Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird was painted after her divorce from muralist Diego Rivera and the end of her relationship with her lover, photographer Nickolas Muray in 1940. Muray bought the portrait shortly after it was painted, and it is currently part of the Nickolas Muray collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. This rather small painting (approximately 16” x 24”), shows Kahlo in a frontal position and directly confronting the viewer’s gaze from the canvas. Her bold eyebrows hold the emphasis on her face, as a thorn necklace strangles her throat, trailing down her chest like the roots of a tree. A small black hummingbird with its wings outstretched hangs like a pendant from her throat. She wears a simple white blouse that contrasts with the tan tone of her skin. She is surrounded by insects and animals, …show more content…
The dead hummingbird which hangs around her neck is considered a good luck charm for falling in love in Mexican folklore. An alternate interpretation is that the hummingbird pendant is a symbol of Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of war. Meanwhile, the black panther is symbolic of bad luck and death and the monkey is a symbol of evil. The natural landscape, which normally symbolizes fertility, contrasts with the deathly imagery in the foreground. Rivera gave Kahlo a spider monkey as a gift, thus suggesting that it could be a symbol of Rivera, especially since he inflicts pain upon Kahlo by tugging the thorn necklace hard enough to make her bleed. Alternately, the thorn necklace could allude to Christ’s crown of thorns, thus likening herself to a Christian martyr, and representing the pain and anguish she felt after her failed romantic relationships. In line with this interpretation, the butterflies and dragonflies could symbolize her
A symbol is a unique term because it can represent almost anything such as people, beliefs, and values. Symbols are like masks that people put on to describe their true self. In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the author uses Tom Robinson and Arthur Radley to represent a mockingbird which illustrates the theme of innocence by presenting these characters as two harmless citizens that do not pose a threat to Maycomb.
A symbol in The Secret Life of Bees is the queen bee, one is found in all hives especially the Caribbean Pink Hive in Tiburon, South Carolina. The queen bee refers to a mated female that lives in the hive; she is usually a mother to most if not all the bees in the beehive. This symbol represents not just the bees hives that the Boatwrights work with, but also August Boatwright herself. The queen bee is a mother to all the bees in the hive just as August is for Lily, Rosaleen, June, and May, sometimes the mother you are born to is not truly meant to be your mother.
In the 16th century, iridescent green feathers, gold, and gemstones were gathered to create a symbolic gesture, a headdress, which would help transform the Aztec ruler into the incarnation of the God Quetzalcoatl. The headdress is believed to once belong to Moctezuma II. He was the Aztec emperor when Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés took siege of Tenochtitlan in 1521, and effectively destroyed the once great empire of Mesoamerica. Moctezuma’s unquestioning spiritual beliefs allowed for this easy invasion, and the once symbol of godliness, fertility, and freedom, became a trophy and one of the countless artifacts sent to Europe. Today, this spiritual piece is once again at the center of a controversy between two countries.
Frida Kahlo nació el 6 de Julio 1907 en la ciudad de México. Ella les dijo a muchas personas que nació el 7 de Julio 1910 porque quiso parecer más joven a los otros. Aunque sus padres fueron judíos, Frida nació en México. Frida fue una artista surrealista y sus obras vió de sus emociones de la tristexa y la cólera de su vida. Ella le encantó decir los chistes, reír, y sonreír. Frida Kahlo llevó las ropas de la cultura tradicional de México porque pensó que las ropas fueran una forma del arte. Todo el mundo admiró mucho a Frida, a causa de sus obras y su actitud.
Frida Kahlo was an amazing woman whose many tragedies influenced her to put her stories into her paintings. She was born in July 6th 1907 to a Mexican Roman Catholic mother who was of Indian and Spanish decent and a German photographer father. Frida had three sisters, Mitilde and Adriana, who were older and Christina who was younger. She learned about Mexican history, art and architecture by looking at her father’s photography. When Frida was six she got polio and it was a long time before she would heal completely. After surviving polio, Frida’s right leg became weak and thin, so her father encouraged her to play sports to help her.
Frida Kahlo is known for the most influential Latin American female artist. She is also known as a rebellious feminist. Kahlo was inspired to paint after her near-death bus incident when she was 17. After this horrendous incident that scarred her for life, she went under 35 different operations. These operations caused her extreme pain and she was no longer able to have kids. Kahlo’s art includes self portraits of her emotions, pain, and representations of her life. Frida Kahlo was an original individual, not only in her artwork but also in her
Born in 1910, Frida was a woman that was not about preserving young beauty. She loved to acquaint herself with Mexico, where she was born. Being a great painter, she loved to paint pictures of herself. A quote by her is as follows “I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best”. In other words, she can paint and feel free, because she knows herself well and can paint the
Another symbol is the Pallas. . It seemed that the bird had a purpose for
The presence of symbolism throughout the novel is undeniable. Each of the symbols in the work are representative of a certain aspect of the characters lives. Dreams showed readers the desire of characters to escape their realities. The twins that Senora Valencia gives birth to are clearly meant to represent the neighboring nations of Haiti and The Dominican Republic. Water is primarily symbolic of life and death, but in this case readers are expected to come to their own conclusions regarding the river. Using these symbols allows the author to make discrete yet important additions to her writing without disrupting the format of the novel. Aside from serving as a benefit to the authors writing style, they can also be seen as an artistic addition which brings the entire novel to a different level. The use of symbolism in The Farming of Bones is not only extraordinarily well written but also completely essential to the story as a whole.
On top of the two black arms are two beautiful American women, one wearing a Native American headdress sitting next to a noose that is wrapped around the arm and the other women is holding up a backwards American flag, while supporting herself on the head of the beast, which is a Ku Klux Klan hood. There are also wings of a United States military airplane on the back of the monster. The two women each have a sash, one saying “Miss America” and the other “Miss Victory”. This symbolizes the nature of American sexuality and how nonchalant our society was compared to Nazi Germany. This was seen negatively from a European standpoint during World War II.
The Song of the Hummingbird, written by Graciela Limon, is a novel telling the story of Huitzitzilin an Aztec survivor whose kingdom fell to ruin by her nation's blind reliance on God. The book features Huitzitzilin as the narrator of the story and Father Benito as a naive journalist of sorts. As the story begins, Father Benito meets Huitzitzilin while he’s taking confessions in the church. Through this transaction; Benito is told by the head of the church to take note of the history Huitzitzilin has to tell, while absolving her of her sins. As Benito begins to hear her story, his irritation and discomfort with hearing it becomes clear. He fidgets, buries his head in his hands, and at times even threatens to leave. The reasons for this comes from what Benito knows from history books and the teaching of his faith, Huitzitzilin begins to pick up on things as she tells her story. She uses this to mess with him at times and to distance him from the mindset that he’s just a tool for his god’s word. When the story draws to a conclusion, Benito sees Huitzitzilin story for what it is, he and his people are no different than hers, yet they treated them as savages.
The statue was important to not only the Aztecs but to the Spanish as well for Catholics seen she as being related to Mary, the mother of Jesus. The Coatlicue is seen as wearing a serpent skirt given the name of her meaning of the serpent skirt. Serpents meant childbirth and blood to the Aztecs which is why it is important that she wears a serpent skirt as it represents the childbirth of Huitzilopotchi and the blood from the decapitation of her head from the two serpents. In the Aztec culture, man trained to for battle while woman were the child bearers. Those who died during childbirth were believed to have become goddesses which relates to the Aztec myth. The Coatlicue’s face has been carved in many monuments to keep in touch with the earth since she was the goddess of earth and fire. The Aztecs were the largest army in Mesoamerica and took in many prisoners of war. They believed in ritual sacrifice so that their god would not desert them and their world would not come to an end. Thought to have been through four different worlds already, they believed to have lived in the final world that the gods sacrificed themselves for. The prisoners captured by the Aztec were mostly
To understand the mythical figure Quetzalcoatl, the first of the trinity to emerge, one must look further in to the religious belief of the pre-Columbian peoples. In the Classical period, Quetzalcoatl represented a sort of binary opposition between earth and heaven, visible in his name, quetzalli, or “precious green feather”, and coatl, the “serpent.” “Precious green feather,” according to Enrique Florescano, referred to a bird, which in the Classical period symbolized the heavens. Coatl, the serpent, symbolized earth, and so the mythical creature Quetzalcoatl was a link between the two, present before the Toltec civilization began, and gave birth to the image of twins, one of life, fertility and order (the bird) and the other representing the fatality of death (the serpent) . Yet the link between the immortal and the mortal was further construed by the Classical Period Indians than even the symbolism of the bird and serpent. The binary oppositions within day and night, also the Morning Star and the Evening Star became entangled within the earliest surviving myths of Quetzalcoatl.
Hummingbirds are fascinating birds that are always fun to watch. These birds are able to hover in mid-air, dart from side to side, go straight up or down, or even backwards. They can out-fly and out-maneuver birds hundreds of times their size. There are many factors that contribute to the hummingbirds’ ability to fly so easily through the air.
The symbolism portrayed in his story is only strengthened by this scene as well. The main symbol in this story is the brooch and its physicality as a butterfly. When Helen gives Myra the brooch, it symbolized the start of a newfound