Just an Illusion??

What I Saw in the Water or What the Water Gave Me

Filipacci, Daniel. "Frida Kahlo: What the Water Gave Her." Venetian Red. 10 12 2008. Wordpress.com, Web. 14 Sep 2009. http://venetianred.net/2008/12/10/frida-kahlo-what-the-water-gave-her/

In Frida Kahlo’s painting, What I Saw in the Water or What the Water Gave Me, I see very dull colors, nothing too bright. I see the illusion of someone sitting in the bathtub with numerous mini pictures on top of the water. There’s a building burning in a volcano next to what looks like a bird on top of a tree trunk. There’s a lot of brown and dirt around them and the water is very shallow, but murky. I also see a naked woman, two of them next to each other. It almost looks as if there’s a dress floating in the water that belonged to one of the women. Some of the figures are hard to make out, but I observed what looks like different kinds of plant life throughout the entire painting. It looks very earthy. She doesn’t use any vibrant colors so all of these different objects seem to almost flow together as a collage.

The reason why I chose this painting was because it caught my eye. Not because it had bright colors or anything like that, but it was a painting that I have never seen before. Frida Kahlo uses numerous objects and morphs them all into one, which I think symbolizes many different things. I like how she used a bathtub as the main background because whenever I’m taking a relaxing bath, I tend to think many different things at once, so I felt like I instantly related to this picture. I feel like each separate “mini picture” symbolizes something specific. The volcano engulfing the building reminds me of manmade disaster. An example of this would be 9-11, even though this picture was painted in 1938. I do not know what the naked women symbolize, but maybe how women were perceived back then? I think this picture is very intriguing, and you can definitely leave it up to your own imagination, which almost makes me wonder if that was Kahlo’s intentions. I would love to read the background on this painting and find out the meaning to each little piece.