Frida Kahlo

I was flipping through a copy of a recent TIME Magazine when I came across a brief article about the art of Frida Kahlo being used as inspiration for a fashion line. The pictures they showed of the fashion line itself were rather uninspiring, but the short write-up on the painter caused me to do a little more research on the Mexican painter herself.

I was struck first with her giftedness as a child but second with the tragedy and pain that befell her in her childhood. That pain seems to have dominated her life--or at least her art. Having survived polio as a child, she was in a terrible bus accident at age 18 which permanently damaged her right leg, spinal column, and uterus, among other injuries. These injuries brought her recurring pain throughout her life and led to three failed pregnancies.

She started painting while she was in a full body cast recuperating from the accident, and she painted the subject with which she was the most familiar: herself. In looking at her accumulated works I see a great deal of majesty and pain, often intermingled. Looking at her art creates conflicted emotion for me about her disabilities: I simultaneously feel a measure of pity at the pain represented in the images and an understanding that the images likely would not have the gravity they do without the pain her disabilities caused. So much of art stems from the artist's physical or emotional pain, and it is a continual wonder that such beauty and inspiration--sometimes even in tragic images--can be the lasting expression of the pain of disability.