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retablo is a form of popular folk art in Mexico

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painted in a small format on tin

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highly decorative but also strangely unsettling to the viewer

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they present ironic commentary on life's contradictions

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PAINTING: Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair 1940

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we see Kahlo dressed in one of Diego's suits

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she has herself represented in the process of cutting off her hair

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she is paused in the act of hacking off her crowning glory

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admiring herself as if in a mirror, scissors still in her hand

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framing the portrait are the words at the top

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"Mira que si te quise, fué por el pelo, ahora que estás pelona, ya no te quiero."

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she has transformed her gendered identity from that of a feminized subject, to a more masculine self

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she has taken away the Frida that Diego loved, and made herself over into a different and almost unrecognizable Frida

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who now withdraws her charms from her unfaithful husband

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what do pictures want

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art historian WJT Mitchell asks this

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we talk about the power of pictures over us and how they make us feel

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shift the debate from power to desire

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along the lines of Freud: What do women want?

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along the lines of Frantz Fanon: What does the black person want?

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Michell wants in a similar way to give agency to the picture

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don't confuse the desire of the picture with the desire of the artist

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what pictures want is not the same as the message they communicate

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what pictures want is to be asked what they want

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you no longer impose on the pictures what you know about the artist's intentions

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what do these paintings want

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both

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want to challenge contemporary ideas of femininity

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PAINTING: Fulang Chang and I

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Kahlo

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painted along the style of the Renaissance Madonna and Child and so wanted to be quite confrontational

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the picture

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wants to show how Kahlo herself is bound to the monkey

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the monkey is an intimate companion

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the connecting ribbon

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communicate calm

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is almost uncanny

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the forest of cacti in the background

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as if woman, animal and nature are all unified together

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PAINTING: Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair 1940

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what the picture wants

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difficult to interpret the painting without the inscription

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quote from a folk song

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retablo

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often produced on tin

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stories of saints

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located behind small altars in small churches

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about dramas relating to the lives of the saints

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here this is about the trials Kahlo has been undergoing in the divorce from her husband Diego Rivera

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the picture doesn't want the viewer to enter into relationship between Frida and her husband

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her stance is defiant

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she has almost disfigured herself

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now the picture seems to want to encourage us to see it in terms of the gay

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wants to communicate Kahlo as someone who's sexuality is fluid

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it's making a statement about the fluidity of gender boundaries

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it shows an appeal of an androgynous looking figure

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we can always return to a picture and ask again, what does the picture want

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it may have different desires in different times and circumstances

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the picture may want many things