Artist Comparison

Cindy Sherman/Frida Kahlo


Although they used different mediums in their work, Frieda Kahlo and Cindy Sherman are both extremely profound figures in the history of self-portraiture in very different ways.

Firstly, Frieda Kaho’s pieces are more oriented on pain and suffering – her work is clearly extremely personal, between her train accident, her miscarriages, her failed marriage, and many surgeries. Her work conveys her life’s most influencing times on a deeply personal level, especially since it was one of the few activities she could do after her accident for the next three months. Over a third of her total paintings are self-portraits, which shows how greatly these events affected her life.

Kahlo also incorporated many aspects of her Mexican culture into her self-portraits, indicating that she was proud of her heritage and didn’t want to lose her roots. Also incorporated are ideas and values held by Christians and Jews, so religion clearly was another influence in her life as well. Kahlo’s surrealist approach on real events in her life was revolutionary, and she appears to have interpreted many of these significant events through usage of symbolism and representation in her works as well.

Cindy Sherman, on the other hand, although also doing numerous self-portraits, did not always intend for herself to be the subject. It appears that she wanted to draw more attention to world issues – such as racism, feminism, etc. Much of her work was created to sort of mock the policies of American advertising and cinema. Despite the fact that they were self-portraits physically, in theory she never intended to be “Cindy Sherman” in the piece in theory. The point was that it could have been anyone in the pictures, and demonstrated the usage of sex appeal in many of them as well.