THE NEW YORK PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIETY & INSTITUTE:
THE FRIENDS OF THE A. A. BRILL LIBRARY
247 East 82nd St., between 2nd & 3rd, NY, NY
Friday, January 29, 2010 at 7 P.M.
Mirror, Mask & Masquerade in the Art & Life of Frida Kahlo
Danielle Knafo, Ph.D.
Frida Kahlo’s artwork, consisting primarily of poignant and breathtaking self-portraits, can be characterized as a bold self-disclosure expressing the anguish of the corporeal battles she fought throughout her life following a horrific and debilitating bus accident at age eighteen. However, far more meaning than this scintillates beneath the surface of her art. The infant Frida suffered neglect by her histrionic mother and later filled her canvases with images of childbirth and nurturance that reflect conditions of both ecstatic union and unbearable derailment. Her artistic oeuvre reveals her harrowing losses and betrayals as well as the reparative attempts that contextualize her suffering within a transcendent vision of life.
Danielle Knafo, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program at Long Island University’s C.W. Post Campus. She is Associate Clinical Professor and supervisor at New York University’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and at Derner’s Postgraduate Programs in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. She maintains a private practice in Manhattan and Great Neck, NY.
Dr. Knafo’s books include: Egon Schiele: A Self in Creation, Unconscious Fantasies and the Relational World, Living with Terror, Working with Trauma: A Clinician’s Handbook, and In Her Own Image: Women’s Self-Representation in Twentieth-Century Art. She is completing a book titled Dancing with the Unconscious: The Art of Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalysis of Art. Dr. Knafo has written and lectured extensively on psychoanalysis, gender and creativity.
RSVP to library@nypsa.org or 212-879-6900. Admission will be based on priority of registration.