The Suicide of Dorothy Hale
...fact that Dorothy was falling from great height, the painting shows the three stages of Dorothy’s suicide. Farthest back, we see Dorothy as she jumps out of the building. Right in front of that, is a close-up of Dorothy falling through space. It looks as though she is in a timeless zone where everything has ceased but her falling, wrapped up in the swirling clouds. Then, at the bottom of the painting, we see Dorothy lying lifeless and her eyes look right out. Not only so, Dorothy, clad in a Madame X black velvet dress, was lying in a pool of blood sipping out from the comer of her lips and dripping onto the painting’s frame! However, even in death, her beauty is still apparent. Frida didn’t hold back in making this painting as graphic as possible. Perhaps, the effect that mostly adds to the deathly scene is the white, blue and grey ghost-like clouds. The swirling lines together with the opaque quality of the clouds might have been added to scare the viewer. In addition, the Hampshire House building whereby Dorothy threw herself out looms in the back like an ominous grave. A banner was also mounted on the painting and it reads, “The Suicide of Dorothy Hale, painted at the requested of Clare Boothe Luce, for the mother of Dorothy.” Frida records a crisis, but she does not include the customary tribute. Instead, she matter-of-factly describes the horrible event in the inscription, which is written in Spanish. The English translation is: In New York City on the 21st of October 1938, at 6:00 in the morning, Dorothy Hale committed suicide by throwing herself from a very high window in the Hampshire Ho...