Frida Kahlo - Selbstportrait mit abgeschnittenem Haar 1cs [1940] - NYC MOMA

 

The painting from 1940 shows the artist in a phase of her life in which she was not yet confined to a hospital bed and wheelchair, at least for a time. She presents herself sitting in an empty room. Dressed in a dark men's suit, she looks at the viewer with composure, even pride and defiance. Months earlier, Frida Kahlo had been divorced from the painter Diego Rivera, the man she loved like no other and for whom she suffered to the point of despair. In her right hand she now holds the scissors with which she has cut off her magnificent long hair, which we recognise from many other pictures. Tufts of hair and braids hang and lie everywhere. A line of music with text stretches across the upper part of the picture. It delivers the tenor of defiance in bittersweet literalness: ‘Look, when I loved you, it was because of your hair; now that you are shorn, I no longer love you’. It is a Mexican love song that sings about the state of abandonment of women from a male perspective, including the situation of the associated lack of freedom.

Usually, abandonment and a haircut mean humiliation and degradation. And almost inevitably, divorce and loss of beauty also lead to a loss of honour for a woman in Mexico. So a display of voluntary loss of honour? Neither Kahlo's proud look nor the whole centralised sitting pose in men's clothing fits in with this. Is this a demonstration of toughness against oneself? An abhorrence of self-pity? Kahlo's answer could lie in the following message: Posture is to be maintained precisely when this posture is not attractive for any external purpose. Because only with a self-determined attitude can we regain lost dignity! This would also remove the burden of femininity, which was already expensive enough in happier times because it was constantly accompanied by serving beauty, by pleasing others. So away with the role of women as ‘women’, away with the old braids!

 

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