On Frida Kahlo's Artistic Creation: Two Methods In Exploring And Interpreting Her Art

Mexico owns a unique cultural tradition, which has nourished Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), a much debated, fascinating and the most legendary woman painter in modern Mexican history. Up to now, she remains the first Latin American painter whose works are collected in le Louvre, which reveals her enduring influence in the world artistic history. The thesis can be valuable in explaining the relationship between the artist and her times background and artistic works.The originality of the thesis lies in its multi-dimensional exploration of Kahlo in light of biography and hermeneutics.The thesis describes Kahlo's life experiences and her artistic creation in light of biography research, which helps reader achieve a more direct understanding of the relationship between the artist and her works, between historical scenes and artistic images. In order to get a thorough understanding of Kahlo's aesthetic psychology and her works, Chapter One, Unique and Rough Life Experiences, outlines the short and legendary life of the artist; her childhood with endless illnesses and adulthood with troubled emotions, all the painful experience are the source of her extraordinary artistic creation. She sublimes her physical and spiritual sufferings into her creation and tells sincere stories through her painting style czharacterized with humor and fancy. Chapter Two, Sincere and Characteristic Artistic Creation, expounds the sincere and unique feature of Kahlo's artistic creation: painful internal strife; mythological life experience and progressive revolutionary spirit. These are the author's personal comments on Kahlo's unique style. Most of her works are self-portraits recording her life episodes, which attract and move readers through simple and grotesque style and persisting emotions with ambivalence.Then the thesis interprets Kahlo's works according to the principles of hermeneutics in order to explain the differences in understanding art in different cultural contexts. Hermeneutics as a new methodology can help reveal the enduring charm and value of artistic works and transform unified value judgment intomulti-oriented understanding. By deploying the aesthetic three-dimensions of understanding, interpretation and application, the thesis makes an aesthetic appreciation and value judgment of Kahlo's works from a new perspective in order to promote the reception of her readers. The third chapter, Communication of Understanding and Interpretation, by using hermeneutics and adopting paradigmatic argumentation, deals with the mutual communication of understanding and interpretation in different cultural contexts in appreciating artistic works. Meanwhile, it explains the possibility of valuable misreading due to cultural difference and other historical factors and points out that, misreading is an unavoidable and necessary phenomenon in interpreting works. Different interpretations of different readers in different historical ages not only express their unique aesthetic speculations and understandings about works but also enrich the aesthetic significance of them and help to form their dualistic aesthetic system.The preface gives a brief introduction of Kahlo and states the writing perspective of the thesis. The conclusion summarizes Kahlo's uniqueness and her aesthetic taste in relation with the author's everyday personal experience of painting. Kahlo combines personal feelings and experiences into her painting and achieves a great harmony in both content expression and techniques. Her artistic creation always offers wonder beyond imagination, constructs a grotesque and mysterious artistic atmosphere and expresses a sour bitterness.