Interpretation of Life in the 20th Century

Interpretation of Life in the 20th Century

How do men of today understand the men of yesterday when they cannot meet? By simply looking at the things they have created. A society will often show the values of the time by their artwork, the things they find important will be expressed in what make. All works created focus on one of the five universal themes, which are: Life, Death, Love, Transcendence, and Beauty. For instance can tell that the medieval ages was a time a religious radicalism, or Transcendence, because of the excessive use of the cross as a symbol of the Christian God on quite a number of artifacts. In the 20th century many people began to focus more on Life. To expound on this, philosophers and artist of the time started looking toward themselves to try and discover what it means to be human and what Life truly is. This view of Life can be seen in the works of Frida Kahlo, Sigmund Freud, and Jean-Paul Sartre.

An artist who focused on the idea of Life is Frida Kahlo who was born July 6th, 1907 in Mexico City, Mexico and is considered one of Mexico’s greatest artists. Frida Kahlo’s art works focused heavily on her self with the majority being self-portraits. Kahlo’s focus on self was an attempt to understand the world around her as well as understand herself by expressing how she felt through the different ways she drew herself. It is very clear to see that most of the paintings she painted were reflections of the life she went through. It began with a bus accident that broke Kahlo’s body causing her to be infertile, her near death experience caused her to see life in a new way and her paintings were the way she saw the world. Andrea Kettenmann an acclaimed writer wrote a biography on Frida Kahlo titled “ Frida Kahlo, 1907-1954: Pain and Passion and she states that: “This self-analysis took place at a time when, having only recently escaped death, she was starting to discover and experience both her own self and the world about her at a new and...