A short guide to writing about art by Barnet Sylvan

Author:Barnet, Sylvan [Barnet, Sylvan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Tags: Art criticism
Publisher: New York : Longman
Published: 1997-03-22T04:00:00+00:00

Frida Kahlo, Marxism Wilt Give Health to the Sick, 1954. Oil on ma-sonite, 30" x 24". (Collection of the Frida Kahlo Museum, Mexico City. Photograph: Cenidiap/INBA, Mexico.

Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes v Literatura)

ture given to a church in fulfillment of a vow made by someone who prayed to a saint for help, and whose prayer was answered, for instance, by a miraculous cure. Such'pictures customarily show the saint at the top, and the recipient of the miracle in the center; for Kahlo, Karl Marx is contemporary humanity's savior.) In the upper right, Marx strangles an eagle with Uncle Sam's head (i.e., Marxism destroys American imperialistic capitalism). Below Uncle Sam are red rivers—presumably rivers of the blood of America's victims—and a shape that probablv represents the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb. At the top left, the dove of peace counterbalances the wicked eagle. Beneath the dove a globe shows Russia, from which flow not rivers of blood but blue rivers, rivers of life-giving, cleansing water. Kahlo, holding a red book (Marx's teachings), is supported by large hands (great power) near Marx; in one of the hands is an eye, a symbol of knowledge (Marx sees all and understands all).

118 CHAPTER 4

The Tehuana dress that Kahlo wears in this picture also appears in several of her other paintings. Janice Helland, speaking of this dress in another painting, explains the iconography thus:

This traditional costume of Zapotec women from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec is one of the few recurring indigenous representations in Kahlo's work that is not Aztec. Because Zapotec women represent an ideal of freedom and economic independence, their dress probably appealed to Kahlo.

"Aztec Imagery in Frida Kahlo's Paintings," Women's Art Journal 11

(Fall 1990-Winter 1991), pp. 9-10

Helland cites three references supporting her interpretation of the Tehuana dress.

Iconology (Greek for "image study") is the interpretation, especially through literary, religious, and philosophic texts, of the image for evidence of the cultural attitudes that produced what can be called the meaning or content of the work. For instance, iconology can teach us the significance of changes in pictures of the Annunciation, in which the angel Gabriel confronts Mary. These changes reveal cultural changes. Early paintings show a majestic Gabriel and a submissive Virgin. Gabriel, crowned and holding a scepter, is the emblem of sovereignty. But from the fifteenth century onward the Virgin is shown as the Queen of the Angels, and Gabriel, kneeling and thus no longer dominant, carries a lily or a scepter tipped with a lily, emblem of the Virgin's purity. In this example, then, iconology—the study of iconography—calls to our attention evidence of a great change in religious belief.

The identification of images with symbolic content is not, of course, limited to images in Western art. Here is a brief passage discussing a veranda post (see p. 119) for a palace, carved by an African sculptor, Olowe, whom John Pemberton III calls "perhaps the greatest Yoruba carver of the twentieth century." (Olowe of Ise died in 1938.) The post

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