All Souls: The Frieda Kahlo Cult
by Peter Schjeldahl
November 05, 2007
There are so many ways to be interested in Frida Kahlo, who was born a hundred years ago an died forty-seven years later, in 1954, that simply to look at and judge her paintings, as paintings may seem narrow-minded. No one need appreciate art to justify being Kahlo fan or even a Kahlo cultist (Why not? The world will have cults, and who better merits one? In Mexico, Kahlo’s ubiquitous image has become the counter-Guadalupe, complementing th numinous Virgin as a deathless icon of Mexicanidad. Kahlo’s ascension since the late nineteen-seventies, to feminist sainthood is ineluctable though a mite strained. (Kahl struggled not in common cause with women but, single-handedly, fo herself.) And her pansexual charisma, shadowed by tales of ghastly physical and emotional suffering, makes her an avatar of liberty and guts. However, Kahlo’s eminence wobbles unless her work holds up. A retrospective at th Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis proves that it does, and then some. She made some iffy symbological pictures an a few perfectly awful ones—forgivably, given their service to her alway imperilled morale—but her self-portraits cannot be overpraised. They are sui generis in art while collegial with great portraiture of every age. Kahlo is among the winnowed elect of twentieth-century painters who will never be absent for long from the mental museums of future artists
Read the rest of the article here
.RENEGADE EYE
36 comments:
Ah, the fickle Frida, Trotsky's mistress who later become a great admirer of his assassin, Stalin...
In Mexico, Kahlo’s ubiquitous image has become the counter-Guadalupe
Hijole!
Fickle Frida! Are not all humans fickle? Is not the world in a pickle? Is not life full of prickles?
A glass of wine softens the pain of living!
She should shave the next time, before painting herself.
Just how self-limiting is it to always judge the quality of an artist's work by their politics...?
Give that man a palme d'or! Or give Al Gore... first the Oscar... then a Nobel.
What a joke!
Thanks for posting about Frida. Who cares about her later phase of politics. What is important is the art she did, which is Surrealist to the core - and therefore revolutionary, what ever she called herself, before or after
Sonia: Diego Rivera and Trotsky had an unfortunate falling out. Trotsky was allowed in Mexico, on the condition he not take part in politics. Diego Rivera was very impulsive. He denounced the president of Mexico, for being cordial to Stalinist trade unions. That forced Trotsky to have to find some other house to live in.
Trotsky's biographer Isaac Deutscher denies Trotsky had an affair with Frieda. Trotsky's grandson Esteban Volkov, who lives in Mexico City, confirmed they had an affair. I'm working on getting an interview with Esteban on this blog.
I never investigated why Frieda and by the way Diego Rivera, settled in Stalinism.
Politiques: Frieda also beats the potato chip, shaped like The Virgin.
Farmer: I agree with you. I'm a fan of the rightist Robert Duvall. Art can best be judged in the language of art.
Gore won the Nobel Prize for peace, not science.
Larry: Surrealists generally were left, excluding Dali. Read the Manifesto written by Rivera-Breton.
Daniel: This calls for repeating what you posted: Fickle Frida! Are not all humans fickle? Is not the world in a pickle? Is not life full of prickles?
A glass of wine softens the pain of living!
Just because Frida Kahlo became a Stalinoid doesn't invalidate her work.
I remember reading on another blog that one of the problematic features of this exhibition is how it papers over her politics, whether Trotskyist-inspired or pro-Stalin. As a result, the Kahlo we're left with is Kahlo the artist divorced from some of the circumstance that drove her creative energy.
larry,
You want a surrealist? Salvador Dali was a surrealist. Compared to him, Frieda was a kingarten finger-painter.
But I doubt Ren will ever post about Dali. After all, he broke with the commies, moved to America and earned a buck or three.
Of kahlo's 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits.
In many respects, Frieda Kahlo was Diego Rivera's "Gala".
Narcissus, in his immobility, absorbed by his reflection with the digestive slowness of carnivorous plants, becomes invisible.
There remains of him only
the hallucinatingly white oval of his head,
his head again more tender,
his head, chrysalis of hidden biological designs,
his head held up by the tips of the water's fingers,
at the tips of the fingers
of the insensate hand,
of the terrible hand,
of the mortal hand
of his own reflection.
When that head slits
when that head splits
when that head bursts,
it will be the flower,
the new Narcissus,
Gala - my narcissus
--Salvadore Dali
In many respects, Khalo was a "typical" Marxist. For whenever Narcissus speaks, Echo answers... hence the "Kahlo Cult".
Too shallow for philosophy, she could only know the surface of herself, and she fell in love with its' refelction.
I saw the Kahlo exhibition a couple of years ago whilst in London. I have to say it was magnificent and she was a quite an extraordinary modernist artist. Her private and political life is well known but what comes across to you in the art is the physical and emotional pain she suffered at the hands of both Rivera and the terrible injuries she suffered when younger during a road accident.
I think the fact that 55 of her paintings were self-portraits says a great deal. Her body and the pains it inflicted upon her appear over and over in her art.
"Salvador Dali was a surrealist..."
Eh? Really. Compared to René Magritte and the other core surrealist of the period, Dali belongs to a more classical tradition. There is too much of the extraordinary in his work, he overdoes the supposed subconscious elements in his art; his pictures are too neat, to glossy and too beautiful to be truly surreal.
Therefore, consciously, highlighting what he thinks is the subconscious rather than letting his subconscious enter the painting, sort of disqualifies him as a surrealist- in my humble opinion.
Great surrealist art must also have the mundane, the scruffy and everyday alongside the fantastical and surprising - something Dali didn't get. It must be true to the unconscious. Dali was a fake surrealist.
Indeed, Dali is surreal to people who do not understand the surreal. And I couldn't give a shit about his politics. And he loved the smell of money too. So what?
His best and only real piece of surrealism is his wonderful work with Bunuel for the cinema - 'L'Âge d'or' and 'Un Chien Andalou'. His later cinematic work with Hitchcock (Spellbound) is again obvious and glossy and not remotely surreal.
Just a passing thought.
No, the addition of the scruffy and mundane to dreams is Marxism contribution to great art... which is to say, NO contribution. It transforms giants into dwarves and men into "last men".
I think you're confusing the Automatists with the Veristic Surrealists, V. And if you can't analyse and decode the subconscious images in the painting, you're simply a dadaist pretender like 99% of Frieda's crap. Dali, at least, was Freudian.
Marcuse's big mistake was trying to mix Marxism w/Freudianism. That's why the New Left is in the state it's in. Marx is a muddler, not a clarifier.
LOL!
cookie, anyone?
me like Dali. He tell people what to expect from commies and anarchists. Lenin was no "William Tell". Me wish he could paint Chavez today.
Fret not, 'C', for perhaps one day I shall bake him a pie.
I have been finding rightists I speak to at thiia blog and others, defining themselves as "anti-left." They don't say conservative or even pro-capitalism, just anti-left. Some on the left define themself as "anti-imperialist." That leads to alliances, because it's based on a negative, as my enemies friends are my enemy. This discussion shows the blindness, of defining yourself in negative.
Dali was a Franco and Hitler supporter. He still is a surrealist.
The ridiculous remarks of seeing Marxism in Kahlo's surrealism, is blind to her work. I posted her picture of her thoughts about New York. Her revolutionary critique was the painting points out New Yorkers are obsessed with plumbing and sports.
Art needs to be judged first in its own language. In addition who is the artist, and how does the art fit into history has its place.
All of this Dali good and Kahlo bad, is like a Stalinist view of art. I can't believe the narrowmindness of this discussion.
Thanks for sharing these info, Renegade. She was such a great artist. A model for us, little cartoonists. She will be my forthcoming "guest of the week" on my blog...
It is a funny discussion! But it is also worth considering the Surrealist's position on Dali. They see him as a Surrealist up to the point that he broke with the Surrealist Movement and supported Franco. About this time Dali started putting religious imagery in his paintings. I don't think Breton and the other Surrealists were wrong to exclude him any more than anarchists or Trotskyists would exclude a member who glorified Stalin and endorsed Stalinist methods.
Farmer John, I think you misunderstand what I mean.
Maybe, “scruffy” was the wrong adjective to use when describing the effects of the unconscious mind on surrealist art – better words like untidy, irrational, fragmented and random spring to mind now. And - seeing as you’ve brought up the split – automatic and unmediated, too. That to me is true surrealism.
Words that don’t really apply to Dali – the Dali of the poster shop, the populist ‘surrealist’, that inspires the safe surrealism of advertisements.
Indeed, you do Dali a great disservice by simply describing him as a surrealist. He was too good a draughtsman and too ‘consciously’ painting his supposed inner landscape to be a true surrealist. Yes there are some elements of the surreal in his work. But if you take a picture that I greatly admire – Christ of St John of the Cross – on what level can you call it surrealist? It is, I would argue, a stunning piece of religious art. True it is oblique. But it msut be viewed as part of a long tradition that links Dali with the old masters and religious painting stretching back centuries, rather than with those who aligned themselves with Breton and the manifesto which aimed for an: “absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.”
Do those words adequately describe Dali’s work? Especially Christ of St John of the Cross?
And would you similarly call Picasso a mere cubist?
Ren is correct, this is not simply a matter of who (politically) aligned themselves with who and when and for what reason. If it was that shallow, then we would be pointing at Dali and uttering the words Hitler and Franco.
Dali was a Franco and Hitler supporter
You are soooo full of sh*t Ren. Have you looked at Dali's painting of Hitler and the fascists? The venom and hatred (wolves and bats) literally "drips"... Hitler's picture on a plate w/ some sparsely scattered "beans". Mass communication of rhetoric creating Hitler... the wolf under the beach umbrella.
The difference between Dali and the automatists was that Dali was an artist and the automatists were merely "rhapsodes" like Plato's "Ion", who create works through "divine inspiration" instead of "transcendant" knowledge.
It's like the field of psycho-analysis. The automatists are the patients. They don't know what the surrealism means. They simply create "inspired" works of art. Dali and the veristic surrealists had all read Freud, and created their imagery through art and knowledge of what the symbols "meant". In that sense, their art is "deliberate" and not merely "accidental".
The New Left is enamoured with the concept of authenticity. But let's face it, it's the equivalent of recognizing the genius in Freud's patient's , rather than Freud, who could both analyze and cure them.
It is a paean to ignorance. The real genius was Freud, who began to explain to us what the dreams meant.
Plato, "Ion"
SOCRATES: I perceive, Ion; and I will proceed to explain to you what I imagine to be the reason of this. The gift which you possess of speaking excellently about Homer is not an art, but, as I was just saying, an inspiration; there is a divinity moving you, like that contained in the stone which Euripides calls a magnet, but which is commonly known as the stone of Heraclea. This stone not only attracts iron rings, but also imparts to them a similar power of attracting other rings; and sometimes you may see a number of pieces of iron and rings suspended from one another so as to form quite a long chain: and all of them derive their power of suspension from the original stone. In like manner the Muse first of all inspires men herself; and from these inspired persons a chain of other persons is suspended, who take the inspiration. For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed. And as the Corybantian revellers when they dance are not in their right mind, so the lyric poets are not in their right mind when they are composing their beautiful strains: but when falling under the power of music and metre they are inspired and possessed; like Bacchic maidens who draw milk and honey from the rivers when they are under the influence of Dionysus but not when they are in their right mind. And the soul of the lyric poet does the same, as they themselves say; for they tell us that they bring songs from honeyed fountains, culling them out of the gardens and dells of the Muses; they, like the bees, winging their way from flower to flower. And this is true. For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles. Many are the noble words in which poets speak concerning the actions of men; but like yourself when speaking about Homer, they do not speak of them by any rules of art: they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them, and that only; and when inspired, one of them will make dithyrambs, another hymns of praise, another choral strains, another epic or iambic verses--and he who is good at one is not good at any other kind of verse: for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine. Had he learned by rules of art, he would have known how to speak not of one theme only, but of all; and therefore God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us. And Tynnichus the Chalcidian affords a striking instance of what I am saying: he wrote nothing that any one would care to remember but the famous paean which is in every one's mouth, one of the finest poems ever written, simply an invention of the Muses, as he himself says. For in this way the God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods by whom they are severally possessed. Was not this the lesson which the God intended to teach when by the mouth of the worst of poets he sang the best of songs? Am I not right, Ion?
ION: Yes, indeed, Socrates, I feel that you are; for your words touch my soul, and I am persuaded that good poets by a divine inspiration interpret the things of the Gods to us.
SOCRATES: And you rhapsodists are the interpreters of the poets?
ION: There again you are right.
The entire "Modernist" movement from Marx to Joyce to present day is a fanfare to the common man... the common and mundane man as "hero". But give the devil his due. The true genius is the man who can best explain "the nature" of our "common" genius to us, and not the talented inmates of the asylum.
Like Nietzsche, Dali was a Promethean man who had firmly bound his talent to an adamantine rock...
Aeschylus, "Prometheus Bound"
PROMETHEUS
Think not that I for pride and stubbornness
Am silent: rather is my heart the prey
Of gnawing thoughts, both for the past, and now
Seeing myself by vengeance buffeted.
For to these younger Gods their precedence
Who severally determined if not I?
No more of that: I should but weary you
With things ye know; but listen to the tale
Of human sufferings, and how at first
Senseless as beasts I gave men sense, possessed them
Of mind. I speak not in contempt of man;
I do but tell of good gifts I conferred.
In the beginning, seeing they saw amiss,
And hearing heard not, but, like phantoms huddled
In dreams, the perplexed story of their days
Confounded; knowing neither timber-work
Nor brick-built dwellings basking in the light,
But dug for themselves holes, wherein like ants,
That hardly may contend against a breath,
They dwelt in burrows of their unsunned caves.
Neither of winter's cold had they fixed sign,
Nor of the spring when she comes decked with flowers,
Nor yet of summer's heat with melting fruits
Sure token: but utterly without knowledge
Moiled, until I the rising of the stars
Showed them, and when they set, though much obscure.
Moreover, number, the most excellent
Of all inventions, I for them devised,
And gave them writing that retaineth all,
The serviceable mother of the Muse.
I was the first that yoked unmanaged beasts,
To serve as slaves with collar and with pack,
And take upon themselves, to man's relief,
The heaviest labour of his hands: and
Tamed to the rein and drove in wheeled cars
The horse, of sumptuous pride the ornament.
And those sea-wanderers with the wings of cloth,
The shipman's waggons, none but I contrived.
These manifold inventions for mankind
I perfected, who, out upon't, have none-
No, not one shift-to rid me of this shame.
Go ahead and join Herbert Marcuse in thean "un-binding" of Prometheus, but realize that your path is a return to "ignorance" and the rule of Zeus (Necessity). It is a dimunition of the powers of man.
Find yourself a "new" rock to bind yourself too. Because the rock of Marxism lies upon the quicksand of a resentment and "jealousy" of the "promethean" man.
Stand atop Mount Helicon at noon. Gaze over at Mounts Parnassus and Olympus. Then catch a glimpse of Athena as she bathe's unarmoured in the Srring. On that day, you too can grow a third eye like tiresias... and/or Frida's muse, Rivera.
But first, one must understand the "evolutionary" nature of the human mind. As Uranus is overcome by Kronos and then oversome by Zeus... the "inpiration" of Hesiod's "Theogeny".
I really need to learn the "art" of spelling (and proof reading before clicking "enter") one day. Apologies.
Christ of St John of the Cross... a religious painting?
You mean sacreligious... don't you? If it were "religious" the cross would be embedded in earth, not "sky".
Just how dumbed down do you need your culture?
The peasants are revolting!
Supertitles at opera NOT a good thing??? Is NOT good to make culture more accessible?
Only if you have an agenda... like making everyone equal, 'C'... equally dumb, that is.
Why learn, otherwise. If culture is universally accessible to all comers, where's the incentive to study and learn? There's no "social ladder" to climb. We can all revel in our own crapulence. We can all have high "self-esteem" and little ability to become "self-reliant". Ask the teachers unions... it's all about "self-esteem," not ability.
High culture is dead. The aristocrats is not only a joke, it's the new reality. We're ALL the joke, now!
FJ,
You like Rodney Dangerfield. You no have class! Maybe that why you so dumb!
Marx only like One class! All others... EVIL!
Then I guess it's all up to Coriolanus and me to keep our "class consciousness" alive. We're the last/ best hope for the future of Rome.
I only wish that the lessons of our experience could be bought less costly. For how many people do you know today that have read BOTH of these more obscure plays of the bard, let alone absorbed their lessons?
Farmer: “The true genius is the man who can best explain "the nature" of our "common" genius to us…”
But this is prefixed with a criticism of the entire modernist movemnt and James Joyce in particular. In Ulysses, Joyce not only brilliantly illuminates and explores, but also critiques and celebrates, the best and worst aspects of humanity. No other book of the 20th century explains who we are in such a multi-faceted way. No other book takes on the thousands of years of learning and our inherited culture like Ulysses. And yet it is not widely read because it is deemed to be difficult and elitist.
Furthermore, this celebration of humanity (the common man) as a mass or at the level of the everyday is something you seem to be scared of for some reason. Maybe it is because you are above the rest of us both morally and intellectually. Whatever it is, you have an evident dislike of the masses –except when they are fighting wars for your benefit.
I don’t know, maybe you are some kind of Nietzschean superman yourself and we are too ignorant to realise it. If so, why do you get yourself soiled and dirty in such base and democratic company? You know there is no hope for us who believe: “I am a man, and nothing that concerns a man do I deem a matter of indifference to me.”
You know there is no hope for those of us who believe in humanity.
FJ,
Retire your sock puppets. This world is NOT your stage!
v,
My apologies for the way I go about making my case, but you still misunderstand me. I am a classical liberal. Joyce's "Dubliners/ Portrait of the Artist" are wonderful works of art. But they, too, are works of "art" acquired from years of study of the classics of the old "western civ" core curriculum. They were not the stream of consciousness/autonomist ramblings of a "common" man. They were serious reinterpretations of the classics, made specifically for our modern age and classically educated middle-class people. Joyce could never have written them, had he not first obtained an "elitist"/ "classical" education. Dali could never have painted, had he not first studied Freud... seriously studied the "elitist", Freud.
And I am NOT afraid of the common man. I'll admit, I, like Zarathustra, have a like "soft spot" for the "higher" men...
O ye higher men, your distress was it that the old soothsayer foretold to me yester-morn,-
-Unto your distress did he want to seduce and tempt me: 'O Zarathustra,' said he to me, 'I come to seduce thee to thy last sin.'
To my last sin?" cried Zarathustra, and laughed angrily at his own words: "what hath been reserved for me as my last sin?"
-And once more Zarathustra became absorbed in himself, and sat down again on the big stone and meditated. Suddenly he sprang up,-
"Fellow-suffering! Fellow-suffering with the higher men!" he cried out, and his countenance changed into brass. "Well! That- hath had its time!
My suffering and my fellow-suffering- what matter about them! Do I then strive after happiness? I strive after my work!
Well! The lion hath come, my children are nigh, Zarathustra hath grown ripe, mine hour hath come:-
This is my morning, my day beginneth: arise now, arise, thou great noontide!"- -
Thus spake Zarathustra and left his cave, glowing and strong, like a morning sun coming out of gloomy mountains.
But I have my own work to do. And part of that is to continue to live in liberty and raise my family.
And I don't need you and YOUR well intended friends trying to raise them for me... to transform our society into YOUR new and progressive vision of what it means to be "human".
Because the Left no longer serves the "common" man. Their "Rawlesian" re-interpretation of 'justice' has metamorphosized into nemesis (anti-justice) and lead you to make "new heroes" out of the hoi kokoi. The Left needs to stop sipping the upsidasium and go back to focusing on doing what is best for the "average" man of the hoi poloi (only you cannot destroy the hoi agathoi in the process... for as much as you destest the Randoids, you must NOT force them to move to Galt's Gulch).
I am only something of an "elitist" today because of the Left's "anti-elitism" and fear of being labelled "elitist".
Newton's Law. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. There is "generation from opposites". Our society is no longer in "harmony". The Left has moved too far away, and threatens to bring us full circle, thereby.
You've lost your path. It's back there, a little behind you... in classical liberalism.
Classical liberalism, eh? From the folks who bring you "Marx is out of date", this is rich. Let's all go back to the 18th Century, why not? Socialism and anarchism developed out of classical liberalism precisely because of that ideologies failure to comprehend the destructive nature of capitalism and class division. Without ECONOMIC FREEDOM - worker self-management - all the liberal constitutions and palaver are just empty pious phrases.
blah blah blah...
Then be prepared to pay for your hubris in generous doses of harsh strife!
A: I think we think the same. This discussion has nothing to do with Kahlo, Dali or Bunuel. It's not even a discussion. It's war at this moment, without violence.
por ahora.
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