Analyzing Frida Kahlo's Painting 'The Broken Column'

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“The Broken Column” You can’t begin to comprehend what hell is until you’ve walked in her shoes. The demons that consume her soul plague her every waking hours and terrorize the only shroud of sanity she has left. The desolate land engulfs almost, but not quite, her entire being. Tears stream from her stony eyes and blood from her wounds like the raging River Styx on one’s way to the ‘other side’. As the tides of aguish and misery crash into this weary woman she crumbles; slowly she becomes a chip, a piece of the woman she used to be. The destruction and neglect have forced her to callous her eyes and anesthetize
Kahlo’s own painting “The Broken Column” inspired this interpretation where she has painted a particularly distressing scene full of needles stinging with desertion and gaping cracks filled with despair. This scene is piercing and lacking in cheerful colors. The statuesque figure in the painting fills up a good portion of the space 2 used. What was thought to be safety belts protecting her and holding her body together look more now like belts of bondage restraining movement and as the viewer’s eyes trail downward toward her fruitless hips they halt. Shielded by a milky white cloth is what is left of her barren hips and immobile legs. Thorns of failure and deceit pierce her supple skin. The core of this piece, an injured spine, is severed in countless places but amazingly mimics the strength and valor of a Corinthian column. Streaming back up this delicate being, again, one is frozen, entranced by her wintry eyes and tears falling like rain from the heavens. All around her the earth is eroding and all life has forsaken her. But there is hope because as one’s eyes are drawn completely upward they can see a crystal blue sky. This piece reveals an emotionally disturbed and vulnerable Frida. Her distress seems to have consumed and overwhelmed her but there might be some nuances of hope she tucks