Back in 2001, when I was a naive graphic design student at the California College of the Arts (then known as CCAC...Arts and Crafts), my first design assignment was a self-portrait. I forget how many pieces we had to make, but the prompt for each piece were things like "Use a letter from the alphabet that represents you," or "A word," "A sound," or "A color." The format of the project had to be six inch squares mounted on Letraset black mat (eww), but the content could be anything and any type of media.
The last prompt was "Your most favorite work of art." I chose Frida Kahlo's The Two Fridas. I chose it because it was an interesting painting, and I liked Kahlo's work. Looking back, I was just beginning to question what my tastes were. More importantly, I was beginning to crack under the pressure of artistic expression. I really liked making self-portraits because they were a form of cartharsis: the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.
Many artists choose pain as the subject of their artwork. But few artists have expressed their personal pain as sucessfully as Frida Kahlo. I'm very excited that Kahlo's work will be exhibited at SFMOMA. Seeing Van Gogh's paintings up close are significant moments for myself, and I think Kahlo's should be just as powerful.
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