ART 125/FIST 340 Frida Kahlo's 'Disrupted Symmetery'

Frida Kahlo’s 1939 oil painting “The Two Fridas.”

Between 1925 and 1954 Frida Kahlo painted 55 self-portraits. In most of these she confronts the viewer in a full-frontal, straight-on manner. This helps her bring you into her world. She wants you to feel her pain, and her passion.

'The Broken column' painted in 1944

Much of her pain was physical. Her health problems began when she contracted Polio at age 6. At age 18 a bus she was riding in was struck by a streetcar and she was impaled by a handrail and her pelvis, spine and leg received multiple fractures. It was during this bedridden recovery period when she began painting seriously. But she never did really recover. In her lifetime she would have 35 surgeries and would wear 50 different supportive corsets and a prosthetic leg.

'Self-Portrait with Monkeys' painted in 1943

Her damaged body did nothing to suppress the power that emanates from the inner self here. We are left to wonder what her understanding of 'self' really was and how she was able to so directly communicate something so intangible.

Much of the lore of her life surrounds her long, disrupted marriage to Mexican painter Diego Rivera. The well-known biographical movie, Frida (2002), is no exception;

ART/FIST 240 Printing in the Wriston Art Center Digital Lab

 The Wriston digital lab is in the lower level of the Wriston Art Center, in the near West portion of the building. Your LU ID will buzz you into the building and the room. Currently only one student can occupy the lab at a time. There is a sign-up sheet on the door if you wish to reserve time, and an 'un/occupied' sign on the doorknob. Only the back computer is hooked-up to the printer. Open your image in photoshop. If you set the screen brightness to 3 suns it will give you a good idea of what it may look like printed...most images need to be brightened up a bit. Check that the printer is powered-up. Insert an 8.5 by 11 sheet of the luster photo paper into the printer vertically with the shiny-ish side up, to the far right part of the paper slot. Make sure the printer dialog is set to 'professional'. Use this video to help navigate the printer dialog;

Most of these settings will not need to be changed. It is important to size your image so it is nicely placed on the sheet, as when we frame the 11x14s the amount of border, or bleed-off, is critical to the look of the framed image.