Name: Frida Gets Personal
Uploaded: 2026-01-31T16:59:11.000Z
Duration: 7 min 47 s
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Frida Kahlo had a flair for the dramatic in her use of colors, composition, in her choice of imagery and iconography.

Adverbs of manner

She's a master at instantaneously capturing the attention of the viewer.

Adverbs of degree

In the decade since her death, especially the most recent ones, culture has come to prize the this quality in creative work, the ability to grab people quickly above pretty much everything else.

This, I think, is why Frida's painting has enjoyed continued and increasing popularity.

Yes, there's a sensationalistic obsession with the drama of her life, another thing that modern culture prizes.

But that wouldn't arouse nearly as much interest if it weren't for the drama of her art, which is also sensational, but

What is it that grabs us in Frida's work?

For me, it's the intimacy of these images, the way she communicates her vulnerability, her physical and emotional pain, but

also her defiance and self confidence and the pride she so clearly has in her culture.

When I look at these paintings, I feel close to Frida, as if I was there when she painted them, as if we were friends.

I think I probably share that feeling with millions of others around the world.

And I don't think that it's an accident, because the more you look at and think about Frieda's work, the more you see how expertly designed it is to cultivate this sense of intimacy.

She uses several techniques to achieve this end, and

they all work together in a way that is cumulative.

The first and most obvious is, is her use of the self portrait.

There never was a more personal form of painting than this.

Of Frida's 143 canvases, only 55 are self portraits.

But these comprise nearly all of her best and most popular works.

Frida's greatest subject, in other words, is herself.

You can look at them as a form of autobiography, and

as with any autobiography, they are a combination of self reflection and self creation.

On the one hand, she's depicting the experiences of her life, the chronic pain she endured after a bus accident at age 18 in which she was impaled through the pelvis by an iron handrail, the love she felt for her husband, the famous Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, and

the emotional turmoil caused by his infidelities and their eventual divorce.

On the other hand, she's fashioning the identity she wants to have, establishing herself as the paragon of a New Mexico.

Frida came of age in the wake of the Mexican Revolution, a decade long bloody struggle to establish a more equal society against the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, whose 31 years in power largely benefited wealthy landowners and foreign investors.

The cultural upshot of the revolution was a renewed interest and pride in Mexico's rich indigenous heritage.

Along with her husband, Frida was a key figure in the development of a new, less Eurocentric national identity.

But whereas Rivera used epic, overtly political murals to champion this identity, Frida located the New Mexico in herself.

She frequently makes use of stories and symbols from Mexican folklore and Aztec mythology, like monkeys and hearts and skulls.

She wears the necklace of the Aztec goddess Coatlicue, who gave birth to the moon and stars, as the story goes, and

the Tiwana dress, traditional clothing of the Zapotec women of Tehuantepec.

Frida combine iconography and themes from various cultures and traditions to create a personal identity, a gender identity, a national identity, and

works of art that are all equally layered and complex.

Now, I really, really hesitate to bring up the word selfie, since Frida is doing something far more sophisticated than pretty much all of what you see on Instagram.

But in so much as her self portraits are always simultaneously a recording and a performance of identity, they're bound to be deeply relatable to modern audiences who think in these terms on a daily basis.

Another thing that makes Frida's work so intimate is of course, the fact that she's looking right at us.

She gazes through the canvas and into our souls.

You're not looking at a painting, you're looking at a person.

And that person is looking back at you, not with reassurance, but

with a face that's stoic and inscrutable, that doesn't let you go.

The last important thing I'll mention is the style of Frida's painting, which has a bit of an amateurish quality to it in its flattening of depth and skewed perspectives and anatomy.

Frida was an educated artist who knew how to paint realistically.

She intentionally adopted this naive and primitive style, drawing from Mexico's tradition of votive paintings called retables or exbotos, religious images made by actual amateur and self taught painters to give thanks for a miracle, which you can find in churches and home altars across Mexico.

Some feature images of saints or religious figures, others depict the story of the miracle itself.

Frida had a collection of around 2000 such paintings.

Not only was she elevating this Mexican folk art tradition, she was also borrowing its down to earth quality.

A feeling that someone, you know, someone from around the corner, made these paintings that you could make these paintings.

Frida's work purposely doesn't position itself as highbrow, with all the solemnity and reverence that implies.

That would only serve to erect a wall between her and her audience.

She aimed to do the opposite of history's uncountable artists only a fraction gain recognition, and

most of the time it's local and fleeting.

Only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction enjoy the kind of recognition that puts their name on the world's lips, spoken by scholars and school children alike.

I know we'll celebrate the brave and brilliant intimacy of her work for a long time to come, the way we celebrate a friend.

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