Frida Kahlo's What I Saw In The Water

What I Saw in the Water is different from most of Kahlo’s painting because this painting does have a dominant focus. This painting is one of the most creative and unsettling. Frida Kahlo friend Julien Levy explained this painting, as “It is an image of passing time about time and childhood games in the bathtub and the sadness of what had happened to her in the course of her life”. She painted her entire life into the bathtub. In this painting you see can some of the same symbols that Kahlo uses in all of her paintings. The bathtub is the first symbol, which is present in the painting. For Kahlo the bathtub setting is equivalent to the womb, which for the artist is both a source of happiness and suffering. Frida deeply moaned her inability to
have children. In this painting the painter’s toes are both pointing up and by reflection pointing back at the various events in her life. Another theme present in this painting is the painter’s problems with body distortion. In the painting the right foot is bleeding between the deformed first two toes. The deformed toes are commonly linked with spina bifida (congenital deformity). Kahlo surrendered from neuropathic pain her whole life. A small portrait of Kahlo’s parents is present in the painting in front of the volcano, they are the one’s who passed the disease to her. In front of the volcano there are also two nude figures that are a reference to her bisexuality. And the two nude figures are two different skin tones, which symbolize her double heritage, European and native Indian. Like most of her painting Kahlo included a symbol for her Mexican heritage, in this painting it was the gushing volcano. Even though Kahlo never viewed herself as a Surrealist, this painting is a perfect example of the “surrealistic” style.