Some write their experiences and feelings, and this becomes a novel. Some compose, and this emerges as a piece of music! She unburdened herself with her colors and brushes, and it became an art!
Mexican serial self-portraitist Frida Kahlo chose to paint herself, her best-known subject since she was alone more often than not. A few self-portraits are fairly straightforward renderings of her striking appearance. Still, many of them are entirely different in approach, profoundly personal, and particular commentaries on her life. But sometimes, even relatively straightforward works of hers, such as Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird or Me and My Parrot, carry multiple layers of allegories of her life.
By and large, Kahlo’s self-portraits simply are the living embodiment of pain. What I mean by that is Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits symbolize her dramatic life and her sufferings from not only her physical pain but also her emotional pain. Today, we will examine Frida Kahlo’s standout work, The Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (Autorretrato con un collar de espinas y un colibrí), hanging in Harry Ransom Center to reveal her true self within in this works.
The Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird painted shortly after Kahlo's marriage to Diego Rivera had ended; moreover, it is an excellent depiction of her as wounded in which the thorns cut into her neck as her monkey and cat look on, and also a dead hummingbird dangles from the necklace.
With this painting, we travel into her life in a way since it holds some traces. In the meantime, we pursue the answers to which message Frida wants to give us with this portrait. So, if you are up for it, let’s start our journey!
THE STORY BEHIND FRIDA KAHLO
Before diving into all the technical details, I would like to provide fresh insight into Frida’s life to understand the painting adequately. (At first, her story might seem too long, but I can assure you that these details are necessary to make all these interpretations of the painting.)
Magdalena Carmen Frieda. German origin name means “peaceful.” However, she had little peace throughout her life.
With the rise of anti-Fascist sentiment in Mexico in the 1930s, Frida Kahlo changed the German spelling of her name Frieda to Frida.
Frida developed poliomyelitis at six, which caused her right leg to be thinner than her left leg. Later in her life, a horrific trolley accident cut short Frida’s plans on September 27, 1925. It was one of those flukes of fate that changed a life forever. An out-of-control trolley hit the bus she was riding. She nearly died that day. You can find the accident by Frida’s words below.
“The buses in those days were absolutely flimsy; they had started to run and were very successful, but the streetcars were empty. I boarded the bus with Alejandro Gomez Arias and was sitting next to him on the end next to the handrail. Moments later bus crashed into a streetcar of the Xochimilco Line and the streetcar crushed the bus against the street corner. It was a strange crash, not violent, but dull and slow, and it injured everyone, me much more seriously..”
Frida Kahlo
The scene of the accident was gruesome. The iron rod stabbed through her hip and emerged through her vagina, damaging her uterus and causing her incapable of bearing children. (Later, Frida Kahlo told the doctor the handrail had taken her virginity.) Her wounds included a broken spine, collarbone, two broken ribs, and a shattered pelvis; her right leg had eleven fractures, and her right foot was dislocated and crushed. Which basically means a lifetime of suffering and pain.
Finding the Solution in Painting
She spent a month in the hospital, immobilized in plaster casts and traction. This followed by several months pinned to her bed at home. Therefore she needed to find something to occupy herself. Frida chose to paint! Her parents devised an easel to paint in her bed. In addition, her mother rigged up a mirror placed above Frida’s four-poster bed; so she could paint herself while lying down. She painted vistas from Coyoacán and portraits of herself and relatives and also her friends who visited her. Admirably she performed it without any artistic experience.
Yet lying in plaster casts, she promptly developed an inclination for art and prodigious talent. The respectable thing is that she made a virtue out of adversity, her misery. Frida coped with her physical and psychological sufferings with a light of art.
Meeting Her Great Pain
Every artist needs approval, so she decided to ask the one artist she knew, a well-known muralist Diego Rivera. She said to him;
“Look, I didn’t come to flirt with you or anything; even though you are a womanizer, I came to show you my painting. If it interests you, tell me so; if it doesn’t interest you, tell me that too, so I can get to work on something else to help my parents.”
Frida Kahlo
Rivera said he liked her work, especially the self-portrait Frida showed him. The other three, he told her, were too much influenced by other artists. Therefore, Diego asked her to paint another picture, and he would come to her visit. So Diego did, and he told Frida she was talented. The rest was inevitable. Soon the two started to see each other passionately. Then, Diego proposed marriage, and Kahlo accepted. And on August 21, 1929, Frida Kahlo, age 22, married Diego Rivera, 42. The next few years were happy, though.
She virtually stopped painting and soon found herself expecting a child. Unfortunately, doctors told her she would be unable to deliver a baby. Later, Frida experienced a miscarriage three months into her first pregnancy.
She tried four more times to have a child. But each time, it ended in miscarriage or medically recommended an abortion. So, Kahlo poured her maternal longings into the care of her nieces, nephews, her enormous collection of dolls, and her pets.
Married to the Devil
Their relationship contained passion, devotion, jealousy, anger, and betrayal.
The other pain in her life, Diego Rivera’s constant infidelities, tormented Kahlo. Even though Rivera said; “Frida became the most important thing in my life.” he did not always show his love by his behavior, unfortunately. It was terrible enough Rivera’s messy relationships with strangers, but…
When Diego lost American mural commissions, he returned to his murals at the National Palace in Mexico City. At the same time, he began making sketches of Frida’s younger sister, Christina. One thing led to another, and then he had an affair with Frida’s own younger sister. Frida was at first crushed and then enraged. The two people closest to Frida betrayed her.
“There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.”
Frida Kahlo
Kahlo was devastated, but subsequently, their relationship was on new terms: Each was free to have sex with whomever they wanted. This arrangement seemed to work for a while, and Kahlo herself had several romantic relationships with men and women. However, the most significant consequence was her affair with the exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Kahlo nicknamed him el Viejo (the old man), and this influential socialist leader characteristically attracted to her. But, of course, conducting an affair with Rivera’s hero was also an act of most effective revenge.
Being on the Public Eye
After the romance with Trotsky was over, Kahlo became more productive than she had been in years. She produced more paintings in 1937 and 1938 than she had during the whole eight years of her marriage. The art world was quick to notice the fantastic images Kahlo produced. And exhibits and sales awaited her, as well as visits to New York and Paris. In 1938, a New York gallery owner invited her to hold a one-woman show. She went on to the second show in Paris. While Kahlo was away, Rivera learned of her affair with his political hero and felt deeply betrayed, followed by the couple beginning divorce proceedings at the end of the year.
She was left heartbroken and lonely. However, Kahlo’s art had become increasingly refined and highly personal. She painted her own experience in an artistic exorcism. She produced one of her most compelling paintings during this time, “Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird.”
THE STORY BEHIND SELF-PORTRAIT WITH THE THORN NECKLACE AND HUMMINGBIRD
Diego Rivera inspired Frida to paint the Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird. The end of her marriage to Diego Rivera in 1939 was an inevitable but also unbearable split for Frida Kahlo. And her health, she had enough of it. Because of those, Frida Kahlo was wholly drawn to painting. This time to paint, in a way, expressing and revealing her physical pain as if in revenge, as well as the pain of loneliness she feels.
Kahlo did not leave only one love. She’d also break from renowned photographer Nickolas Muray in 1941. However, Kahlo and Muray stayed good friends until she died in 1954. After her divorce from Diego, Kahlo struggled financially, and she had to sell the painting to raise money for a divorce lawyer. And Nickolas Muray bought Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird directly from Kahlo soon after completion.
Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird stayed in Muray’s home until it was acquired by the Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin in 1965. Since 1990, the University has been generous in lending the piece out to other domestic and abroad galleries. As a result, it has visited Australia, Canada, Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Mexico, Rome, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and New York City.
The Meaning Behind Self-portrait with the Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird
Frida Kahlo’s portraits have quite personal meanings. As we mentioned before, she uses objects and settings to emphasize her identity or narrates her life story through these self-portraits. Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird has multiple layers of meaning and represents her cultural identity, all the pain that followed her since her childhood, her divorce from Diego Rivera, her courage, and influences of Mexican, Aztec, and Christian culture.
ANALYSIS OF SELF-PORTRAIT WITH THE THORN NECKLACE AND HUMMINGBIRD
Frida Kahlo uses objects from nature such as animals and plants to express her identity in a Christian significance and her suffering in the Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Humming Bird by using a strong narrative style. Her hair and clothing represent her cultural background as a Mexican female artist, and the animals allude to her marriage with Diego Rivera.
The Movement of Self-portrait with the Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird
Frida Kahlo employed naïve art in Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Humming Bird and, as in her other works, primarily self-portraits influenced by Mexican culture. She created paintings filled with the bright colors and flattened forms of the Mexican folk art she adored. Her use of bright colors and simplifying flattening leaves forms shows this effect in Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Humming Bird.
On the other hand, the work features elements of Realism in Kahlo’s face details, the monkey and the cat, yet in some aspects are perhaps more influenced by Surrealism, such as the unnatural butterflies and flying flowers.
The Technique of Self-portrait with the Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird
Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Humming Bird has very realistic and skillful technique. Kahlo’s brushwork was delicate and elegant. Moreover, she depicts many details using small brushstrokes; for that matter, the intricate laces in Frida’s white dress or her detailed hair demonstrate her incredible attention to detail.
The painting is well balanced with symmetrical composition. Frida’s image dominates the painting, balancing other subjects in the mid-ground and background. And also, two animals alongside her shoulders create harmony in the design of the painting and the environment filled with leaves.
Kahlo initiates contrast. How? She used white for her shirt and black for the animals. (White could be used to link her to the idea of her further as Jesus, and as well as black in the animals to represent devils or demons.) In addition, there is an excellent example of chiaroscuro; Kahlo is wearing a white top against her golden, sun-kissed skin and dark hair. Simultaneously, the luminous white clothing contrasts with her dark hair and black animals.
Her use of traditional Mexican marks, yet her modern approach, has caused the materials to be used in conventional and contemporary ways. Namely, She painted her face and the animals quite traditionally, with realistic results, whereas her approach to the background is more modern.
What Can You See in Self-portrait with the Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird?
Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Humming Bird by Frida Kahlo carries not only realistic figures but also some symbolic details. At first blush, her highly personal work seems pretty straightforward but, in reality, conveys loads of meaning behind it to be seen.
Animal, flower, leaf, gaze and expression, pain, love, mother nature, longing for a child, Aztec symbols, and many more, all archetypal images that can be listed as; seems to be related to the artist’s inner world and its spatial representation in this self-portrait.
Frida Kahlo wants to give us her messages with animal and flower figures with this work. While monkey, bird, and cat are observed as animal figures, braids in different colors and shapes are placed on the artist’s hair as flower figures draw attention.
Now we are about to start to examine each figure in detail. But, first, let’s start with our main character!
1. Frida the Christian Martyr
Kahlo introduced herself as a Christian martyr by wearing a necklace like Christ’s crown of thorns in a frontal pose. Even though Frida was an atheist, Christian and Jewish imagery are often represented in her work; she blended those elements of the Mexican religious tradition with realistic and surrealist renderings.
One essential detail in the painting is that the thorns pierce her neck, drawing blood and causing her pain. However, if you look at it closely, you will notice the monkey, placing on her left side, tugging at Frida’s thorn necklace. Monkey is the one who gives her the pain and causes all the bleeding. Regardless, this image makes the viewer feel sorry for her since Frida Kahlo depicted herself in a way, she stared directly at the viewer with a calm and deadpan expression on her face, seeming as if she’s patiently enduring the pain she is suffering, both due to her divorce and her physical anguish.
Nonetheless, she might also have something to tell us, waiting for our help patiently. Or, since she did get used to pain, she wanted to show us this ordinary moment of her painful life.
Frida Kahlo Style
Frida was rebellious, setting her own style. Her dark eyebrows met in the middle, which she did not disturb them to pluck, and she had a faint mustache. Besides, Kahlo didn’t avoid expressing them in her many self-portraits as in the painting. She was a pioneer of a new form of a self-portrait with facial hair indelibly strokes the one who looks at them. Frida Kahlo went against both conventions of beauty and social presumption in her self-portraits. Here, the political and gender-based message of feminism and nationalism is indicated through the unconventional exaggeration of her unibrow and mustache.
Frida Kahlo’s hair and white dress represent her bond to indigenous Mexican culture and her husband. It’s intriguing to witness how Frida’s dress style reflected the changing conditions of her life. After their marriage, Rivera encouraged her to wear the glowing Mexican-Indian garment. (It was worn by the women of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.) Frida wore Tehuana dress with floating skirts and dramatic jewelry for the rest of her life. She made her hair braid and trimmed with ribbons, blossoms, and sometimes combs. (As in the painting, Kahlo continually painted self-portraits of herself in those exotic outfits and this hairstyle, which attracted attention.)
2. Biblical Reference of The Necklace of Thorns
By and large, the thorn necklace symbolizes her pain and the thorn necklace alludes to the crown of thorns worn by Jesus at his crucifixion.
Nevertheless, using the thorn necklace digging into her neck as a metaphor, Kahlo might show the pain of her failed relationship with Diego. Some art critics also interpret Kahlo used the Resurrection of Christ as an influence in this painting and directly resembles herself to Jesus through the thorn necklace.
3. The Dead Hummingbird
A pendant hanging from the thorn necklace takes the form of a hummingbird, whose outstretched wings echo Frida’s united eyebrows. However, a close look at hanging from the thorn necklace is actually a dead hummingbird.
A hummingbird is a tiny, jewel-colored bird whose wings move quickly, fly long distances, and make a humming noise. They are distinctive, feisty, perseverant, and adaptable. That is why hummingbirds symbolize endurance and grit, and the hummingbird reminds us of Frida; since she tended to bear all the pain in every condition and she was adaptable strikes on her way. Therefore we can associate the hummingbird with Frida in the painting.
Moreover, the hummingbird often symbolizes freedom, and in terms of biblical meaning, the hummingbird’s symbolism is related to the bird’s ability to spread joy and playfulness. But in this painting, the black and lifeless hummingbird could represent Frida’s deadened heart, spirit, and how she feels trapped in emotional thorns.
Harmony in Mexican and Aztec Culture
Kahlo often blended elements from Mexican and Aztec culture into her work. So we do. In indigenous Mexican culture, hummingbirds are used as magic charms to bring luck in love. Another interpretation could be as hope for her failing marriage. But the bird died; maybe her hopes died too.
When it comes to Aztec mythology, the hummingbird symbolized reincarnation, which the spirits of warriors killed returned in the form of hummingbirds. So, the deceased marriage might have been returned in the form of a dead hummingbird and placed around her rib.
Since Aztec god Huitzilopochtli was depicted as a half-man half & hummingbird creature, our last interpretation would be Kahlo’s hummingbird might be a symbol of Huitzilopochtli. Huitzilopochtli was, above all else, a war god. Huitzilopochtli was perceived as the sun and the ever-youthful warrior who fought battles with the other gods for man’s survival. Likewise, Kahlo was a warrior, fighting her constant pain in her lifetime; here, she might want to resemble her war by depicting hummingbird.
Lastly, hummingbird wings rotate forward and backward in a “figure eight” pattern, which is unique among birds due to the unusual anatomy of the hummingbird’s wings. Consequently, the symbolism of the hummingbird is also related to the idea of eternity and infinity. Frida Kahlo’s purple bandana on her hair settled in an infinity symbol echoes the hummingbird fly pattern in the painting.
4. The Spider Monkey
The spider monkey Caimito de Guayabal (meaning Guavapatch Fruit), a gift from Diego, is on the right side of her shoulder, black and menacing and symbolizing lots of things. By pulling on the necklace like the crown of thorns of Jesus, a spider monkey digs into Frida’s neck, causing Frida to bleed. Somehow, Frida does not show fear or look threatened by the monkey; instead, she surprisingly endures the pain.
Kahlo frequently used monkeys as a symbol shown in her self-portraits. In Mexican culture, Monkeys are symbols of lust, yet mostly Kahlo portrayed them as tender and protective creatures. But to Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, some critics interpret it as an honest depiction of her dear pet. Others point out it symbolizes her worst pain Diego or a visual expression of the physical pain she endured most of her life. Others actually claim that it is set on her right shoulder signifies the devils as Rivera himself. And yet, others assume it marks an ancient Aztec tradition that considered the monkey a symbol of the arts, creativity, and expression.
Simply a Monkey?
It seems to me the monkey symbolizes the children she could never have due to being unable to have children from the trolley accident. As we mentioned before, Frida tried to have children many times, but these efforts ended with miscarriage and medically recommended abortion. So, to fill the void of having no children, Frida turned her maternal longings to nieces, her massive collection of dolls and pets. Maybe Frida wanted to convey to us the emotional pain of not having a child by portraying the physical pain caused by the spider monkey. If we take it a step further, maybe he did not just describe our interpretation, but what really hurt her was looking at a spider monkey instead of her children, and she naively presented it.
But another strong comment might be that since Kahlo made this work during the time that they divorced, depicting the pain which monkey (the gift from Diego) gave to her symbolizes the pain she endured during her divorce from Diego. Or, in the same way, we can relate that the monkey represents Diego and his indifference to the pain he caused to her during their marriage, with the way monkey is unaware of the pain he caused to impose on Frida and his keep doing it.
5. The Threatening Cat
Over her left shoulder, the menacing black cat waits to pounce on the hummingbird, symbolizing lousy luck and death according to Mexican culture. Its ready to pounce action gives the viewer a sense of unease that something might happen.
The black cat also may try to break Frida’s hope about making up with Diego if we consider that hummingbird symbolizes magic charms to bring luck in love.
6. Surrealist Dragonfly Flowers & Butterflies
Among the leaves, on top of Frida’s head, two flowers transformed into dragonflies may be symbols of Resurrection, as are the filigree butterfly brooches attached to Frida’s headdress, and again Frida draws on Christian principles.
Dragonflies are, sometimes colloquially called Devil’s darning needles, reputed to sew up the mouths of misbehaving children; hence they have needles. Suppose Frida depicts the monkey as her child; the dragonflies might be waiting to punish the monkey for its misbehaving act. Or Frida may have wanted to intimidate the monkey (causing her pain and blood in the painting) and protect herself from physical pain, likewise emotional pain. For that matter, would it be wrong to define dragonflies as guardians to protect Frida from the pain?
7. Tropical Background
Once again, Frida uses sizeable tropical plant leaves as the background. As in many of her self-portraits, a division of large leaves closes off space. Frida uses the background to express her mood or create a particular atmosphere for the painting. In “Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace and Humming Bird,” she fills in the scene with animals and plants to create a claustrophobic space, giving us an idea of her inner sufferings and her spending time closed places mostly in her bed.
The green leaves and dragonfly flowers in the background symbolize fertility, differing from the deadly figures (allegories of miscarriage resulting from a metal pole piercing her pelvis in the bus accident) in the mid-ground and foreground and create a striking juxtaposition.
Conclusion
When one first looks at Frida’s artwork, it is easy to say that it is very dreamlike, possessing enigmatic traits and abstract thoughts meshed together. “Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined by the everyday ration world in an absolute reality, a surreality,” André Breton said. However, after studying Frida’s life, it does not seem as surreal anymore because many of her life events are expressed in the paintings, and all the dreamlike scenes are elements of her memory. Hence, Frida can be labeled a surrealist, but it is essential to remember that her paintings are not dreams. They are her reality.
All was said by me, yet, the one more thing left to be told by Frida Kahlo…
“They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.”
Frida Kahlo
I have a few questions for you:
Which feeling does derive when you look at Frida's expression?
What title would you give this painting?
You can share your answers with us in the comments:)
To learn more about Frida Kahlo and her works, I recommend to you the book “Frida Kahlo: The Paintings” by Hayden Herrera.
Wanna continue to read more about Frida Kahlo’s artwork? Check out The Two Fridas, here.
Until next time, stay with art.. ????????✌
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