Frida at the Walker

When I was a child we had a peg-board wall in the dining room and I still look back on it fondly in my memories. My artist mother had a place of honor on that wall just in front of the table where she would hang famous works of art from those old marvelous folio collections that had free sheets of art works in collections that were tied up wityh a ribbon. Each week we would be delighted by a new image of immense beauty or creativity hung in front of the table and we always looked forward to Sundays when the newest image would be chosen and revealed. I loved the visions of hell of Hieronymous Bosch and Pieter Breughel, the graceful lines of Boticelli, the spotlit allacrity of the Degas dancers. I also remember the primitive, bushy green of Diego Rivera with his solid workers and bright enticing colors. I do not remember Frida Kahlo. She never hung in the place of honor.

I learned of Kaho later in my life. Her images are not easy for the novice aesthete: Her images of pain and suffering, of severe facial expressions amidst a tropical palette do not immediately appeal to the artistic beginner and yet as I grew up, I realized that all the coolest of the cool people, my feminist and Lesbian firends, the intellectuals, the sensitive men in the library where I worked - all of them adored Frida.

My feelings for her were much more ambivalent. I knew my Mom was not very fond of her work (hence her absence on the wall) and so I recently asked her about her opinion of Frida and was told that, she always seemd too full of herself. I pointed out that she liked Diego Rivera and that he was really quite full of himself and a horrible person to boot and my Mom replied that they were actually both horrible people. I can only assume that the couple's open marriage (which Kahlo, by the way, was not so thrilled with) offended my mother, but this conversation caused me to think about the problems of the woman painter in our society in the age of modernism.



When Diego and Frida painted, we as a society were still enthralled with the idea of the genius painter imbuing his work with his special style and essence. I say his because part of the mystique of the painter was the idea that he was male: He was arrogant, but unquestionably talented and thus forgiven. He was Picasso, he was Dali, he was Gaugin. Each of these painters were self-promoting bastards and yet we adore them and consider them some of the greatest artists of all times.

As I was looking for images for this post I happened upon Ms Kahlo's horoscope chart.



The reading by Astrolabe mentioned (along with being charming and overly ambitious) elements such as...

You prefer to be in charge of your own destiny, rather than following someone else's dreams...You tend to identify who you are with what you have accomplished in the world. This may make you highly competitive in establishing yourself within a definable lifestyle or career.

The analysis went into minute detail:
Sun opposite Mars -The extreme tension that you feel within you often propels you into situations that are full of antagonism. Needing to vent the steam built up inside you, you are often either bruising for a fight or argument yourself, ... It may be difficult to control your hot temper and impulsiveness,
Sun conjunct Jupiter- The grand gesture is your trademark, because you hate to do things in a small way.



Mars conjunct Uranus - You are known for being unconventional, restless and independent. Your demand for freedom to be yourself at all costs can lead to a pattern of constant difficulties with authority figures...
Chiron conjunct Descendant- Preoccupied with the way you look and behave, you are much too concerned with the opinions of others. You often paint yourself as a victim of circumstance and feel that the world owes you a living.



Moon sesquare Mars- You are both aggressive and emotional, which can make it very difficult for others to deal with you at times.
(http://www.astrodatabank.com/NM/pnr/KahloFridaPNR.htm)

Not that I am such a believer in horoscopes, but this uncanny description does seem to support my mother's opinion. I ask myself from this - why is that okay for men painters and not for women - especially since women have been consistently denied a place in the painter's pantheon?

Ms Kahlo intended to become a doctor before a horrible bus accident immobilized her. Not bowing to the apparent vagaries of fate, she decided to become a painter because she could do it in a stationary condition. As a woman, as a person from Mexico (a country considered to be primitive and dominated by superstition and mysticism by intellectual snobs), as a painter, she was constantly regarded as a second class person and it is her very persistence and insitence of being full of things she should be proud of that allowed her to survive and continue. How could she be any other way and still succeed?

I realized from the exhibit that my ambivalence with the work of Ms Kahlo is echoed in my ambivalence about Mexico itself. Kahlo has taken a culture that was looked down upon and by intentionally embracing it, by wearing her native Teotihuacan dress, by embracing the Catholic mystical imagery, by embracing the tropical ripeness replete with its violence and decay she has produced a mirror of her self and her culture.

I have spent many wonderful, amazed times in Mexico appreciating the warmness of the people, the historic greatness of the early cultures, and the ingenuity of the impoverished who get along with almost nothing. On the other hand, I have been horrified by the violence, the corruption of the police, the squalor, the superstitious behavior and I feel all these things when I view Ms. Kahlo's work.

One can be equally ambivalent about our own culture in the US. It is very hard for me not to agree completely with this political statement about living in new York. My Dress Hangs Here. Because you live somewhere, that does not make it home and Frida certainly felt no sympathy for a country preoccupied with plumbing and money.



A few weeks ago, a dear friend featured this image from the exhibit on her blog - Just a few Nips - and I had the nerve to suggest compassion not only for the abused (and in this case murdered) woman, but also for the misery and guilt feelings of the person who took just a few nips from the bottle before taking a few nips into the flesh of his partner. I could feel no compassion for the perpetrator after seeing the actual painting.



It is a matter-of -fact little painting (and almost all of Kahlo's paintings are really quite small) and yet its subject literally spills over onto the frame in the representation of the blood jabbed in red into the wood.

The Kahlo exhibit is also small - but still offers quite a lot to consider. Images relating to her miscarriage are equally disturbing, both for their connection to religious imagery as well as their direct assault visually on the viewer.



The intentional use of so-called primitive folk style with such unsentimental subjects somehow enhances the feeling of frontal assault and so while it is an intellectually fascinating journey, the walk around the museum gallery can feel unpleasant and unfriendly.



This is perhaps appropriate. In The Two Fridas, one of the two larger paintings that kahlo painted, she speaks to the need to reformulate herself after yet another trauma (I believe) resulting from the separation from Diego Rivera. Alone with herself, the old more approachable Frida is to be replaced by a stronger, harder less accessible one (even though she will always be both) The two are connected by one circulatory system and yet the transformation still results in the loss of blood as the clamp is unable to still the painful overflow. The image is at once clinical and mystical - but also distant and unsentimental.

One of the more cheerful pieces is the image of herself and Rivera which she modelled on their wedding photo. Critics note that her hand hovers above his rather than being enfolded as if to indicate her desire to remain her own person despite the matrimonial union.



Of course the pieces that i liked the best are not reproduced on the internet. One rather abstract small piece done in a circle with muted reds and greens really appealed to me. I must have been too tired to think at this point and perhaps it appealed to me because I simply felt it - no interpretations, no idea of what it was about - it wasjust an image and animage that contrasted to the garish, direct ones I had been taking in up to that point.

It is a very worthwhile exhibit and I recommend you see it if you are fortunate enough to have it come to a gallery near you. Most of the better known images are there although I missed a few of the bed pictures and the self-portraits - particulalry with the white lace headdress. I want to close this commentary with a political image about culture, which I will not explicate, but simply leave for the viewer to ponder and enjoy.



At the end I am still highly ambivalent about Kahlo and her works and I think that is the thing I most appreciate about them. While I prefer the works of Georg Grosz, Kathe Kollwitz and Egon Schiele (with all his narcissism) to those of Kahlo, because of their commentary and style, they are in the end not so different from each other. My tastes reflect precisely my tastes and reflect the fact that it is German culture that I chose to study in school and not Mexican culture. Thus it is the critique and analyses of the German culture that draw me more strongly. The message of our inhumanity to each other is strong in all of these works, of our culture's unfairness to the down-trodden, of its treatment of women and Western focus on the material. Such themes are evident in the works of the German Expressionists as well as in those of Frida Kahlo, but above and beyond that one can not deny that the bravery, persistence and endurance of Kahlo as Mexican, woman, painter is deserving of special recognition, respect and awe.