The Saddest Girls Wear Flowers: Frida Kahlo & Lana Del Rey

Frida Kahlo & Lana Del Rey edited by me

“Like the sorrow of a winter creates poetry. Everything that is beautiful doesn’t always start beautifully.” – Noor Unnahar.

Frida Kahlo was an artist who is well-known for her portrait paintings. And Lana Del Rey is a singer with cinematic aesthetic and several vibrant vocal characters. Both of them express sadness in their art. It's their aesthetic. And both often mentioned death in their life. It is no secret that Lana Del Rey loves the idea of die young as in her interview with The Guardian, she kinda thinks that it is glamorous. Both love their country to the point make it as one of the outstanding features in their artworks. It's like Lana always sings America, while Frida paints Mexico.

I don’t know much about they’re personal life, other than what’s written about them from an outsider’s point of view, which is so helpful and rather vague. That is why I don’t say they’re sad based on what I know about their private life, cause I only know few pieces of the truth. And even if I claim to know accurately just because I have watched Frida Kahlo’s biographical movie or have read those articles about Lana Del Rey and all her old flame darlings, it is still not the whole story. You can’t really know what that person has gone through other what they tell you, right? What about the part that’s been left out? Well, it’s non-existent to public eyes. Then, let us exclude it. So here is the base why I can judge them that they are sad, even tend to be melancholic, and sometimes a tiny tad morose. It is depicted through their own media and in their own way, through art to be precise. The mood of their arts (note that I am no art expert, just a girl enjoying art through my own interpretation) depicts a lot about sadness.

If you are familiar with Lana Del Rey, the term melancholia is probably interchangeable with her name. Well, other than some titles her songs that explicitly tell the obvious sad theme, like “Summertime Sadness”, “Sad Girl”, and “Pretty When You Cry”, we also can see it from her discography. From the album “Born to Die” to “Lust for Life”, Lana Del Rey is very consistent with her melody to bring out such slow sadness. In her music video “Ride”, in the scene where she was swinging (I think it was inspired by Poison Ivy movie) she softly recites a poem-like prologue in which later emphasised the whole core of the song, the sadness of a stray-cat-like life where you do is to seek the feeling of home. 

In Radio, the lyrics ‘now my life is sweet like cinnamon, like a fucking dream I’m living in’, in my opinion, is sceptical bliss. An illusion in her life. It's like she has anticipated the disillusion that she knows well will be coming her way. For the fact that we all know cinnamon is not sweet. And these tones of her with her vocal absoluteness makes me often think of her as a siren luring us, her audience, to be mesmerised of the blues. It is not exactly the type of destructively depressing tone, but more like something to be absorbed in a good way. Her voice and music always give me the vibe of peacefulness, the kind that you feel when there is imperfection going on in my life or I’m in not okay situation, but somehow I overcome it.

Whereas, Frida Kahlo was a visual artist that can put vibrant colours to be muted in sadness. Her numerous portrait paintings, even her own portrait, do not have a smile on it or just a twitch of the lips. Always these flat lips that seem kind of brooding. And all the colours in her works, either with vibrant blue in “The Broken Column” or red to orange warm tone dominations in “Flower of Life” and “Viva La Vida” or even the colourful “The Frame” and “The Last Supper” make the paintings remotely muted and grim. And almost all her notable works like “A Few Small Nips”, “Henry Ford Hospital”, and “The Wounded Deer” portray physical hurt, but I think it has to do with her way to express her pain in mind and feelings. And a couple of her works evidently carry obsession over death, for instance “Without Hope” and “Thinking About Death”.

I am so inspired by these two women. Not to see the sadness in my life as it is. Raw. Tear shedding. Leaving open wounds that time may or may not heal. What a way. For me, it is rather realistic point of view. But I knew since I was a little, I was born a dreamer. With or without opening my eyes. Sadness was their muse. Whatever provoked this feeling must have been ugly when it was happening. But theirs are not the cheap sadness that make people pity or sympathize it. Instead they envy it. The awful people and events, unsatisfactory relationships, shattered dreams or unfulfilled expectation they have experienced, afterwards will be haunting and lingering memories. But those trapped feelings later inspired them to make a beauty out of it. Just like the flowers they often wear. I prefer to make my life as they did to theirs. To frame my sadness into ethereal melancholy that only myself understand. Poetically sad. So sad that someday, under the nostalgic clouds, I only can smile over it.

Curtsey