Gender issues
Theory notes
Frida Khalo
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Las Dos Fridas” graphically manifests
the wrenching emotional pain of famed
Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s divorce
from Diego Rivera. On the left is the
traditionally dressed, weaker Frida, her
broken heart exposed. On the right is
the stronger, cosmopolitan Frida,
whose intact heart feeds the other
Frida. Both hearts are connected to a
locket containing a picture of Rivera.
Despairing, the weaker Frida attempts
to staunch the blood flow from Rivera,
which endangers her life. The sky is
filled with stormy clouds that convey
Kahlo’s (1907 – 1954) agitation, and in
profound loneliness, she holds her
own hand and is her sole companion
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www.art.com
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Frida Kahlo employed the symbolism
that characterized much of her work in
the self-portrait, “Autorretarto con
Collre de Espinas y Colibri, 1940.”
Wearing a necklace of thorns, Kahlo
represents a Christian martyr, and the
thorns piercing her skin symbolize the
emotional pain of her divorce from
artist Diego Rivera. The dead
hummingbird is a love charm; the
black cat signifies bad luck and death.
Kahlo’s pet monkey, a gift from Rivera,
represents the devil, and the butterflies
in her hair denote the Resurrection.
The painting was intended to be a gift
for one of her lovers, but after her
divorce, Kahlo (1907 – 1954) sold it to
pay her lawyer.
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“Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair” was
the first self-portrait iconic Mexican
painter Frida Kahlo created after her
divorce from artist Diego Rivera.
Renouncing the feminine image
depicted in her other self-portraits,
Kahlo (1907 – 1954) has just cut off
the long hair Rivera admired, and is
wearing a suit that was most likely his.
Conveying the deep sorrow of her
loss, the image appears to express
Kahlo’s yearning for the freedom and
independence of a man. The large
empty space around Kahlo suggests
the depth of her loneliness and misery,
and the song verse above her reads,
“See, if I loved you, it was for your hair,
Now you’re bald, I don’t love you
anymore.”
Frida Khalo Biography
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From 1926 until her death, the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo created striking, often shocking,
images that reflected her turbulent life. Kahlo was one of four daughters born to a HungarianJewish father and a mother of Spanish and Mexican Indian descent, in the Mexico City suburb of
Coyoacán.
She did not originally plan to become an artist. A polio survivor, at 15 Kahlo entered the
premedical program at the National Preparatory School in Mexico City. However, this training
ended three years later when Kahlo was gravely hurt in a bus accident. She spent over a year in
bed, recovering from fractures of her back, collarbone, and ribs, as well as a shattered pelvis and
shoulder and foot injuries. Despite more than 30 subsequent operations, Kahlo spent the rest of
her life in constant pain, finally succumbing to related complications at age 47.
During her convalescence Kahlo had begun to paint with oils. Her pictures, mostly self-portraits
and still lifes, were deliberately naive, filled with the bright colors and flattened forms of the
Mexican folk art she loved. At 21, Kahlo fell in love with the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, whose
approach to art and politics suited her own. Although he was 20 years her senior, they were
married in 1929; this stormy, passionate relationship survived infidelities, the pressures of Rivera's
career, a divorce and remarriage, and Kahlo's poor health. The couple traveled to the United
States and France, where Kahlo met luminaries from the worlds of art and politics; she had her
first solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City in 1938. Kahlo enjoyed
considerable success during the 1940s, but her reputation soared posthumously, beginning in the
1980s with the publication of numerous books about her work by feminist art historians and
others. In the last two decades an explosion of Kahlo-inspired films, plays, calendars, and jewelry
has transformed the artist into a veritable cult figure.
Jane Alexander
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Being around this sculpture gives me a very uncomfortable
feeling. But what I like about it is the realistic confrontation that
it brings out. To me it talks about male destructiveness and the
male enjoyment of destroying women.
It looks as if the female figure suffered a lot before her death
and her body looks disfigured and destroyed; and the title tells
me that it wasn't her intention to be like that. I have a feeling
that it might have been an action of rape. The quote, "oh yes",
seems to imply that. Her hair seems to have been pulled out,
and although she is dead her facial expression is one of pain
and suffering. Her mouth is slightly open as if she wanted say
something. Her body looks rotten, which might imply that she
was found a long time after she died. And if you look behind
her, she looks as if a post-mortem has been done on her. Her
feet are close together, as if on a crucifix, and her shoulder is
hanging over the clothes line, as if used to display clothes.
Although it is almost unbearable to look at, this sculpture
reminds me of recent rapes in our society. It confronts us with
reality. This is what people run away from and call a disgrace.
The title Stripped ("Oh Yes") girl has several implications as to
what the girl was and where she was before she was stripped
and killed. She might have been a prostitute who died doing her
work or it could have been the rape of an innocent girl.
Whatever the case, she was left naked, with no dignity, which is
what happens in our society B but people are turning their
heads away from it, instead of confronting it. The main focus is
on the abuse of women and, to my understanding, this work of
art is aimed at confronting people to face the reality of our
degenerated world.
www.tatham.org.za
Diane Victor
• She is motivated by a
strong negative response
to the way people react to
each other.
• She also favors large
figurative drawings of
human figures sitting like
lumps of rotting meat and
harboring all these rotten
desires inside - beautifully
covered up of course.
David Hockney
• “Looking through a keyhole” –
nude figures of men unposed
and relaxed
• Men not living up to a
stereotype – just being
themselves
• Personalised view
• Titles are often names of the
people Hockney draws
• Hockney often paints and
draws men who are part of the
homosexual scene in America.
• Image “Ian watching TV”
Shirley Goldfarb & Gregory Masurovsky, 1974
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Gregory. Palatine, Roma. Dec. 1974
Tracey Emin
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A consummate storyteller, Tracey
Emin engages the viewer with her
candid exploration of universal
emotions. Well-known for her
confessional art, Tracey Emin reveals
intimate details from her life to engage
the viewer with her expressions of
universal emotions. Her ability to
integrate her work and personal life
enables Emin to establish an intimacy
with the viewer.
Tracey shows us her own bed, in all its
embarrassing glory. Empty booze
bottles, fag butts, stained sheets, worn
panties: the bloody aftermath of a
nervous breakdown. By presenting her
bed as art, Tracey Emin shares her
most personal space, revealing she’s
as insecure and imperfect as the rest
of the world.
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Info from the Saatchi-gallery
Lucian Freud
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By stripping away the props and
accoutrements of some fictional,
staged scene—and often the
model’s clothing—Freud directs
our focus on the person or
persons as he views them. These
are typically friends and family
members. The artist feels a need
to know his models. The result is
that his familiarity produces such a
high level of vulnerability (on the
model’s part) and scrutiny (on the
artist’s part) that we are drawn
past the magnificent surfaces into
the hidden psychological aspects
below. This forms a grafting of the
physical with the psychological.
Freud
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Freud’s work is often linked to the
confident corporeality of his subjects.
Rotund figures with excessive mounds
of flesh have become a trademark. At
times these figures seem little more
than an exercise in the mastery of
materials. The protuberances of paint
are a stand-in for the folds of flesh,
though a mere masterful bravado is
seldom the end. The starkness of
these immense figures within the limits
of the studio space provides a glimpse
beyond their sheer fleshiness and
beyond that sole trait that we most
often associate with an obese figure—
the immensity of his or her physical
body.
Freud - Benefits Supervisor
Sleeping
• Yet all the publicity aside, this
painting brings several
signature elements of Freud’s
work into alignment. The
fleshiness and encrusted paint
surface are coupled with the
placement of the figure inside
a studio setting, in a pose that
heightens the sense of her
physical weight with
psychological heft. Still, the
work is steeped in the tradition
of the male gaze and the
complicated heritage that that
implies after the introduction of
feminist theories.
Jenny Saville
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A physicality that she partially credits to Picasso an artist that she sees as a
painter that made subjects as if "they were solidly there....not fleeting"
In 1994, Saville spent many hours observing plastic surgery operations in
New York. Saville spent long hours observing the work of Dr. Barry Martin
Weintraub, a plastic surgeon based in the city. Taking photographs while
standing in on cosmetic surgeries and lyposuctions, Saville gained a better
understanding of the human body and the various manipulations that can
be made through modern medicine. Not only did she improve her
knowledge of the physical workings of the alterations, but -- perhaps more
importantly -- she gained insight into the psychological factors behind the
changes as well.
Saville dedicated her career to traditional figurative oil painting.
Her paintings are usually much larger than life size. They are strongly
pigmented and give a highly sensual impression of the surface of the skin
as well as the mass of the body. She sometimes adds marks onto the body,
such as white "target" rings.
In a society often obsessed with physical appearance, Jenny Saville has
created a niche for overweight women in contemporary visual culture.
Known primarily for her large-scale paintings of obese women, Saville has
recently broken into the contemporary art
Saville is lauded for her celebration of paint and her loyalty to oil painting as
a medium. In a society of constant technological advancement, Saville has
resisted the temptations of using media such as video in her work and has
dabbled only briefly with photography. Although Saville finds great
inspiration in such media and often sees multiple films per week, these
modern fillers are not for her. Instead, she has embraced the physicality of
paint and thus has chosen a medium that dates back hundreds of years.In
her painting titled “Plan” Saville comments on the need for woman to want
to look prettier / be thinner. The contour marks on the flesh is the map
where the plastic surgery is to unfold.
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Saville’s images are typically viewed through the
lens of feminism, but that is too narrow a
construction. The paintings that exhibit lines and
shapes drawn onto the naked skin of fleshy
females (Plan) imply the pre-surgical markings of
a plastic surgeon. The artist actually observed
plastic surgeries in the year after her art school
studies. While there are connections to body
image and the pressures placed on women in
contemporary cultures—worldwide and not just in
the West—the work is more expansive than that.
Saville’s figures do not merely exhibit a density
of flesh, they often allude to severe physical
traumas. The figures are wounded at times, yet
the viewer is uncertain whether these are selfimposed traumas or the results of living in a
tragic, broken world. Hybrid (1997) seems like a
patchwork quilt of skin—a body mismatched to its
ill-fitting parts. And this idea of not necessarily
feeling at one with the body is a recurring theme
in Saville’s work