Frida, the unapologetic bitch. Frida, the disabled artist. Frida, symbol of radical feminism. Frida, the victim of Diego. Frida, the chic, gender-fluid, beautiful and monstrous icon. Frida tote bags, Frida keychains, Frida T-shirts, And also, this year’s new Frida Barbie doll (no unibrow). Frida Kahlo has been subject to global scrutiny and commercial exploitation. She has been appropriated by curators, historians, artists, actors, activists, Mexican consulates, museums and Madonna.
Over the years, this avalanche has trivialised Kahlo’s work to fit a shallow “Fridolatry”. And, while some criticism has been able to counter the views that cast her as a naive, infantile, almost involuntary artist, most narratives have continued to position her as a geographically marginal painter: one more developing-world artist waiting to be “discovered”, one more voiceless subject waiting to be “translated”.
In 1938, Frida Kahlo painted Lo que el agua me dio (What the Water Gave Me), the painting perhaps responsible for launching her international career, but also her international mistranslation. In this self-portrait of sorts, we see Kahlo’s feet and calves inside a bathtub and above them, as if emanating from the steam, a collaged landscape: an erupting volcano out of which a skyscraper emerges; a dead bird resting on a tree; a strangled woman; a Tehuana dress dramatically spread out; a female couple resting on a floating cork. Kahlo was working on Lo que el agua me dio when the French surrealist André Breton arrived in Mexico for a visit. He was transfixed by it. He called Kahlo a “natural surrealist”, and in a brochure endorsing her New York debut at Julien Levy’s gallery in 1938, he wrote: “My surprise and joy were unbounded when I discovered, on my arrival in Mexico, that her work has blossomed forth, in her latest paintings, into pure surreality, despite the fact that it had been conceived without any prior knowledge whatsoever of the ideas motivating the activities of my friends and myself.”
Though “natural surrealist” was a label that helped translate Kahlo’s paintings for European and American audiences, it was one that she always rejected. To be projected as a “surrealist” in Europe helped audiences to understand her work more immediately – more palatably. She was branded as authentically Mexican, with international flair. But to be seen as a “naturalsurrealist” also transformed her into a kind of sauvage: unconscious of her talent, unsuspecting of her mastery. After her debut, a Time magazine critic described her work as having “the daintiness of miniatures, the vivid reds and yellows of Mexican tradition and the playfully bloody fancy of an unsentimental child.”
Kahlo was hardly unsuspecting, hardly unconscious of what she was doing and who she was. She knew how to capitalise on the elements of her private life and cultural heritage, curate them carefully, and use them to build her public persona. She was a mestizo, born in Mexico City, who had adopted a traditional Zapotec-Tehuana “look”. Her father, the German-born Carl Wilhelm “Guillermo” Kahlo, was a well-known photographer, and the family lived in a neocolonial mansion in Coyoacán, the famous Casa Azul. Kahlo was very much aware of the complex politics of selfhood she was creating and manipulating. In a 1939 photograph taken during the opening of Kahlo’s first exhibition in Paris, she is posing in front of Lo que el agua me dio. She is wearing a Tehuana dress and her unibrow is underscored with black eyeliner: Frida representing Frida. (It is unclear which one is the artwork.)
The way Kahlo’s work and persona were read in Mexico was of course very different from the way they were translated into other cultural milieux. Just as Breton had attached the category “natural surrealist” to her art and framed her work in a discourse that she herself did not embrace, many others did the same with various aspects of her public and private life.
by Valeria Luiselli, The Guardian | Read more:
Over the years, this avalanche has trivialised Kahlo’s work to fit a shallow “Fridolatry”. And, while some criticism has been able to counter the views that cast her as a naive, infantile, almost involuntary artist, most narratives have continued to position her as a geographically marginal painter: one more developing-world artist waiting to be “discovered”, one more voiceless subject waiting to be “translated”.
In 1938, Frida Kahlo painted Lo que el agua me dio (What the Water Gave Me), the painting perhaps responsible for launching her international career, but also her international mistranslation. In this self-portrait of sorts, we see Kahlo’s feet and calves inside a bathtub and above them, as if emanating from the steam, a collaged landscape: an erupting volcano out of which a skyscraper emerges; a dead bird resting on a tree; a strangled woman; a Tehuana dress dramatically spread out; a female couple resting on a floating cork. Kahlo was working on Lo que el agua me dio when the French surrealist André Breton arrived in Mexico for a visit. He was transfixed by it. He called Kahlo a “natural surrealist”, and in a brochure endorsing her New York debut at Julien Levy’s gallery in 1938, he wrote: “My surprise and joy were unbounded when I discovered, on my arrival in Mexico, that her work has blossomed forth, in her latest paintings, into pure surreality, despite the fact that it had been conceived without any prior knowledge whatsoever of the ideas motivating the activities of my friends and myself.”Though “natural surrealist” was a label that helped translate Kahlo’s paintings for European and American audiences, it was one that she always rejected. To be projected as a “surrealist” in Europe helped audiences to understand her work more immediately – more palatably. She was branded as authentically Mexican, with international flair. But to be seen as a “naturalsurrealist” also transformed her into a kind of sauvage: unconscious of her talent, unsuspecting of her mastery. After her debut, a Time magazine critic described her work as having “the daintiness of miniatures, the vivid reds and yellows of Mexican tradition and the playfully bloody fancy of an unsentimental child.”
Kahlo was hardly unsuspecting, hardly unconscious of what she was doing and who she was. She knew how to capitalise on the elements of her private life and cultural heritage, curate them carefully, and use them to build her public persona. She was a mestizo, born in Mexico City, who had adopted a traditional Zapotec-Tehuana “look”. Her father, the German-born Carl Wilhelm “Guillermo” Kahlo, was a well-known photographer, and the family lived in a neocolonial mansion in Coyoacán, the famous Casa Azul. Kahlo was very much aware of the complex politics of selfhood she was creating and manipulating. In a 1939 photograph taken during the opening of Kahlo’s first exhibition in Paris, she is posing in front of Lo que el agua me dio. She is wearing a Tehuana dress and her unibrow is underscored with black eyeliner: Frida representing Frida. (It is unclear which one is the artwork.)
The way Kahlo’s work and persona were read in Mexico was of course very different from the way they were translated into other cultural milieux. Just as Breton had attached the category “natural surrealist” to her art and framed her work in a discourse that she herself did not embrace, many others did the same with various aspects of her public and private life.
by Valeria Luiselli, The Guardian | Read more:
