites of the bandages, and
the cold dark sky seems to press the female subject
down into the ‘frame” of the painting.
– The woman’s injuries suggest that painting’s static
nature; the woman is trapped within herself, just as she
is trapped within patriarchy.
Paintings to Analyze
Please pick one of the paintings below to use
for your form to content paper
• John William Waterhouse’s “I am
Half Sick”
• Frida Kahlo’s The Love Embrace of
the Universe
• Grant Wood’s American Gothic
• Pablo Picasso’s Harlequin
Family with an Ape