Author Archives: j.leedaly

Frida Kahlo was an artist born in Mexico in 1907. In 1925, she was seriously injured in a bus collision where a steel handrail went into her hip and came out the other side. Her raw self portraits often depicted a hurting Kahlo. However, her painting tilted My Grandparents, My Parents, and I, on display at the Museum of Modern Art, does not.

This painting features a young Kahlo holding a red ribbon that encompasses, as the title suggests, her father and mother, as well as their own parents. Young Kahlo is standing in her family home, the “Blue House,” among water, mountains, and cacti in the desert. Her paternal grandparents’ portraits lie over the ocean, presumably because her father was born in Germany. Her maternal grandparents’ sit atop mountains in the Mexican landscape. The setting for My Grandparents represents home, far and away, for Kahlo.

Symbols of birth lay on the maternal side of the painting. For example, a fetus lays over her mother’s stomach. Underneath this, fertilization is about to occur as the sperm reaches the egg. Similarly, the flower next to the egg seems to be ejecting pollen, as little cacti lay behind it. I believe Kahlo is depicting herself as a fetus in her mother’s womb, while also remembering her ancestors.

One can easily point out the genetic similarities between Kahlo and her ancestors. Quite obviously, you see Kahlo’s distinctive unibrow that seems to have come from her paternal grandmother. It is also worth noting that her mother and father are dressed in wedding clothes. The colors in this painting are very earthy in the landscape, while Kahlo ensured to maintain the bright color of the house and her mother’s wedding dress. The red ribbon also stands out from the landscape colors.

The focus on childhood in this piece is reminiscent of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory that helped shape the Modernism era. Essentially, the treatment Frida received from her parents shaped who she became as an adult. Accordingly, the people her parents became were shaped by those that raised them, and so on. This consciousness of the self is vital in modernism and can be evidently seen in Kahlo’s painting.

Frida Kahlo was an important female artist at a time when the work of her artist husband, Diego Rivera, overshadowed much of her own work. Her many self-portraits are so fraught with hurt that it is hard not to imagine the physical pain she endured for much of her life. Yet, the perseverance she embodied by continuing her artwork is an inspiration. I have seen this painting once before, so when I found out the MoMA had a work of Kahlo’s, I set out to find it. It took me two tries around the fifth floor galleries to find this small painting. Set next to Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, Kahlo’s work remains a beautiful rendition of her family tree that fully encapsulates the beginning of her life.

This year at Baruch’s Art-A-Thon, I had the pleasure of listening in on a lecture about Edward and Josephine (Jo) Hopper, two American painters. Professor Gail Levin, distinguished art historian and author of many books on Edward Hopper, delivered the lecture with a slideshow of some art pieces by both painters and photographs of the couple.

Professor Levin offered great insight into the life of Jo and Edward Hopper as two lovers and two artists. Jo recorded her personal thoughts in diaries, while Edward would draw silly caricatures of their relationship. One example of this is his rendition of his growing jealousy towards Jo’s cat. This drawing is below depicting Jo and her cat happy at the table, while a sickly Edward is kneeling on the floor.

Edward and Jo were opposites, physically and emotionally. He stood at six foot five, while she was barely five feet. Edward was quiet and reserved, as reflected in his early self-portraits, while Jo was outspoken enough for the two of them. They often traveled in Edward’s Buick, his mobile studio, and painted many of the same scenes that offered an interesting look into both of their viewpoints.

Edward Hopper is recognized as one of the greatest realists from America. Jo never received the same success, being a woman in the early 1900s and then having most of her own work thrown out after her death. Nonetheless, her husband ensured that his last painting, seen below, would depict them both together bowing from the spotlight.  

My name is Jeannie Lee-Daly and I actually started my college career as a Child Study (education) major. Now, I am an accounting major and history minor. I am excited to read some “great works,” most especially those by Frederick Douglass and Alexander Pope. I have read Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” and was captivated by the language he used.