"Frida Kahlo' at Art Museum (2nd review)

She refused to be silenced

ANNE R. FABBRI

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) is more than just an icon for feminist artists of the 1980s. She really was a vibrant, fascinating artist of the first half of the 20th Century. Now, in celebration of the centennial year of her birth, a traveling show of her paintings is on view at the Art Museum, its only East Coast venue. Forty-two paintings, plus 118 informal photographs of Kahlo, her husband Diego Rivera, family and friends reveal the societal nuances of a compelling artist.

Kahlo’s paintings burst beyond the borders of her native Mexico to confront us directly. We almost have to turn away for relief from their force. The exhibition begins with one of her many self-portraits that brook no polite evasions. In strong, sharp colors, she confronts us: full-faced, matter-of-fact, take it or leave it.

While claiming to be an extension of her native culture, Kahlo employed various modes of representation. She refused to be restricted or silenced. Using traditional oils on canvas, her skilled brush strokes create images incorporating Mexican traditional folk art and Henri Rousseau’s pseudo-primitive imagery with the brazen stares of Pablo Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon.

Scenes from a painful marriage

Kahlo painted scenes from her life, however painful the recollection might have been. An early double portrait of her with Diego (1931) follows in the format of a traditional marriage picture. She wears native dress, which she adopted at Diego’s urging after her marriage. He is the only one holding an artist’s palette and brushes. Above her floats an unfurled titular ribbon and pink flower. She looks petite and modest, holding his hand for support and protection.

Well, their marriage didn’t quite follow that scenario, and it’s all reflected in the ensuing paintings. Kahlo painted haunting memento mori of her several miscarriages, imagining the insemination, fertilization and aborted fetus. She created memories of their travels in the form of pictorial icons of Mexico and the United States.

An alien on Wall Street

My Dress Hangs There (1933) was her diatribe against American culture, with visual notations of its most despicable elements. In the left foreground, resting on a Doric column, is a resplendent, white porcelain toilet, a testament to America’s obsession with plumbing. Wall Street’s Federal Hall, with sales graphs replacing steps, occupies the center, flanked by Trinity Church, whose window is decorated with the dollar sign and bland factories belching smoke. Columns of fatigued workers trudge in the lower foreground. Her native folk dress is the exotic item that, like Kahlo herself, is an alien in this milieu. Although interesting to decipher, this work is as artistically limited as most political diatribes.

Some of her paintings are almost too poignant to bear. A Few Small Nips (1935), painted after the revelation of her husband’s affair with her sister Christina, conveys all the physical pain of heartbreak. Even Kahlo’s extending the bloody spots to the frame doesn’t feel overdone.

Much-needed breathing space

The Art Museum, known for the superb quality of its installations, has arranged Kahlo’s major works in a loose chronology, beginning with the first gallery of deep blue walls referencing her house in the outskirts of Mexico City. The ample breathing space between them is much needed– for recovery from each powerful statement.

After her self-portraits and scenes from the early ’30s, the next gallery is filled with 118 photographs, casual occasions with friends and family. It’s like looking at someone’s family album…after a few minutes, your interest lags and turns to something of substance.

Yes, Kahlo painted in the traditional Mexican images, including ex voto images on metal, exhibited with a selection of the traditional thanks offerings for healing that hung in provincial churches, and a traditional portrait of a dead child, The Deceased Dimas Rosas (at Three Years of Age) (1937). Fascinating to me is the fact that Kahlo’s deceased are always portrayed with their eyes half open, an imitation of life.

Her diverse Mexican contemporaries

Although her short life was filled with physical pain and suffering, Kahlo was very much an active participant in Mexico’s vibrant art community. The Contemporaries, as they called themselves, were a lively group, stimulating each other to experiment with new modes of expression and enriched by the artist refugees fleeing Europe and Hitler.

Fortunately, the Art Museum introduces us to this diversity with a few paintings by Kahlo’s contemporaries in the side corridor beyond the sales shop, plus a noteworthy exhibition in Gallery 181 titled “Fragile Demon: Juan Soriano in Mexico, 1935 – 1950.” This small exhibition reveals the diversity of Mexican art during Frida Kahlo’s artistic prime. She was not painting in a vacuum but was part of a cauldron, boiling with the cross currents of European art, American regionalism and Mexican tradition.

The fully illustrated catalogue of the Frida Kahlo exhibition contains an excellent essay, “Frida Kahlo’s Legacy: The Poetics of Self,” by Hayden Herrera.


To read another review by Andrew Mangravite, click here.
To read another review by F. Lennox Campello, click here.