Portfolio And An Introductory Essay: Rhetorical Analysis

Name Tutor Course Date Portfolio and an Introductory Essay Rhetorical Analysis Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. ~Henry Ward Beecher We find ourselves coursing through life with tunnel vision, sometimes forward, occasionally backward, and recklessly in the moment. We remain selfish, self-evident, and unapologetic, all in the chase of the most amazing. I shall talk about Frida Kahlo, one whose paintings are brazenly in touch with her reality, and even more so, herself. “I paint self-portraits,” Frida Kahlo once said, “because I am the person I know best, I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.” She produced some 70 self-portraits. Apprehensive, effervescent pieces that captured her continued progression as an artist and as a person. To live, to have loved and lost, were all sources of inspiration for her work. Most would assume that what she has produced became one of the turning points for intense and vivid imagery in the 20th century. This Frida Kahlo imagery is what I will be using throughout this essay because she mostly gains fans through her use of imagery to affect pathos, her imagery as a powerful tool in inducing empathy—whether or not she meant to. This is a rhetorical analysis essay of Frida’s “The Broken Column” (1944), to be ushered in by a brief description of “The Two Frida’s” of 1939, highlighting her ingenious use of ethos, or the ethical appeals, and pathos, or the pathetic appeals. Because Frida believes that she paints her own reality, her own emotions, her own experiences, her paintings are accepted by a wide range of audiences because that is how her character shines through. She builds credibility because there is no false pretense that taints her artwork nor her delivery of it. It is pure as it is raw, it is unabashed. On the other hand, she makes use of the pathetic appeals in the fact that it is emotion we see in her paintings straight away, especially in “The Broken Column” where she bore everything, using just the right metaphors to evoke the right emotion properly. Frida uses pathos probably more appropriately than ethos because it just comes naturally to her. Because she has had experienced true, such heartbreaking events in her life, she does not need to use anything other than what she already has in her heart. This has consistently been the root of her work. Frida Kahlo’s life has been tainted a somewhat endless barrage of sorrow which she astoundingly expresses using a medium that we can only say is a true gift from the gods. Pain, something we are all accustomed to a certain degree, in both a literal and figurative sense, has been continuously depicted—mentally, psychologically, physically raw. She is a visual artist, using symbols rooted in her culture and upbringing; that when contextualized into her experiences as a child and as a woman, are thrust into relevance in the modern times. Her appeal is grounded in her ability to evoke emotion and mold it into an existing language, truly her own. The emotion is the pain that she has been so accustomed to. 1938 was a very crucial year for Kahlo as an artist in terms of her burgeoning exhibition history at that moment. Andrй Breton, occasionally called the Pope of Surrealism, in the same year travelled to Mexico City to visit Rivera who with Kahlo. Mexico was a hub for intellectuals and artists travelling to the city and Breton discovered Kahlo’s work and immediately co-opted it for his movement. However, she never agreed to put a label on her work, ultimately herself. She truly felt that she was not dreaming or she was not painting her dreams or exploring her subconscious. She firmly believed that she was painting her reality. Two solo exhibitions later, she returned to Mexico where she found Rivera asking her for a divorce. This was taken by Kahlo as a form of betrayal. Her despair over it had manifested in this wonderful painting, a double self-portrait, “The Two Frida’s.”  “The Two Frida’s” of 1939 is one of her defining works and is readily telling of the torment she was going through with her divorce from Rivera. This is a great introduction on her amazing use of pathos, even more pronounced on the “The Broken Column”. On the right, she is depicted wearing her costume which she wore as somehow a political stance to adopt the costume of this very matriarchal society in the region of Tehuantepec in Mexico City. Moreover, she also wore it in order to please Rivera. She used the dress to eventually mask her damaged body which was so because of when she had polio as a child and also from the terrible accident as a young woman which will be mentioned later. The costumes here are also a reference to her culture. She uses a lot of symbolism in her images to depict the kind of culture she has been enveloped in all those years. It can also be observed in her hand the photograph she had of Rivera’s and a young child. Instead of a frame, there is an artery or vein wrapped around the perimeter of the photograph which travels up her arm and tangles around and enters into her heart which has been extracted from her chest. Extracted hearts and blood, in general, are very potent symbols in Aztec culture as in Christian art. If you follow further the same artery or vein, it connects into the other portrayal Frida and her heart, again, is extracted. This time, atrophied and vulnerable—a broken heart, to put it simply. This brings us to “The Broken Column” (1944) where the pain goes from subtlety to forthright. She was involved in a serious accident when she was eighteen which left her broken, in a much more literal sense. There is a huge crevice that runs from her lower body to her neck, exposing her spine. She is covered in nails, the biggest of which protrudes from her heart. She cries in despair. Here, the truth is unraveled—agony from all dimensions. Kahlo sets the tone by painting herself in front of what looks like a place of desolation, alone. She suggests that she is merely hanging on by what seems to be a man-made contraption placed inside of her. However, in the rigidness of that artificial spine, she still follows through with a feminine exposition of her body, the corset enveloping her body, maintain the integrity of what is left of her. From the waist down she is enveloped in a cloth that what experts say is semblance of what Jesus Christ wore on the cross. This is a nod to her Christianity and her Mexican culture, as Mexicans are very devout and convicted in their beliefs. A lot of her other paintings also show nods to her Christianity like “My Birth” (1932) and “My Nurse and I” (1937). She also uses these symbols to commemorate Christianity and how it is an integral part of the Mexican culture itself. The imagery here is melancholic. It is less subtle and more apparent than her other works. She explains her story without even saying a word. This is what the painting is saying and that we did not know before. This is all that her paintings are: they are her stories, made aesthetically appealing to the eye, however, retaining that same effect of devastating emotion as if she has felt it herself. She reinforces her ethical appeals in The Broken Column by remaining consistent throughout her paintings. In effect, she reinforces her credibility as an artist that paints her reality and shows her integrity and character by remaining true to her experiences, and not sacrificing the candidness of those experiences just to be more appealing to her audience—whether it was the people of Mexico or those that started following her after her two exhibitions. Ethos is not as strong as her use of pathos but this makes it more appealing in the long run because she uses pathos not only in gaining the hearts of the millions that follow and appreciate her art but also because Kahlo’s use of pathos strengthens her ethos even more. It makes to mention that by this time in 1944 when she creates this that she embraces the fact that she has been a victim her whole life, a slave to circumstance. She is almost lifeless, save for the tears that still leave her eyes. It is to be believed that these symbolic elements are what gives Kahlo’s portraits depth and relevance in the modern world but in line with the thesis is that Kahlo’s articulation of the emotional pain is deep enough to push her style into modern recollection. There is a level of candor that must be attributed to herself as an artist because as mentioned she does paint as how she perceives herself, and not to be mistaken or labeled as surrealism. It is as if she has told us her story through her paintings without even being with us. There is no tone here, or diction, or narration. We get to know her by just looking at pieces that she creates with her hands. There are multiple levels of separation and yet art enthusiasts and non-enthusiasts alike relate to her to such a vulnerable degree, as if the audience was there with her when those traumatic things happened to her. This is the charm of art, the almost disgustingly overuse of pathos in gaining public approval. Why? Because these are emotions, and nothing can be more human than that. They are relatable in what they are, and when Frida brings them on canvass, it is magic. And how Frida brings in symbols from her own culture is evidence that she is proud in spite of how Mexico has changed her, how Mexico has been harsh on her. By commemorating these trinkets of culture, she immortalizes Mexican culture—almost celebrates it despite her trauma. Throughout her stint, she has gone from taking elements of her own body into incorporating emblems from a much wider gamut of reference, her female identity. Kahlo embeds herself into our consciousness as an icon very much magnificent but just as relatable. Only a true artist can take that trauma and transfigure it into an energy that is so raw and genuine that we are left at a loss. It is said that Diego Rivera, an acclaimed Mexican painter and muralist, and also her husband, acknowledged that it took courage for Kahlo to create these images. He believed that his then wife “is the only example in the history of art of an artist who tore open her chest and heart to reveal the biological truth of her feelings. The only woman who has expressed in her work of an art of the feelings’ functions and creative power of woman.” Rivera reinforces her credibility by referencing her—from one great artist to another. When it came to depicting herself as a woman, Kahlo makes use oftentimes not only the strength and candor of certain aspects of the female gender but also the baubles of Mexican culture that, in it of themselves, are already signposts of the same. Frida has become quite the reservoir of her multi-cultural background. Appealing not only to the Mexican audience but also to the world that appreciates certain vestiges of culture they want to see and know more about. She does this seamlessly and almost subtly. Kahlo’s ability to transform monumental points in her life into concrete, tangible pieces is uncanny, as if in total control and in absolutely near-perfect articulation. This cannot be solely owed to the powerful sentiments that arise from the traumas she has experienced throughout her life but very much so as well to this skill, and truthfully, a skill that simply cannot be taught. It has only been intensified by these experiences as well as the environment where she grew up in and which formed her as an artist. Frida Kahlo as an artist almost seems like a superfluity, an unnecessary remark, because the two concepts are married so well. Kahlo makes it appear as if she, too, is just coursing through life. Yet we are gifted with these pieces that are so remarkable in their own ways because perhaps we perceive ourselves through them, sometimes forward, occasionally backward, and yes, triumphantly in the moment. Kahlo legitimized feminine functions of the heart, back when it was out of the ordinary. We grow with her through her paintings time and time again. She legitimized emotions, and endeavored to, consciously or unconsciously, normalize the same, especially those that sat at the farthest ends of the spectrum. To be able to feel so strongly and deeply is both a gift ...