Frida Kahlo, The Wounded Table (assignment 1)

Salmah Aldaghady 

Professor Cacoilo

Frida Kahlo, The Wounded Table, 1940

Frida Kahlo was born on July 6th 1907 in Coyoacan, Mexico City, Mexico. Frida is recognized for her self portraits, pain and passion and as well as her vibrant colors. As she was growing up she seemed to have a tough life, she almost died in a bus accident, fractured her spine, ribs, collarbone, and dislocated her shoulder. As she was recovering in the hospital, she started to focus on painting. Frida painted nearly 200 paintings, sketches, and drawings. All these paintings tend to bring out her physical and emotional pain. Her work of art brings light to Mexican culture and power to the idea of feminism.

The painting called the Wounded Table, occurred around the time of 1940 in December. Around this time Frida decided to officially divorce her husband Diego Rivera that she was truly in love with. This painting demonstrates Frida sitting with wicked looking figures next to her as skeletons, white evil looking figure, and then the spread of blood everywhere. When looking closer Frida’s arm is attached to an aluminum eerie figure. This demonstrates that this is not her actual self and that she is broken. It is obvious that her divorce destroyed her and she is not able to take responsibility for her own life.

This illustrates the cultural and societal issue of patriarchy which is the idea that men tend to generally have more respect than women and men are increasingly more regarded and dominant over women. The way that The Wounded Table is illustrated shows that Frida is losing herself over the man she loved is the ideology that feminism where men are the controllers over women and that feeds to patriarchy because it shows that a man is capable of destroying a woman’s life and he is very powerful.

https://www.fridakahlo.org/the-wounded-table.jsp

https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/c_crop,d_placeholder_euli9k,h_1439,w_2560,x_0,y_0/dpr_2.0/c_limit,w_740/fl_lossy,q_auto/v1491847213/articles/2017/03/25/what-happened-to-frida-kahlo-s-missing-adultery-painting/170324-mcnearney-kahlo-tease_ig7awp