The four roles of an artist are to keep a historical record, to give form to intangibles, to reveal the hidden, and to show the world in a new way. There was a time when much of the world was illiterate. So in order to keep a historical record of things, people painted objects , made sculptures, other crafts and also told stories. Some art shows emotions that aren’t exactly present to the outside world, so the painter gives form to the intangibles or feelings. In other paintings, the painter reveals the hidden things such as the suffering of the people from a war or massacre. Lastly some artists like to show the world in a new way or show it how they view it from their own eyes. The two paintings i have chosen for this assignment are “The Two Fridas” and “The Persistence of Memory”. They are two of my favorites and I learned a lot about them while I was taking a Spanish class in high school. I do not know as much about them as I would like to but I do intend to spend the time learning about them.

“The Two Fridas” painted by Frida Kahlo in 1939. She painted this shortly after divorcing Diego Rivera.
When Frida painted the Two Fridas, the role that she was portraying was giving form to the intangibles. I say this because it is portraying her feelings about her divorces. When she was one person, the woman in the European dress, her husband of the time rejected her and betrayed her. When she was the woman in traditional dress, the woman on the right, he loved her. What she is showing is that both woman are connected because they are the same person.
In the painting you can see that the Frida on the left is holding a pair of scissors. There is blood flowing down onto her dress from what appears to be a vein that she had intentionally severed from her other half, the Traditional Frida on the right. They are holding hands to show that she loves herself even though he didn’t love the other side of her, it shows that they are one but she tried to severe the bond to make Diego happy. The painting is the symbol of her struggles that not all her was loved.

“The Persistence of Memory” painted by Salvador Dali in 1931. The role that Dali portrayed when he painted The Persistence of Memory is that of revealing the hidden. Everything in this painting is a symbol of something. The animal laying there on the ground is fading away, it’s a symbol of the fact that we all fade away eventually. In time we are all forgotten. It is said that the animal like creature is actually Dali himself. In time he did fade way and we have his art to remember him by. The clocks melting is a symbol of how time slips away, it stops for absolutely no one and it can fly by in a blink. In other words time just melts away. The rocks in the painting are a symbol of the things that are virtually unaffected by time. They are still there even if hundreds of years have passed. They are like the permanent reality of life so to speak.

Resources: http://www.ehow.com/list_6618004_four-traditional-roles-art_.html http://blog.simplecastle.com/time-melts-away/
http://www.fridakahlo.org/