What the Water Gave Me by Frida Kahlo
What the Water Gave Me, 1938, Oil on canvas
Bathing is a very feminine past-time: from Cleopatra who chose to immerse her body in asses’ milk to Kate Moss who chose champagne for herself and her then lover, Johnny Depp.
Unfortunately, that last one is apparently an urban myth, but still, what a myth. Perhaps it is because it is associated with making pretty or, as Frida Kahlo shows us in What the Water Gave Me, it is not just skin deep.
Bathing is also a time to contemplate, to let the worries of the day be washed away. It is literally and metaphorically a time of reflection and for a woman to be alone with her body.
Kahlo is known for her self-portraits but in this painting we are denied her face and instead she paints a narrative of her inner turmoils projected onto the landscape of her submersed body.
It seems that these dramas play themselves out in front of her eyes as she bathes, as though it were a film of her life.
Kahlo’s right foot is deformed, and she does not attempt to hide this in the painting. Hers was a life filled with trauma, suffering a trolley car accident at an early age (which left her with the deformation and in considerable pain for much of her life), a marriage and a divorce (followed by a remarriage) to the same man, affairs with men and women – never a dull moment.
It is all these “traumas” though which lent her life colour and which makes for such a rich legacy. Like other strong twentieth century female artists such as Lee Milller and Louise Bourgeois who refuse to be categorized or pigeon-holed, Kahlo summarized it best when she said, “They thought I was Surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.”
Claire Storrow
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