Monday, 12 May 2014

Frida Kahlo And Degas Paintings

By Darren Hartley


With their intense and vibrant colors, Frida Kahlo paintings are best remembered for their pain and passion. Mexicans and feminists celebrate them, the former, as emblematic of national and indigenous tradition and the latter, for their uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form.

Frida Kahlo paintings are characterized as Naive art or folk art and prominently feature Mexican culture and Amerindian cultural tradition. They are also described as surrealist, as a matter of fact, in 1938, one surrealist described Frida as being a ribbon around a bomb.

Frida was never ashamed to reflect her lifelong health problems in her works. As a matter of fact, half of the Frida Kahlo portraits are self portraits of one sort or another. She was born a bitch and a painter, according to her. The rationale for these self portraits came from Frida herself, her being alone more often than not and her knowing herself best, making herself the best model for her own paintings.

Although Degas paintings have been labelled as impressionistic in style, Edgar Degas prefers to call himself as either a realist or independent. Edgar sought to capture the fleeting moments in the flow of modern life.

However, he showed little interest in painting plein air landscapes. Degas paintings favoured theatre and cafe scenes illuminated by artificial light, clarifying the contours of figures, in total adherence to an academic training.

Edgar's father recognized the artistic gifts of his son and encouraged his efforts at drawing by taking him to Paris museums frequently. Early Degas paintings were copies of Italian renaissance paintings at the Louvre.

Emphasizing on line and insisting on the crucial importance of draftsmanship, the traditional academic style was the style Edgar got his training in under the tutelage of Louis Lamothe. Another strong influence reflected in Degas paintings are those from paintings and frescoes Degas saw during his long Italian trips in the late 1850s. Edgar recorded these paintings and frescoes in his personal notebook by making his own drawings and sketches of them.




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