Sunday, May 5, 2019

Mothers of Invention: Frida Kahlo




Nickolas Muray, Frida on White Bench, 1939
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Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón (1907-1954) was a larger-than-life figure—even if she appeared diminutive in photographs—who wore, quite literally, a multitude of identities: mesclada with European and Tehuana roots, artist, reluctant Surrealist, fervent communist. She lived with debilitating pain and limited movement, the result of childhood polio and a trolley accident in adolescence that sent a handrail through her lower torso; had a messy but enduring relationship with a much-older, and initially more famous, husband; and had numerous affairs with women and men. All of that is reflected, like the flowers she intertwined into the braids of her hair, in the current exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. Plus there are some very fine paintings.  

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This is the second exhibition mounted by the Brooklyn Museum that focuses on the accoutrements of a woman artist’s life. Whereas the Georgia O’Keefe show seemed infuriatingly like a W magazine feature (I saw it at the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts, not in Brooklyn), this one did not. While in principle I'd prefer that museums focus exclusively on the art, in Frida Kahlo: Appearances can be Deceiving, you experience her compelling story as well as her art. Moreover, many of the artifacts on exhibition have not been seen before. From her death in 1954 until 2004, some 15 years after Diego Rivera’s death, they had been locked away in Casa Azul at the direction of her chubby hubby. You have to wonder: Was he feeling overshadowed?

Let me take you around.

The exhibition opens with digitized films of Frida at her blue-painted home in Mexico City, Casa Azul. Throughout the exhibition are additional films that include views of Mexico City in the early years of the 20th Century and a tour of Casa Azul, with its gardened courtyard and interior with art and artifacts. Mexicanidad, the Mexican identity that included indigenous roots on her mother’s side, loomed large, as did her relationship with her husband, Diego Rivera


 There were many such installations of photos, drawings, and letters. These are photographs of the young Frida taken by her father, Guillermo, who made his living as a photographer. The adolescent Frida often helped him in the studio. The idea has been advanced that Frida was well aware of  the kinds kinds of poses that were the most dramatic. She certainly played well to the camera
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 In the first gallery we are greeted with this Tehuana costume, with its dramatic resplandor, a lace or starched cotton headdress that frames the face

Self Portrait as a Tehuana (Diego in My Thoughts), 1943

Moving around the gallery, we see the portrait accompanied by photographs of Tehuana women  wearing the resplandor. Film clips in the exhibition suggest that this traditional headdress was worn only for ceremonial occasions

Entrance to the next gallery with Frida's Self Portrait with Monkeys, 1943, shown larger below



Self Portrait, 1941

Las aparencias engañan, the drawing that gave the exhibition its name: Appearances Can Be Deceiving

Beneath the loose huipiles were casts or corsets; the flowing skirts drew attention away from Frida's shorter right leg, her limp, and eventually the prosthetic she wore after the amputation

Two corsets with the self portrait and drawing shown above

Below: A painted plaster cast depicting a broken column. After Frida's many surgeries, when she was lying in bed, a mirror affixed overhead allowed her to paint. Like Ginger Rogers, who famously danced "backwards in high heels," Frida painted in reverse and upside down



Self Portrait with Cropped Hair, 1940

Wearing a too-large suit, perhaps Diego's, Frida depicts the aftermath of a self-inflicted haircut. This likely followed a breakup with Diego. The superscript comes from the words of a song popular at the time: Look, if I loved you, it was because of your hair. Now that you're bald, I do not love you anymore

Self Portrait with Braid, 1942


Lucienne Bloch, Frida at the Barbizon Plaza Hotel, 1933

Many photographers captured Frida over the years, including Bloch, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Lola Alvarez Bravo, Tina Modotti, and Nickolas Muray. Here Frida sits beneath a self portrait that is posted below

Self Portrait, 1933


 Two views of the  gallery in which Frida's costumes are displayed.
Above, the view as you enter; below the view looking toward the front



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 Coming around to the front of the figure shown above, we have a better view of the costume, as well as of the photographs in which she is shown wearing a similar garment


Nickolas Muray, Frida in New York, 1946; printed 2006
Frida called the United States "Gringolandia," but she loved New York City and San Francisco


In 1953 Frida's right leg was amputated, the result of gangrene from childhood polio

Below: Her right leg was shorter, so her shoes were built up to compensate




Nickolas Muray, Frida Kahlo with Olmec Figurine, 1939


Frida Kahlo died on July 13, 1954.  Hayden Herrera, in  her brilliant monograph,  Frida Kahlo: The Paintings (Harper Collins, 1991), closes with this story about the artist: "Eight days before she died, she added a finishing touch to her last painting, a still life that pits the crimson pulp of chopped and sliced watermelon against the life/death duality of a half dark, half light sky. The painting both welcomes death and defies it with alegria.  One last time Frida dipped her brush into red paint and inscribed her name . . . on the foremost slice. Then in large capital letters, she wrote the motto whose invocatory force makes both her art and legend live: VIVA LA VIDA, she said, LONG LIVE LIFE."


Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving is at the Brooklyn Museum through May 11. Entry is by timed ticket, and tickets are largely sold out. Check the museum's website for more information.

All photos courtesy of The Brooklyn Museum