"Death Dances Around My Bed:"
Frida Kahlo and the Archetype of Death
Kate T. Donohue, Ph.D. REAT
“In this hospital death dances around my bed at night.”
—Frida Kahlo
Frida’s deathbed at Casa Azul
I am standing in front of the bed
where Frida Kahlo died, absorbing the beauty of her petite Mexican death mask,
shrouded in a green and gray rebozo, touching her flamboyantly painted and
glowing corset. My tears flow and a tremendous sadness I have been
experiencing, while moving around Casa Azul, flood me.
I recall her statement to her young
lover, Alejandro Gomez Arias after her tragic streetcar accident. “…. death
dances around my bed at night.” (Herrera, 2002, p. 36) I see the dance of death
move around this bed of suffering, from her tragic accident, numerous
operations and physical anguish, miscarriages, love affairs, and her political
as well as cultural pain. The words of Octavio Paz, a Mexican writer, capture
me again, "…. Mexicans have no qualms about getting close and personal
with death.” (Paz, 1961 p. 75). By becoming close and personal with Frida’s
suffering, life and death, I become close to my experience of death again. Remembering my encounters with death both
literal and symbolic, I recalled my first dreams of Frida after my own series
of miscarriages.
Twenty years ago, I did not
understand my dreams of Frida in which we share our suffering about
infertility. Curious, I went back to Frida’s biography I had read ten years
prior to my dreams. My unconscious had remembered Frida’s suffering around her
own infertility. Twenty years ago, Frida spoke to me in my dreams to comfort me
and guide me back to my creative resource of painting. Inspired by Frida, I
painted my pain.
My photo of Casa Azul, the home of Frida Kahlo, 2005
Standing here in Casa Azul, now as an
older woman, I find she moves me again. I traveled to
Photo of Frida Kahlo, 1935
Living so closely with pain, loss,
disappointment and death, Frida’ life and art embody Jung’s words for me.
Kahlo’s dance with death is a vivid portrait of how our unwanted agonies can be
our greatest teachers. Frida’s paintings
became the voice of her psyche.
The Dream, 1940
For Frida, life and death existed
simultaneously. She understood the archetype of death most intimately, as it
was palpable everyday. With death as her
guide, she plunged into her internal world through her art. This descent
allowed her to ultimately value her life, her culture, and her inner-directed
creative expression. Frida’s images penetrate into this paradox of existence,
the dance of life and death. Invited into her world, she seduces us to confront
similar issues in our own lives. Frida has become a mesmerizing archetypal
image of the wounded and triumphant feminine: the feminine whose teacher is her
indigenous culture and death.
My Photo of the Inner Courtyard and
After experiencing Casa Azul, I began to write seated
in her garden. In my reverie, memories and images, as well as Jung’s
reflections on death, cascaded through me. Vivid memories of my trip to
Jung knew the archetypal importance of literal and
symbolic death. He saw death as sacred marriage with life. Death is a universal
wedding, which gives the soul wholeness.
“In light of eternity, it is a wedding, a mysterium
conjunctionis. The soul attains, as it were its missing half, it achieves
wholeness.”(Jung, 1961, p.314).
Delving deeper, Jung taught me how death informs life
choices, especially marriage. Jung stressed the importance of confronting
actual death as way of knowing the self, our values and the meaning of life.
The symbolic aspect of death is equally important and speaks to us through our
unconscious in dreams and imagery, highlighting the transformative aspects of
symbolic death (Yates, 1999).
In my reverie that day in June, the
power of Frida’s art become clearer to me. Frida’s art infuses Jung’s ideas
with a flesh and blood experience of the Archetype of Death. Frida’s life and
art openly confronts literal and symbolic death, pain and the shadow, all that
we reject.
Frida took a stance in life that
allowed her to live with her vulnerability and find strength and power by
embracing what is rejected. Exploring the shadow of death was an integral part
of her Mexican culture and provided a doorway to enter into the universal, the
archetypal. Frida boldly painted her suffering, her relationship to death and
all she was supposed to hide.
Frida’s art plays with these
agonies. They become teachers of the paradox of existence. As she revealed her
pain, she not only liberated herself, but liberated me, as well. Frida’s art
gives us permission to embrace what is hard and difficult in our lives. Through
her art and her psyche’s voice, creativity and meaning emerge from suffering
and confrontations with the shadow of death.
Statue of Coatlique
Many scholars of Frida’s art feel she
is guided by the Aztec goddess, Coatlique/Coatlicue, (pronounced kwat-lee-kweh),
the Mother of the Gods, the goddess of life, death and rebirth, the Lady of the Skirt of Snakes. She is
the Aztec goddess of death, dismemberment, and destruction as well as life.
Coatlique wears a skirt of writhing snakes and a necklace made of human hearts,
hands and skulls. Her feet and hands are adorned with claws and her breasts are
depicted as hanging flaccid from nursing. She was created in the image of the
“unknown,” the mystery created by the decorations of skulls, snakes, and
lacerated hands (Granziera, 2005, p. 25). Coatlique is the archetypal symbol of
death like the Hindu goddess Kali (Metcalf & Huntington, 1991, and West,
1997).
With skeletons and hearts in her
paintings, Frida found a way not to fear Coatlique but to embrace her, thus
finding meaning beyond suffering. With the help of this cultural icon, Frida
understood symbolic death culturally as well as personally. This goddess will
be her most profound instructor. With the help of Coatlique holding life and
death, Frida’s ego can consciously contend with the unexpected appearance of
the Self in her art and psyche.
Thinking about Death, 1943
Frida was challenged with many
losses: her health, children, infidelity and constant physical suffering. The
emergence of the self for Frida came from the loss of what the ego had
embraced. Paraphrasing Jung, the ego’s desires may not be our path of
individuation. But through symbolic death - loss, failure or illness - the Self
can emerge surprisingly and unexpectedly.
Girl with a Death Mask, 1938
Death’s presence compelled Frida to
burrow into her internal world through her paintings. Little Frida wore the
Mexican mask of death almost from birth. Her acknowledgment of death created a
metamorphosis in her psyche, then in her art. Her confrontational paintings
persuade us to explore these unknown territories in ourselves.
This piece of a beautiful 1922 poem
by Frida speaks of her sorrow, perhaps due to the presence of the shadow of
death following her.
“I had smiled nothing more. But clarity was in me and
in the depth of my silence.
He followed me. Like my shadow, irreproachable and
light.
In the night he wept a song….
He followed me.
I ended up crying, forgotten in the entrance of the
Parish church
Produced by silk shawl, which soaked up my tears”
(Herrera, 1991, p. 31).
These words captured my
curiosity. They tell the story of her
inner and outer life struggles. Lacing Frida’s art with Jung’s ideas gave me a
deeper perspective on the archetype of death and the poignancy of her art and
poetry. Now I more fully understand how Frida, the artist and poet, became an
archetypal icon herself.
Frida’s self-portrait: Diego on her mind, 1943
Frida was an immensely complex woman,
but the following glimpses into her life and soul will illuminate the wisdom of
her art. Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderon was born on July 6, 1907 in
Coyoacan, a suburb of
My Family-Painting, 1950
She was born and lived most of her
life in Casa Azul in Coyoacan with her parents and four sisters, currently the
home to the
Frida had vastly different
relationships with her parents. Frida’s
Mother, Matilde Calderon y Gonzalez, was still mourning the death of a son who
had died shortly after birth when Frida was conceived. Perhaps Matilde had been
suffering from postpartum depression as she was unable to breast-feed baby
Frida. Soon after Frida’s birth, her mother became pregnant with her sister
Christina. This may have deepened her mother’s depression and overwhelmed her.
Frida felt unloved and abandoned by her mother and was competitive with her
closest sister, Christina. This family
photo illustrates the tone and feel of the family for little Frida laying in
the chair on the left. The evidence of the mother complex is reflected in her
face and body posture.
Kahlo childhood photo, 1913
Of mixed Spanish and Mexican
heritage, Matilde was a devout Catholic and seemed stern, self involved and
distracted. It seemed that Frida did not receive, as Winnicott (1965) would
say, the “good enough” mothering a young soul deserves. This inadequate
mothering can leave a child unable to metabolize her experiences. These
archetypal energies are left raw with no personal energy to humanize them. Fortunately, Frida had her art. She also had
childhood’s natural connection to the archetypal realm through her imagination
and art, which was paradoxically fueled by the woundings she experienced.
My birth, 1932
In “My Birth,” created after her
mother’s death, Kahlo depicts the suffering she endured in her relationship
with her mother. The baby is birthing herself, alone and unaided. On the wall
is an image of the Virgin of Sorrows pierced by thorns, bleeding and weeping.
This image seems to hold birth and death simultaneously. The mother wears a
death’s shroud and the baby emerges with a face of anguish. Frida said this is
“how I imagine I was born” (West, 1997, p.383); perhaps she felt she was born
from a dead mother, a child’s experience of the depressed mother. (Carpenter,
2008, Herrera, 1983, 1991, and Zamora, 1990).
My nurse and I, 1937
The collective mother gives Frida the
nurturance she needs in “My nurse and I”. Frida was not breast-fed and
experienced a wounded motherline, a mother complex (Lowinsky, 1992). She was
forced to find the Great Mother through her culture, which she embraced in her
Tehuana styled Mexican clothes, and through the universal mothering energies of
her goddess, Coatlique. Frida started to create in this painting, the goddess
and the mother she longed for and which will be developed in her later
paintings. However, this nurse looks austere and has a pre-Hispanic death mask
instead of a human face. Nurturance and life are laced with death and suffering
as the baby Frida does not look securely held, nor does she have the soft
maternal gaze that is so important in attachment and bonding (Schore, 2003).
The Two Fridas, 1939
Her fantasy and imagination allowed
her to create the images she needed to metabolize her painful experiences and
to live close to the collective. She contracted polio at the age of six, and it
left her left leg thinner than the right. Frida had an imaginary friend who
could dance, did not limp and who would be her friend when alone in bed. Frida
talks about her friend in her diary:
“I
must have been six years, when I experienced intensely an imaginary friendship
with a little girl more or less the same age as me…I went down in great haste
into the interior of the earth where my imaginary friend was always waiting for
me (Kahlo, 1995, p. 230).
As an adult, this imaginary friend
was transformed into her self-portraits, her empathetic mirroring and also into
the “Two Fridas” as seen above. She is alone with herself, yet accompanies
herself.
Frida in Coyoacan, 1927
In “Frida in Coyoacan,” we see the
younger Frida, alone, sad, yet perhaps prescient, knowing that tragedy waited
to happen on the street of trolley tracks. Frida, with a knowing child’s face,
communicates her close delicate connection to her personal and to the
collective unconscious. The universality of death emerges through her dead
mother, her polio, her suffering and her culture.
Portrait of My Father
Fortunately and complicatedly, she
had a positive and close relationship to her Father, Wilhelm Kahl, a German
Jewish photographer who immigrated to
Evelyn Torton Beck, a feminist
scholar, (2006) delved into Frida’s paintings and journal as they revealed
evidence of incest with her father, emotional or literal. This hypothesis about
sexual wounding provides a fuller perspective on her behavior: Frida’s sexual
acting out in adolescence, her marriage to an older man, Diego, and her affairs
after the sexual betrayal by her sister, Christina which will be explored
later.
What the Water Gave Us, 1938
Beck uses the surreal painting of
“What the Water Gave Me” as evidence of her sexual wounding. These images, many
from other painting here are fragmented into torturous and dangerous positions.
This torture is reflected in the poetic passage from Frida’s Diary.
“Mine
is a strange world
Of criminal silences
Of strangers’ watchful eyes
Misreading the evil.
Darkness in the daytime…
Was it my fault?
I admit, my great guilt
As great as pain
It was an enormous exit
Which my love went through”
(Kahlo, quoted in Beck,
2006. p. 77-78)
Her poignant words and disturbing
imagery depict evil in a more collective, surreal context here, as well as her
ability to hold paradox in her art. These paradoxes are held in a delicate
balance that foreshadows a stronger resolution in her later pieces.
Jung felt that poetry helps us move
into our dark currents and leads us to the collective unconscious. Frida’
artistry again embodies his words.
“(Poets) are always the first to divine the darkly moving mysterious
currents and to express them, as best they can, in symbols that speak to us.
They make known, like true prophets, the stirrings of the collective
unconscious” (CW, vol. 6, par. 322, p.190).
Enacted incest, emotional or literal,
is a soul murder to the feminine spirit and adds yet another possible death
Frida experienced in her early years (Kalsched, 1996). This painting has
special significance to me. When I visited the O’Gorman-designed home and
studio of Frida and Diego in San Angel, I entered Frida’s tiny bathroom, and
saw this piece “What the Water Gave Us” above her tub. I imagined her in this
tub, wrestling with this soul murder through these sexual woundings, and
discovering a creative resource to grapple with her inner death through her
surreal imagery. Then I imagined her painting it in this very studio.
My photo of “What the Water Gave Us” taken at the San Angel, Frida and
Diego’s second home and studio, 2005
Frida dressed as a male in a family photo, 1926
As an adolescent, she
identified with her Father, and often dressed as a male. There may have been
many reasons, perhaps trying to replace the dead son and becoming the son her
father might have wanted. However, the
price of being the father’s daughter is high (Harding, 1970). There can be
alienation from the feminine source of self. Frida did not identify with her
mother and felt she was stupid. The
seeds for difficulties in future relationships were planted: triangulation,
betrayal and infidelity. These issues did pervade her love relationships and
her relationship with her sister, Christina.
Tragedy laced her life. As mentioned,
she struggled with polio as a child. With the encouragement of her father and
her feisty personality, she overcomes her disability. Guillermo encouraged
Frida to be physically active, pursue art and education. Paradoxically, Beck
theorizes it was during this period of confinement and adoration that the
emotional if not actual incest began.
This was the positive aspect of being
the father’s daughter. Frida had the world of men opened to her and she
developed a sense of androgyny, which would help her cope with her future
tragedies. However, Frida may not have had a full sense of androgyny. She
seemed to reject the personal feminine her mother offered, yet she found the
feminine by embracing the Mexican culture through her Tehuana dress and
artistic style.
The Bus, 1929
There are moments that can change the
course of our lives. Frida had such a life changing experience at the age of
eighteen. While riding home from school, the bus she was on collided with a
trolley car.
The Accident, 1926
Frida sustained grave injuries which
included a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis,
eleven fractures in her right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot and a
dislocated shoulder (Alcantara and Egnolff, 2005, Herrera, 1983, 1991,
Carpenter, 2008, Grimberg, 2006, and Zamora, 1991).
A broken handrail had entered her
left hip and came out through her vagina. Frida joked it was in the accident
she lost her virginity. Her sexuality was linked not only to sexual wounding,
but also to physical suffering from these sexual injuries from the accident.
Both pervaded her relationship with Diego Rivera, her future husband. During
the accident, her clothes were torn from her body, the handrail impaled her,
and a painter’s gold-leaf paint covered her bloody body. Many passersby called
her “la bailarina, la bailarina,” the dancer (Herrera, 1991, p. 34).
Clip from the Frida movie, the scene “The Accident”
Synchronicity was at play, marking
the golden and bloody relationship Frida would have with her body for the rest
of her. Kahlo felt the presence of death as she recovered and said,” In this hospital
death dances around my bed at night” (Herrera, 11991, p. 37).
Retablo, 1925
She spent a year in bed recovering
from these injuries. Told she would never walk again, Frida was determined, and
did regain her ability to walk, but spent the rest of her life in constant
pain, and had thirty-five surgeries, mostly on her back and right leg and
foot. Frida, a Catholic, identified with
Jesus and the sacredness of his horrible death and called this accident, “her Calvary”
(Herrera, 1991, p. 37).
Coatlique dismembered Frida, and
after this fragmentation. Frida was
reborn again, first as a “mature, sad woman” (p.37) and second as icon of the
wounded and triumphant feminine, that she holds for many women today.
In Frida’s words to her lover Alejandro Gomez
Arias, she revealed the immensity of the accident in her life:
“… A little while ago, not much more than a few days
ago, I was a child who went about in a world of colors, of hard and tangible
forms. Everything was mysterious and something was hidden, guessing what it
was, was a game for me. If you knew how terrible it is to know suddenly, as if
a bolt of lightening illuminated the earth. Now I live in painful planet,
transparent as ice, but it is as if I had learned everything at once in
seconds. My friends, my companions become women slowly, I became old in
instants and everything today is bland and lucid. I know that nothing lies
behind, if there were something I would see it.” (p. 37).
Near death accidents, life
threatening illnesses or the death of loved ones collapse life into a liminal
space in which defenses are striped and all becomes a search for meaning,
purpose and a spiritual attitude.
"The self.... hits consciousness unexpectedly, like lightning, and
occasionally with devastating consequences. It thrusts the ego aside and makes room for a Superordinate factor, the
totality of a person..." (CW, vol. 9, par. 541, p. 304).
Photo of Frida with her painted body cast, 1950
Again embodying Jung’s words, the
accident was life changing. She abandoned her hopes of pursuing a medical
career and became a full time painter. This was a slow process. First, she
painted her body casts and then her family created a bed-easel with a ceiling
mirror over her reclining body. She stayed in her bed for the first year.
Self-portrait: velvet dress, 1926
Having an essentially captive model,
Frida drew and painted herself, and is best known for her self-portraits.
Fifty-five of her 143 paintings are self-portraits. At first, her
self-portraits were gifts to her boyfriend and friends. This seems to have been
her way of ensuring their interest and love for her. By representing her face
in a serene and impassive way, she was also attempting to deny the overwhelming
feelings of helplessness and despair she felt. Just as she had done earlier,
when she fell ill with polio, creating an imaginary double, she attempted to
convey a sense of invulnerability, strength and transcendence over her body’s
limitations.
Through her artistic empathetic
mirroring, she is able to start metabolizing the horror she has experienced as
well as embracing her inquisitive, irreverent and intellectual spirit.
Self-portrait of Mexican-looking Frida, 1929
Self–taught, at first her paintings
were deliberately naïve and flattened forms of Mexican folk art, which she
loved. As her paintings matured, she starkly painted her pain. She created
sometimes shocking images of her numerous operations, painful miscarriages and
her troubled marriage to Diego Rivera, symbolically depicting her physical as well
psychological wounds.
Self-portrait with thorns, 1940
As her individuation process
deepened, her art changed. Her paintings became replete with bright colors and
her indigenous Mexican imagery and culture, and her self-portraits trace her
cultural embrace. These thorns, in “Self-portrait with Thorns,” pierce her neck
as her face is surrounded by nature. There is no distance from her suffering in
many of her later self-portraits. Frida experiences little deaths each day, but
she is not cut off from nature. Frida is embraced by earth mother.
Four Inhabitants of Mexico, 1938
Frida was able to consciously hold
the archetype of death without being overwhelmed by it. Her stance with death
was interlaced with a Mexican cultural mythos of the Day of the Dead. In this
mythos, one has close relationship with the spirit world. The spirits return to
be fed when the veil is lifted between life and death on November 2nd,
the Day of the Dead (Calavera, 2005).
Broken Columns, 1944
Frida intrigues us with her metamorphosis
on her canvases. In the transformative “Broken Columns,” Frida is no longer
lying down as she was in life, but is upright and gazing into a reality that is
beyond the personal, into the very nature of existence, an archetypal reality.
Her ego consciousness can now hold her as a numinous symbol of the Self, the
universal wounded and triumphant feminine. Frida stands tall and able to return
to her life not in crisis, but with strength that her direct and inward gaze
portrays as the objective Self (Alcantara and Egnolff, 2005, Herrera, 1983,
1991, Carpenter, 2008, Grimberg, 2006, West, 1997and Zamora, 1991).
Photo of
Diego and Frida-younger version, 1928
At the age of 21, Frida fell in love
with the Mexican muralist, Diego Rivera, who also affiliated with the Communist
Party. Soul mates and lovers, theirs was a turbulent relationship. Twenty years
her senior, with a demanding and successful career, Diego was repeatedly
unfaithful to Frida, with one of the most hurtful encounters occurring between Diego
and her beloved sister, Christina.
Frida and Christina, 1940
Jung (1925) explores how the unlived
lives of an individual’s parents are carried in the unconscious and later
activate the choice of a marriage partner, this ongoing influence of death in
our lives. . Perhaps Frida and Christina enacted the competition, triangulation
and betrayal that were interwoven in their family dynamics. Frida also enacted the family secret in her
marriage to Diego. Her mother was betrayed by her husband’s secret adoration of
his daughter. Frida was both betrayed by a family member, her sister, as well
as becoming the betrayer with her numerous sexual liaisons after Christina’s
affair with Diego.
Self Portrait with Chopped Hair, 1940
After she learned of the affair,
Frida chopped off her hair, which Diego loved, in an act of defiance. Reflecting her sardonic humor, at the top of
this painting are the words of a popular song:
“Look, I used to love you, it was because of your
hair, now you‘re pelona (bald or shorn), I don’t love you any more. “ (Zamora,
1990, p. 64)
Frida said: “you have ruined my womanhood through your
infidelities” (Herrera, 1991, p. 152). Frida used the imagery of her hair as a
symbol of her rage, attempting to severe her attachment to Diego. Her fury is
palpable in her ugly man’s clothes, mutilated hair, and angry expression.
Frida’s femininity had been sacrificed at Diego’s altar of infidelity. She
begins to sever her dependent attachment to Diego and continues this severance
the “Two Fridas, which we will revisit later. Frida did never entirely sever
her relationship with her husband. Frida
and Diego’s passionate, stormy relationship survived these infidelities, her
seriously dangerous miscarriages, their divorce, remarriage and her faltering
health.
Henry Ford Hospital, 1932
Frida suffered tremendously with her
inability to birth a child due to her accident. In this piece, she depicts her inner horror of not being able to bear a
child, another reflection of the golden and bloody relationship she has with
her body. Frida suffered greatly from her infertility. Yet, a compensatory
resource grew in her with her attachment and dedication to her nieces and
animals.
Frida and the Caesarian Operation, 1932
I feel a deep kinship with these painting
about her loss of mothering. These paintings reflect my suffering and also
inspired me to paint my own pain. Frida has been like a patron saint of
infertile woman and couples. Through her
art, Frida transforms pain into beauty and truth and then penetrates into our
inner loneliness, thus universally bridging our experiences to hers.
Older Diego and Frida, 1954
Diego and Frida’s relationship was
very complex. On one level, he offered an arena for the enactment of
triangulation and betrayal, her early trauma, as well as recreating her bonds
with an older male, first her father and then Diego. Frida had a sense of this
in her remark,
“I
suffered two grave accidents in my life. One in which a street car knocked me
down…The other is Diego” (Zamora, 1990, p. 70).
Diego was a paradox for Frida, giving her
life, death, and rebirth.
Diego’s mural at Frida’ high school, 1922
Their lives intersected in many ways
even before they fell in love. Frida was a budding artist and politically
active before her accident. She had a high school crush on Diego and taunted
him, while he was painting this mural at her high school. She would call him
fat and then run and hide to see his reaction.
Self-Portrait with Loose Hair, 1947
After meeting him at party at which
Diego shot the phonograph, Frida became attracted to his untamed and
unpredictable manner, perhaps one that matched her own. Although a tiny woman,
Frida’s personality was large, loud, vibrant and extroverted and could match
his personality and size. Frida developed a stronger compensatory style of
defiance after the accident. She would hide her vulnerability and pain with a
strident, loud and adventuresome persona.
Self Portrait with Braid, 1941
Even her appearance was
unconventional; she declined to remove her facial hair and was known for her
unibrow, small mustache, and for her flamboyant Mexicana-styled clothes. Diego
was financially generous to Frida and her family with her medical bills, her
father’s financial problems and her future medical bills. Even with the
financial assistance, Frida’s mother was unsupportive of her daughter’s
marriage to Diego. With deep fears for her daughter, Matilde said it was
marriage between “a dove and an elephant” (Herrera, 1919, p.48).
Frida and Diego on their wedding day, 1941
Similar to her father, Diego was a
great artistic mentor to Frida. He indirectly influenced her to leave her early
European style and adapt a more Mexican colonial retablo style. Initially, she
absorbed his cultural embrace along with his political idealism. As her journey
of individuation matured, her culture, politics and sense of style increasingly
reflected the Self.
Painting of Diego and Frida, 1944
Diego and Frida were comrades and
bound by their commitment to Communism as well as art. In a sense as seen in
this painting, they completed each other, finding their anima and animus in the
other in their relationship.
Diego
was Frida’s muse and supporter artistically. In his autobiography, Rivera said
that Frida’s canvases
“…revealed
an unusual energy of expression, precise delineation, character and true
severity. They showed none of the tricks in the name of originality that
usually mark the work of ambitious beginners. They have fundamental plastic
honesty and an artistic personality of their own. They communicated a vital
sensuality, complemented by a merciless yet sensitive power of observation. It
was obvious to him that this girl was an authentic artist” (Rivera, quoted in
Alcantara and Egnolff, 1999, p. 115).
He
has often said she was a better painter than he was.
Self-portrait with parrot and monkey, 1940
Frida painted her painful inner
experience through realism, symbolism and surrealism always laced with her
indigenous Mexican culture. She never liked these labels and said, “I paint my
own reality” (Carpenter, 208, p. 79). In painting her internal reality of
suffering, Frida, along with Jung and others birthed a new approach to art,
later called Expressive Arts Therapy.
Frida painting the “Two Fridas”
Frida lived a paradox. Always close
to death and suffering with many losses because of her accident, she lived
largely by celebrating life. With “Two Fridas,” she holds the paradox of her
existence: The European and the Mexico Frida. She becomes her imaginary friend
and companion again and expresses the capacity to love and be loved as the two
Fridas hold each other hands. Frida is painting her psychic pain, of her
exposed and wounded heart. She holds the
duality of existence: the observer and the observed, the conscious Frida who
ego is observing and the universal Frida who source is from the objective
collective unconscious. With the joined hands, she has developed a strong
ego/self axis, able to consciously manifest a deeper connection to the larger
Self. This was also a death and rebirth in her art: the death of the European
feminine, and a rebirth as a Mexican icon. Using Jung’s lens, Frida’s eventual
transformation from the personal into an archetypal image stems from her
rebirth as Mexican feminine icon.
“Rebirth
is an affirmation that must be counted among the primordial affirmations of
mankind. These primordial affirmations are based on what I call the archetypes”
(CW, vol. 9i, par.207, p. 203)
The Little Deer, 1946
With the little deer, she holds the
ego and archetypal imagery in a deeper way. She is animal and human, the human
who observes, and the animal that is wounded. Yet the animal is still able to
move. Culturally, this type of symbolism is native to Mexico. Yet Frida takes
it a step further in creating her mythos. She can hold her suffering as she moves in life. Frida’s powerful stance
strengthens her as she struggles to live each day in pain (West, 1997).
The Tree of Hope stands Firm, 1946
Frida explores another duality inside
herself: the tragic victim and the heroic survivor. Psychologically, she has
developed the caring mother who is able to hold her pain and is hopeful. Frida
painted this while her health declined. At this time, Frida was forced to wear
a steel corset and was confined to bed. Holding this tension of opposites, she released her libidinal energies
and through her art moved more into the archetypal realm as her pain increased.
She is becoming a universal symbol of the Mexican Tehuana woman, connected to
the earth while existing in the moonlight. The Tehuana garbed Frida holds the
blood and golden colors of her accident in her dress now as fierce passion and
regal majesty.
Frida’s drawing of feet from her journal, 1953
After Frida had her right foot
amputated at the knee, she created this drawing that was discovered in her
journal. In contrast to her other journal; this drawing is a complete,
thoughtful piece. She depicts her greatest fear, the loss of feet and thus her
independence. Frida created these feet as “Milagros,” a Mexican amulet whose
name means miracles. Through the miracle of her art, she can accept this loss.
Frida now lived in the archetypal realm of the imagination and can learn how to
fly. The writing on the feet says “Feet
What Do I Need Them for I have Wings to Fly” (Kahlo, 1995, p. 274).
Without Hope, 1945
Frida became very depressed after
this surgery and lived increasingly in the spirit world, on the dark shadow
side with alcohol and drugs, and on the other side through her creativity and
connection to the spirits of Mexican culture. Her archetypal imagery emerged
more and more in her paintings. Seen in tears in “Without Hope,” she vomits,
expelling the horror of her suffering onto her easel. The earth reflects the fissures of her body,
the violence done to her body and to Mexico.
This piece is a testament to her
belief that art is medicine as she painted her suffering. This medicine led her
to exist more and more in another objective reality.
Two Nudes in the Forest, 1939
With this earlier piece the “Two Nudes,”
Frida turns to art to find comfort that did not exist in her external world.
She is held by the feminine, a compensatory stance countering the rejecting
personal mother. Her nudes evoke the transformation of her imaginary friend who
waited for her in the center of the earth. Her friend is now her brown Mexican
mother culture in nature, who holds her like a child. Both nudes could be the
comforter and comforted. In the collective world, she can be vulnerable and
comforted as well as loved by the mother. This piece may also reflect her
bisexuality, receiving comfort from women when the masculine offers little.
The Love Embrace of the Universe 1949
With “The Love Embrace,” the earth
and the Aztec goddesses cradle Frida. There is a union of darkness and light. She embraces the baby Diego, the passion of
her life, mothering him now, while the earth mother cradles her. Frida
identifies with the great mother. This is an incredible painting, bringing
resolution of her personal pain with her mother, Diego, and her wounded body on
an archetypal level. The emergence of the great mother flowing from her culture
and her art provides the love and nurturance needed to bear the pain of her
declining health.
Roots, 1943
In “Roots,” Frida is alone and lying
down and she is one with nature. Frida is the artist whose creative urge lives
in her like a tree and nourishes her. She is the artist rooted to nature. She
is a numinous image of the artist who transforms her scars into the roots of
life. This is an example of Jung’s belief of the transformative power of
art. Frida is able to give birth not to
a child but to the roots of life itself. All energies flow from a universal
source of nature. This could also be the reversal of “Me and my nurse”. She now
nurtures the archetypal earth.
Ironically, Jung discussed the artist
with the same imagery that Frida used in this painting.
“The unborn work in the psyche of
the artist is a force of nature that achieves its end either with tyrannical
might or with the subtle cunning of nature herself, quite regardless of the man
who is its vehicle. The creative urge lives and grows in him/her
like a tree in the earth from which it draws its nourishment. We would do
well, then, to think of the creative process as a living thing implanted
in the human psyche.”
(CW, vol. 15, par. 115, p. 162)
Moses, 1945
In “Moses,” we see this
interconnection and flow of life as Frida painted and as Jung espoused it. Frida painted this after reading Freud’s Moses
and Monotheism. There is an unusual complexity to this piece. Frida said
that she wanted to show “…the reason these people invent or imagine heroes and
gods is pure fear. Fear of life and fear for death” (Zamora, 1990, p. 110).
Frida may be imagining herself reborn into the collective. Fear and suffering
propels us to create either with icons or art to comfort and soothe the fear of
death and the suffering of life. Frida is birthed in the collective and
welcomed, which is in striking contrast to birthing from the dead mother in “My
Birth”
Fruit and Parrot, 1951
Flower of life, 1953
Sun and life, 1954
In these pieces, all created in the
three years before her death, Frida was suffering physically. Her internal terrain changed as did her
self-portraits. Frida related more to the archetype of life as depicted in
nature. Her self-portraits, this empathetic mirroring and her imaginary friend
were now fruit, foliage and animals, the archetypal source of life. As we can witness in this piece, “Sun and
Life,” Frida’s paintings are full of life. On the shadow side, her paintings
were said to be “over-exuberant,” due to her drug addiction. However, they also
reflected the intensity one can feel about life with the approach of death.
Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick, 1954
In the year of her death, Frida
returned to a human form for a self-portrait. However, this was not the human
Frida or even a surreal Frida. This was the archetypal Frida. She stands
straight and full-bodied. She is corseted with what could the tablets of the
Ten Commandments. She no longer needs her clutches, so they fall away. The sun
and the moon, the peace dove and the evil eagle surround Frida. She can hold
the opposites and is strong and powerful, held by her political beliefs and
universal hands. Frida is ready for death.
Photo of Frida at the gallery in bed,
1954
Only a few months before her death,
Diego produced her first solo show in Mexico. Frida would not leave till her
art spoke in her motherland and she fought to attend. Though weak, she obeyed
her doctor’s orders not to leave her bed and had herself carried into the
opening in her bed.
Photo of Frida in her coffin, July 13, 1954
Frida died on July 13, 1954, 54 years
ago, entering the collective world totally. She now lives through her art. Frida has become an archetypal symbol of the
wounded yet triumphant feminine whose art become medicine. She embodied the
sacred marriage of life and death through her paintings.
The Wounded Table, 1940
Long after her death, Frida, who
turned 100 last year, continues to intrigue me. Twenty years ago, she invited
me to her wounded table to learn from her. At this table, she confronted her pain, shadow and death and discovered
meaning in her life. Unafraid of Coatlique, she danced with death and uncovered
universal truths in her art. Frida’s dance with death was her greatest teacher
and has been mine, and perhaps now, yours.
Frida caressed life as she approached
death. The voice of her psyche spoke in her final painting, “Viva al
vida,” “Long Live Life”!
Vida al vida, 1954
Frida Kahlo References
Alcantara, I., & Egnolff, S. (2005). Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.Munich: Prestel Publishing Ltd.
Beck, E. T. (2006). Kahlo's World Split Open. Feminist Studies, 32(1), 55-81.
Calavera, R. Y. (2003). Dia de Muertos II. Mexico: Artes de Mexico.
Carpenter, E. (ed). (2008). Frida Kahlo. New York: D.A.P./ Distributed Art Publishers.
Chodorow, J. (1991). Dance Therapy and Depth Psychology: The Moving Imagination. New York: Routledge.
Dosamantes-Beaudry, I. (2001). Frida Kahlo: self-other representation and self-healing through art. The Arts Psychotherapy, 28, 5-17.
Downs, L. (2001). Border: La Linea: Narada World.
Fernandez, M. (1971). Frida Kahlo: "La mejor expresion moderna de la vida y el mundo plastico de una gran
Artista": Departmento de Actividades Cinematograficas.
Frida Kahlo. (2005). On Biography: A&E Television Networks
Goldenthal, E. (2002). Frida Soundtrack: Miramax.
Granziera, Patrizia. "From Coatlicue to Guadalupe: The Image of the Great Mother in Mexico." Studies in World Christianity 10(2): 250-273. 2005.
Grimberg, S. (2006). I Will Never Forget You: Unpublished Photographs and Letters. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books LLC.
Harding, M.E. (1970). The Way of All Women. New York:: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
Herrera, H. (1983). Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo. New York, NY: Harper Perennial.
Herrera, H. (1991). Frida Kahlo: The Paintings. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Jung, C.G. (1961). Memories, Dreams and Reflections (with Aniela Jaffe). New York: Vintage Books.
_________. (1928). “Marriage as a Psychological Relationship” in Cary, H.G. and Cary, C.F. Contributions to Analytical Psychology. New York:
_______(1971). Psychological Types, Collected Works, vol. 6. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
________. (1959). The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Collected Works, vol. 9.1. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
________. (1968), Alchemical Studies, Collected Works, vol. 13. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
_________. (1963). Mysterium Coniunctionis, Collected Works, vol. 14. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
________. (1966). The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature, Collected Works, vol. 15. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Jimenez, V. (1997). Juan O'Gorman: Principio y fin del Camino.Mexico: Instituto Latinoamericano de la Comunicacion Educativa.
Kahlo, F. (1995). The Diary of Frida Kahlo, An Intimate Self-Portrait (B. C. d. Toledo & R. Pohlenz, Trans).. Mexico: Abradale.
Kahlo, F. (1995). I Painted My Own Reality. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books.
Kultur. Great Women Artists: Frida Kahlo: Kultur.
Kalsched, D. (1996). The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit. New York: Routledge.
Medina, O., & Gurrola, J. J. (1984). Frida: Naturaleza Viva: Veracruz.
Metcalf, P. & Huntington, R. (1991) Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press.
Paz, O. (1961), The Labyrinth of Solitude. Grove Press: New York.
Shore, A.N. (2003). Affect Dysregulations & Disorders of the Self. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Taymor, J. (2002). Frida: Mirimax.
The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo. (2004). On PBS Home Video: Daylight Films.
Vogel, S. (1995). Teotihuacan: History, Art and Monuments (D. B. Castledine, Trans).. Mexico: Conaculta.
West, J. J. (1995). Frida Kahlo: Dynamic Transformations. Proceedings of the 13th International Congress of Analytical Psychology. (95), 379-388.
Winnicott, D. W. (1965). The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment. New York: International Universities.
Yates, J. (1999). Jung on Death and Immortality. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Zamora, M. (1990). Frida Kahlo: The Brush of Anguish (M. S. Smith, Trans). Seattle: Marquand Books, Inc.
Frida Kahlo Image List
- The Dream, 1940
- Frida’s deathbed at Casa Azul
- My photo of Casa Azul, the home of Frida Kahlo, 2005
- Photo of Frida Kahlo, 1935
- The Dream, 1940
- My Photo of the Inner Courtyard and Garden of CASA AZUL, 2005
- Statue of Coatlique
- Thinking about Death, 1943
- Girl with a Death Mask, 1938
- Frida’s self-portrait: Diego on her mind, 1943
- My Family-Painting, 1950
- Kahlo childhood photo, 1913
- My birth, 1932
- My nurse and I, 1937
- The Two Fridas, 1939
- Frida in Coyoacan, 1927
- Portrait of My Father
- What the Water Gave Us, 1938
- My photo of “What the Water Gave Us” taken at the San Angel, Frida and Diego’s second home and studio, 2005
- Frida dressed as a male in a family photo, 1926
- The Bus, 1929
- The accident, 1926
- Clip from the Frida movie, the scene “The Accident
- Retablo, 1925
- Photo of Frida with her painted body cast, 1950
- Self-portrait: velvet dress, 1926
- Self-portrait of Mexican-looking Frida, 1929
- Self-portrait with thorns, 1940
- Four Inhabitants of Mexico, 1938
- Broken Columns, 1944
- Photo of Diego and Frida-younger version, 1928
- Frida and Christina, 1940
- Self Portrait with Chopped Hair, 1940
- Henry Ford Hospital, 1932
- Frida and the Caesarian Operation, 1932
- Older Diego and Frida, 1954
- Diego’s mural at Frida’ high school, 1922
- Self-Portrait with Loose Hair, 1947
- Self Portrait with Braid, 1941
- Frida and Diego on their wedding day, 1941
- Painting of Diego and Frida, 1944
- Self-portrait with parrot and monkey, 1940
- Frida painting the “Two Fridas”
- The Little Deer, 1946
- The Tree of Hope stands Firm, 1946
- Frida’s drawing of Feet from her journal, 1953
- Without Hope, 1945
- Two Nudes in the Forest, 1939
- The Love Embrace of the Universe 1949
- Roots, 1943
- Moses, 1945
- Fruit and Parrot, 1951
- Flower of life, 1953
- Sun and life, 1954
- Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick, 1954
- Photo of Frida at the gallery in bed, 1954
- Photo of Frida in her coffin, July 13, 1954
- The Wounded Table, 1945
- Vida al vida, 1954