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Frida Kahlo
It’s All About Her
by Ted Wilson
9 April 2008
It didn’t take long for me to know that I had no artistic talents; the lines in my coloring book were impossible limits. In college, I was stumped by all the symbolism presented in an art history class. Recalling that dogs in paintings were often used as symbols of faithfulness, I once suggested that the dog pooping in Rembrandt’s painting, The Good Samaritan was the artist telling us that faithfulness was nothing more than what the dog was leaving behind.
So it is with some trepidation that I relate my visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the extraordinary Frida Kahlo centennial celebration show on exhibit until May 18. Kahlo’s paintings are rife with symbolism and not just any symbolism. By and large, it’s all about her. And, lest viewers miss this critical point, the curators blatantly tell us that through her art Kahlo “…need[ed] to tell her own story in the most direct way possible.”
So many major exhibitions I have gone to were so overwhelming that by the time I left I felt more drained than the neighborhood swimming pool in September. Lucky for me, the curators have made Kahlo’s work and this show quite accessible. I believe that her work -- her imagery and symbolism -- cannot be fully understood and appreciated without the context of her life. Despite the many books and films about Kahlo (the most recent being the acclaimed 2002 movie staring Salma Hayek), I somehow managed to miss them all, leaving this exhibit as my primary introduction to one of the twentieth century’s great artists. This was quite a burden to put on the curators, but they met the challenge like Himalayan Sherpas guiding even the most unfit to Everest’s peak.
In his book, The Courage to Create, Dr. Rollo May suggests that when we look at a painting, say of a tree, what we see is not the painting of a tree, but rather a representation of the “emotional encounter” between the artist and the tree. Through my work in the performing arts and study of the creative process, I have come to believe that Dr. May did not go far enough. The encounter is not just emotional, but is also social, intellectual, physical, and spiritual. If ever there is an artist that represents this interpretation of the creative process, it is Frida Kahlo.
First and foremost, this exhibit points out that Kahlo’s life cannot be separated from Kahlo’s art. The interpretive information hammers this fact home by focusing on two of the most significant aspects of her life and art: her severe medical conditions and her relationship with husband and fellow artist, Diego Rivera. It is a stroke of curatorial genius to have provided at the outset two rooms filled with photographs of Kahlo, her family, friends, and, of course, Diego Rivera. In so many of these photos, it is clear that Kahlo was an extremely willing model. Through this, along with the fact that so much of her work was or a least included self-portraiture, we discover Kahlo as artist and model.
If there is an undercurrent to this show, it is the inner tension created as Kahlo the artist fully encounters Kahlo the subject, thereby creating a plethora of stunt doubles as she goes about presenting her life as her art, or vice versa. This dualistic dynamic presents itself in far more ways than this article can accommodate, but here are just a few:
There are two surprisingly interrelated symbols that are as prevalent in her art as they were in her life: Kahlo’s ubiquitous unibrow and her purposeful costume choices. The “V” shape of that trans-facial brow are alarmingly reminiscent of similar symbols of the goddess(es) worshipped in the matrilineal civilization that lasted a good four or five thousand years in the Neolithic landscape of southern Europe and the Middle East. (There’s an ironic contrast here between the goddess of The Great Mother and Frida’s failed efforts at bearing children.) The costumes she wore were typical of the Tehuana traditions found in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, home for an indigenous society known for their matrilineal customs. Now before you start singing “I Am Woman,” check out the apparent subservience she displayed in her 1931 painting, Frida and Diego Rivera in which Rivera appears disproportionately oversized next to the diminutive Frida.
As a person of privilege (she was the daughter of a successful photographer as well as the wife of one of Mexico’s leading muralists), she was also a part of Mexico’s socialistic intelligentsia, which included an affair with exiled Soviet leader, Leon Trotsky.
She and Rivera professed what we might today call an “open marriage,” yet she was tormented by her husband’s affairs despite having her own flings and maintaining an openly bisexual persona.
We find Frida often struggling with her mixed heritage of the light-skinned origins from her German-born father and the dark-skinned traditions of her mother’s indigenous Mexican roots.
Born with polio, she was about to enter medical school when she was in a serious bus accident that almost claimed her life. It was during this convalescence that she began painting. Through the resulting life-long medical torments, she portrayed herself as both martyred victim and celebrated survivor.
The curators of this show could not have been more on the mark by presenting one of her later paintings (1949) as the final titled piece of the exhibit. To me, they saved the best for last. I dare say that The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Diego, Me and Senor Xolotl presents virtually every major theme of Kahlo’s life as an artist and as a subject.