Great Art Essays Samples

Women in art have always been a very mysterious and intriguing object to observe, both from the perspective of women as an object and a subject for the painting. Mona Lisa is possibly the most recognized painting in the world. She still puzzles its every observer with her gaze and feeble smile, welcoming him to silent communication. Frida Kahlo is the world’s most recognized woman artist. However, she neither invites for silent conversation in her Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair, nor does she puzzle the observer. What Frida does, is pictures her soul openly and frankly, not hiding anything, not leaving us guessing, not making us read between the lines. Mona Liza and Frida Kahlo are presented oppositely. While the first bears secrets and beams with grace and nobility, the second bears pain and beams with surrealism and honesty.
Both Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair are painted with oil. However, Da Vinci painted on 30-1/4 x 21 inch panel and Kahlo painted on 15 3/4 x 11" inch canvas. This makes the first painting almost twice as big as the second one. Paradoxically, little of Leonardo da Vinci's fecund and many-sided output was devoted to painting. He rated the medium above all other factors. It was Mona Lisa where the artist combined all his previous accomplishments and researches into the landscape and the portrait (Louvre). Kahlo, however, always said that she did not know what art style her works belonged to or what medium was better to use, knowing only that her paintings were the frankest expression of her. (MoMA).
The Mona Lisa, painted in 1503-1505 most likely depicts a portrait of the wife of a Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo (Smarthistory). Still to this day, we do not know much about its commissioning, payment and painting. Some scientists guess that the birth of the third child of Francesco and Lisa, whose maiden name was Gherardini, would have been a perfect reason for commissioning the portrait (Louvre). A portrait at that time spoke to status and social level, which is why it is likely that the silk merchant ordered this painting from Da Vinci.
The woman is placed in the center of the painting. During the Early Renaissance, it was typical for figures in portraits to be often painted in strict profile and cut off at the bust. On Da Vinci’s painting, however, the figure is looking straight at the observer and is three-quarters turned to him. The woman is sitting on a semicircular wooden chair with arms on a terrace with two small columns. We can only see the columns’ bases and edges. Mona Lisa is depicted from just below the waist. She has her arms folded, and her head is facing us, though she is looking further to one side. Her right hand is resting on her left wrist, and her left arm on the chair arm (Louvre). There are two different areas on the background: a humanized landscape and an imaginary landscape. We have a bird's-eye view of the landscape, which is also relevant to Early Renaissance and would still be relevant in Late while the object is seen from a frontal viewpoint. There is a harmony between figure and landscape (Louvre).
Mona Lisa is pictured in a dark dress with a pleated bodice, embroidered with gold. Her chest is exposed from the dress neck down to her cleavage. She is not wearing any jewelry. There are a scarf hanging from her left shoulder and a veil over her slightly tousled hair. Her yellow dress sleeves are rumpled into tiny folds. Her attire fully corresponds to that time’s fashion and style of clothing, which means that she belonged to the higher middle class. Women of those times used to pluck their eyebrows and lashes deemed unsightly in order to make their eyes look bigger. Eyes were meant to represent the nobility, purity and class, and this is depicted in Mona Lisa’s portrait.
Interesting, that eyebrows in Frida Kahlo’s portrait, on the contrary, attracts the viewer’s attention and becomes an unmistakable thing about the painting, just as Mona Lisa’s smile, the absence of facial hair and Italian background are on hers. The artist used light as a tool to define and model forms, and create the illusion of depth. He also used the sfumato technique, which makes the contours dissolve into the shadows and light. He does not emphasize contrasts and boundaries; instead he blends light and shade, which makes the painting look more natural. The glossy surface of the painting is created with a succession of translucent glazes (Louvre). Leonardo combined Northern Renaissance innovations of portraying the subject upfront with Italian painting's understanding of the three dimensions of the body and the perspective picturing of the background.
While the Mona Lisa is surrounded by uncertainties and mysteries, Frida’s Self-portrait with Cropped Hair seems to be clear and understandable. It is filled with many symbols. Knowing Kahlo’s biography, the viewer can guess what the artist wanted to demonstrate. The Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair was the first self-portrait she painted after the divorce with her unfaithful husband, the artist Diego Rivera, in 1940. Previously, Kahlo had often pictured herself in a feminine Mexican woman's traditional dresses and flowing hair. After the divorce, Frida gave up the feminine image demanded from her. She stopped wearing her Tehuana costumes so liked by Diego and preferred a man's suit instead. In a renunciation of Rivera, she pictured herself in the full height sitting on a chair in the middle of the room, shorthaired and in a man's shirt, shoes, and a large dark man’s suit. Judging by the suit being oversized, it is presumably her former husband's (MoMA).
Diego had always admired Frida’s long hair, but she cut it off. She holds a lock of her hair like a symbol of her sacrifice in her left hand. The very scissors with which she has demolished her femininity are in her right hand. Frida sits alone in a spacious room, which symbolizes the vastness of her despair. She is surrounded by the locks of fresh-cut hair, which must also be linked to her feelings of estrangement from her former husband (whom she remarried a year after). The strands of hair have the dreamlike quality of Surrealism. The verse of a Mexican song painted right across the top of the painting holds to the reason behind her act of self-mutilation: "See, if I loved you, it was for your hair, now you're bald, I don't love you anymore."
This self-portrait seems to express her desire for freedom and independence of a man after the artist had stripped herself of all feminine adornments.
Kahlo’s self-portrait evokes different emotions. There is something devastated and forlorn in the work, but there is also something rather ironic. Her sly sideways gaze and the addition of a song lyric at the top of the canvas are rather humorous than bitter. There is something undoubtedly confident about her cross-dressing and open-legged pose in a man suit. However, this only tells us as much of the artist’s personality: if it is impossible to change the situation, one can always change his attitude. The Self-portrait with Cropped Hair is believed to belong to Surrealism, although Kahlo was very ambivalent about her style. She said that she only pictured herself because that was the thing she knew the best, and did it in the best way possible.
Of course, apart from the two painters living in different times and painting in different styles, there is one very important thing about comparing these two works. Leonardo da Vinci painted on the orders of wealthy silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo from Florence. The portrait, as we know, was commissioned to the birth of their second son, and to become a decoration of their new home. We also know that this was due to French King François I that the public is now able to observe this portrait in the Louvre. Leonardo began painting the portrait in 1503 in Florence. He took the Mona Lisa with him when he left for France about 13 years later, and died three years after that. The portrait passed through several hands, until François I managed to buy it from it last owner for today’s equivalent of over $11 million. The French Revolution hit soon after, and the aristocracy fell. Consequently, the Mona Lisa became part of the public collection and was available to the eyes of the wide audience.
Frida, on the other hand, started painting while recovering in bed from a bus accident that left her disabled. Her works and self-portraits in particular deal with her battle to survive. With depicting another Frida on canvas, she projected her anguish to a different person and separated herself from the pain. She has a museum in Mexico, that exhibits her paintings.
Her works have never been stolen, unlike the Mona Lisa. This portrait was first stolen from the Louvre on 21 August, 1911 and a few times after that. Of course, the painting was not universally famous a hundred years ago, and its popularity was restricted to the west. Ironically, the press coverage inspired by the theft was what put a face to the portrait’s name. Pablo Picasso and the poet Guillaume Apollinaire were the first suspects, although it was clear that they did not commit the crime. The trace of the portrait went cold for two years. Then Vincenzo Perrugia, its thief, tried to make a business deal with a Florentine dealer Alfred Geri. The latter recognized the painting and called the police. So, the stolen piece of art was brought back to the Louvre.
No mysterious thefts or crimes have been ever connected with The Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair. Of course, the popularity of Frida Kahlo is less wide-spread than da Vinci’s, and with her art considered to be “autobiography in paint”, stealing her self-portrait would have been an identity theft. Luckily, the work is currently exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, LA and is available to the public’s eye anytime.
The Mona Lisa is surrounded by mysteries and guessing till today, and the naturally realistic portrait Da Vinci painted of her does not reveal the secret of a woman, but invites to share her mystery. Kahlo presented herself in many contradictory ways, rather using her art not to reveal her personality, but to construct a personality. Two different in many ways paintings nevertheless are the same in the following: if we really want to read the art as the story of a woman, regardless if she is an object or a subject, we have to remember that we will never really know who that woman is.