An Analysis of Psychology in Art Essay

Kahlo’s painting Personal Portrait with Cropped Frizzy hair (1940) and Lichtenstein’s Drowning Girl (1963) both make use of emotive techniques in order to convey more subtle feelings. While Lichtenstein employed a more bold turn to his woman subject, Kahlo uses a formal stance in her self-portrait, but both give the audience the idea of misery, woe, anguish being the middle subject behind these feminine figures. Kahlo’s self portrait shows a lady on a couch (presumably Kahlo) with the lower pieces of her hair existing all about her. This make use of the hair getting all around the main figure gives the viewer the impression of your battle – that Kahlo lost.

Hair is a metaphor in the art work – a metaphor of peace or strength. Inside the bible the symbol of hair are available in the story of Samson and Delilah through which Samson acquired his durability from his hair, plus the prostitute Delilah cut it almost all off therefore rendering the hero useless. If then simply, Kahlo’s locks is her strength it can be almost like the viewer is peering on to a death sentence in your essay of the female. The death sentence in Lichtenstein’s function is much more blatant as the drowning lady states in her bubble “I’d alternatively sink than call Anthony for help” which coordinates this concept of the desperation and sorrow.

The stance of either woman in their highly regarded representations will be opposite: Lichtenstein gives his subject a subdued and hopeless posture being previously almost totally submerged in the water and thereby nearer to death when in Kahlo’s painting, although nearly all of her hair is spread about her within a form of wipe out, the physique stands in erect location rather in a stance of experiencing lost the battle. There is distinctly more depth present in Kahlo’s painting, with the minimize hair existing on the ground and the angles of the chair making the viewer fell like they are peering into this.

In Lichtenstein’s work the viewer has a close up of the woman whom doesn’t allow for much interesting depth to be viewed – in classic Lichtenstein technique, his use of toned planes even more develop this kind of loss of field of depth. This is perhaps a metaphoric sense of depth seeing that Kahlo’s symbol is simple and the viewers has to examine into the subject matter and the implied emotions mixed up in work whilst in Lichtenstein’s work the viewer merely has to read what the woman says to be able to understand almost everything about the painting in a single glance.

Using a second glance at the figure in Kahlo’s work (and with the history of her recent divorce by her unfaithful husband Diego Rivera) the viewer may well guess that this kind of cutting in the hair can be symbolic of Kahlo’s state of emotions. Perhaps she is shedding fault herself that Diego got claimed as Kahlo reports of her art, “I do not know if perhaps my artwork are Surrealist or not, but I do know that they are the most frank manifestation of me. ” (Kahlo). Thus, in cutting of her curly hair (presumably he loved lengthy haired women) she is producing a declare of personal identity away from her cheating husband and thus the art work becomes become a woman burning off hair, in a woman attaining her id.

The top of Kahlo’s painting even claims as much in saying, “”Look, if I adored you it absolutely was because of hair. Now that you are with out hair, I don’t appreciate you ever again. “” Lichtenstein’s portrait of your woman who will be also inside the bad end of love also offers a small piece of this id. She says that she’d rather expire than have got Brad come and help her, but the viewers wonders, so why doesn’t the woman try and conserve herself? The depth that is certainly lacking in the field of vision with Lichtenstein’s function is replaced by a depth into personality of the female. A psychiatrist might argue that the woman comes with an Ophelia complex (from Hamlet) in which she would rather perish than live without her lover.

In either instance, it is clear that both equally artists are trying to depict a great emotional express in which love is the reason behind the effects. Lichtenstein’s work is definitely predominately innovated through POWER comics (a panel that inspired The Drowning Girl). His use of Benday dots emphasize a stylistic strategy. Kahlo’s art is more surreal in characteristics and emblematic in style being evident in Self Symbol with Cropped Hair. In surrealistic style, Kahlo allows the interchange of sexuality to play a dominate part in the portrait.

The number, Kahlo himself, is dressed up in men’s pants and a shirt, therefore allowing the short hair to almost determine her in a masculine ability. In Lichtenstein’s work the gender in the painting is quite clear while using woman demonstrating attributes a helpless female drowning inside the water along with love. This woman relinquishes her control of her fate in a alternatively docile element of femininity (the viewer can be reminded from the big bosomed females in horror films who run from your monster in drastic actions only to along with their high heel shoes and be damaged by their pursuer).

In Kahlo’s painting, probably because of this sexuality bending thought, the woman becomes like a person, that is, able to survive, or perhaps, in comparison, the lady becomes the pursuer and thereby solid. In opposition to the bible tale then, Kahlo does not in reality become weak in shedding her locks, but rather the painting is supposed to suggest that she turns into strong through this shedding of hair, and husband. In either piece of art it is crystal clear that the two artists are interested in the mindset of their subject. In the POWER comic globe by which Lichtenstein gained inspiration, women were somewhat reliant creatures inside the 1960’s just gaining a female stance in the 1980’s approximately.

His perspective of women through his portrait gives the audience the idea that devoid of love, that women do not have an identity, and thus, death is a logical replacement to not possessing a ‘Brad’. In Kahlo’s piece of art the same can be deciphered; the lady allows her femininity to surround her on the ground by means of her hair, and her transformation in a man makes her better. It is then simply interesting to make note of the decades which lie between both painting – it may be stated that Kahlo was progressive with her painting style and her representation of women (perhaps taking note of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening in which the protagonist simply cannot live in a man’s community and thus drowns herself in an act of freedom).

It really is clear that in both artworks you will find strong emotions which propel the subjects into the places that they stand prior to the viewer. The emotional trip has come to a finish in either painting or perhaps the female statistics either claim their details (in the situation of Kahlo) or they turn to be submerged in a place where they cannot live without love (in the truth of Lichtenstein). The psychology of the primary characters turns into evident through the artists’ making through the use of space, script, and symbolism. Functions Cited Alloway, Lawrence, Roy Lichtenstein, D. Y.: Abbeville, 1983 759.

1 L701A Claudia Bauer, Frida Kahlo, Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2005. Frida Kahlo, ed. At the Carpenter, exh. cat., Minneapolis: Walker Fine art Center, 2007 759. 972 K12FR Gannit Ankori, Visualizing Her Selves: Frida Kahlo’s Poetics of Identity and Fragmentation, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002. Hayden Herrer, Frida Kahlo: The Works of art, N. Sumado a.: Harper Collins, 1991.

759. 072 K12H Lobel, Eileen, Image Duplicator: Roy Lichtenstein and the Beginning of Take Art, Fresh Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Appear Art: A vital History, Steven H. Madoff, ed., Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1997 709. 73 P8242 Waldmann, Diane, Roy Lichtenstein, exh. kitty.., N. Sumado a.: Guggenheim Museum, 1993.

759. 1 L701WAL Whiting, Cecile, A Style for Pop: Pop Fine art, Gender and Consumer Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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