{"id":10449,"date":"2019-02-28T06:25:37","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T11:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=10449"},"modified":"2019-02-28T08:14:26","modified_gmt":"2019-02-28T13:14:26","slug":"frida-kahlo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/02\/28\/frida-kahlo\/","title":{"rendered":"How Frida Kahlo\u2019s Visionary Paintings Were Inspired By Mexican Folk Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kahlo\u2019s riveting 1940 painting \u201cSelf-Portrait with Hummingbirds and Thorn Necklace\u201d is all the reason you need to see \u201cFrida Kahlo and Arte Popular\u201d<\/a> at Boston\u2019s Museum of Fine Arts from Feb. 27 to June 16, 2019.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s Kahlo in her early 30s, at the peak of her artistry, staring out at us from under her prominent brow. She\u2019s posed in front of a screen of lush tropical leaves. A monkey and black cat perch on her shoulders. Silver butterflies alight in her hair. A necklace of thorns with a hummingbird pendant pricks her throat, drawing blood. Her brown eyes are magnetic\u2014serious, regal, fierce, defiant, a bit sad.<\/p>\n

\"Frida<\/a>
Frida Kahlo, “Self-Portrait with Hummingbird and Thorn Necklace,” 1940, oil on canvas. (Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kahlo was born July 6, 1907, but she was wont to claim she arrived in 1910, coinciding with the start of the Mexican Revolution. She came of age as the civil war subsided around 1920. And she embraced mexicanidad, an intellectual and political effort to rebrand Mexico by asserting a pride in being a modern Mexican and the nation\u2019s unique culture arising from Spanish Catholic conquest of indigenous pre-Columbian societies.<\/p>\n

After the civil war, they were \u201ctrying to construct a new narrative for Mexican art that speaks of unification,\u201d MFA curator Layla Bermeo says.<\/p>\n

\"Nickolas<\/a>
Nickolas Muray, “Frida Kahlo ‘The Classic’ (Black and White),” 1939, photograph. (Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

French cuisine and architecture lost cachet. Instead collecting Mexican arte popular\u2014folk art\u2014and adopting indigenous fashion became stylish. Kahlo assumed the Tehuana dress\u2014a traditional dress of Zapotec women from Oaxaca\u2014as her look. \u201cKahlo and politically-minded elites in Mexico City acquired handmade objects from rural communities as a romanticized celebration of Mexico\u2019s indigenous and working-class peoples,\u201d says a sign opening the exhibition. \u201cIt was these collectors who defined and promoted arte popular as Mexico’s new national art, connected to both ancient histories and modernist aesthetics. By examining some of the social and political ideas of the post-Revolutionary period, this exhibition offers contexts for Kahlo\u2019s paintings and arte popular, and explores the dialogues between the two.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFrida Kahlo and Arte Popular\u201d is a modest exhibition, offering eight paintings by Kahlo in four galleries, plus works by her contemporaries and lots of Mexican folk art. It’s a rare chance to see Kahlo’s amazing art around here. The exhibition aims to illustrate a thesis: Kahlo is talked about as a surrealist, a feminist, a communist, but you don\u2019t really understand what she\u2019s about unless you know how much folk art inspired her.<\/p>\n

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If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"Frida<\/a>
Frida Kahlo, “My Grandparents, My Parents, and I (Family Tree),” 1936, oil and tempera on zinc. (Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kahlo\u2019s 1936 painting \u201cMy Grandparents, Parents, and I (Family Tree)\u201d depicts her as a fertilized embryo, as a fetus, and as a girl at her childhood home. Her parents and grandparents float above her. Her father was the son of Hungarian Jews in Germany. He immigrated to Mexico in 1891 at age 19 and became a professional photographer. (Kahlo assisted in his studio.) Her mother was born in Mexico, a Catholic woman from a Spanish-indigenous family.<\/p>\n

Kahlo grew up middle class and Catholic. Kahlo \u201cadored bloody depictions of Christ,\u201d Victor Zomudio-Taylor wrote in the catalog to the 2007 Kahlo retrospective that originated at Minneapolis\u2019s Walker Art Center<\/a>. She joined the communist party as a young woman. Then in September 1925, a bus Kahlo was riding was hit by a streetcar. A metal handrail stabbed into her. She broke ribs and a foot, fractured her spine and pelvis. The rest of her life was filled with surgeries, bed rest, painful corsets and back braces. She took up painting during her initial recovery.<\/p>\n

\"Frida<\/a>
Frida Kahlo, “Still Life with Parrot and Fruit,” 1951, oil on canvas mounted on board. (Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then she met Diego Rivera, the Paris-trained modernist painter who had returned home to Mexico to paint mexicanidad murals visualizing the new Mexican identity and imagining a dazzling industrial, communist future. \u201cKahlo was part of larger artist movements,\u201d Bermeo says. The exhibition is filled out by her artistic peers\u2014Rivera, Maria Izquierdo (\u201cprobably the most famous woman artist working in Mexico\u201d then, Bermeo says), Rosa Rolanda, Edward Weston, Gabriel Fern\u00e1ndez Ledesma, Miguel Covarrubias, Henriette Theodora Markovitch (Dora Maar).<\/p>\n

Kahlo and Rivera\u2019s relationship was a tempestuous romance. (Watch this home movie of them together<\/a>.) They married in 1929, when she was 22 and he was 42. They divorced in 1939 and married again a year later. He had affairs. She had affairs. She had a series of miscarriages as her broken body was unable to carry her into motherhood.<\/p>\n

\"Bernard<\/a>
Bernard Silberstein, “Frieda Kahlo in Rivera Living Room with Figure of Judas,” around 1940, photograph. (Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Together Kahlo and Rivera collected pre-Columbian ceramics, papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 skeleton \u201cJudas\u201d figures (representing \u201cany kind of betrayer\u201d), coconuts carved with faces, toys, masks, ceramic beasts, milagros. Traditional Mexican still-life paintings inspired three of Kahlo\u2019s still-lifes here of juicy fruits from 1938 and \u201951. Bermeo says Kahlo collected ceramics and textiles decorated with floral patterns that inspired the \u201ctight foliage backgrounds\u201d in her 1928 painting \u201cDos Mujeres (Salvadora y Herminia),\u201d owned by the Museum of Fine Arts, and \u201cSelf-Portrait with Hummingbirds and Thorn Necklace.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Kahlo taught in 1943 and \u201944, she told her college students \u201cto train their eye by looking at real life, particularly popular and indigenous practices,\u201d Zomudio-Taylor wrote.<\/p>\n

\"Burnished<\/a>
Burnished Jar (Olla), about 1930 Mexico, single-fired, painted earthenware. (Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Frida<\/a>
Frida Kahlo, “Dos Mujeres (Salvadora y Herminia),” 1928, oil on canvas. (Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For Kahlo, participating in collecting folk art aligned with her communist politics. It was a way of signaling solidarity with the people. At the same time, it paralleled Pablo Picasso (whom Rivera had connected with while living in Paris), the Cubists and other modernists\u2019 artistic trick of finding fresh creative energy by mining the \u201cprimitive\u201d styles of children, the mentally ill, ancient cultures and the societies around he world that Europeans overran. \u201c\u2019Primitivism\u2019 offered a reservoir of inspiration, forms, materials and outlooks that function as an antidote to and critique of the dehumanizing aspects of modernity,\u201d Zomudio-Taylor wrote.<\/p>\n

\""Ex-voto<\/a>
“Ex-voto to El Se\u00f1or del Encino,” 19th century Mexico, oil on tin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cOne of her key contributions to modernism was her transformation of the Mexican religious genre of the ex voto,\u201d Zomudio-Taylor added. The Christian ex votos or retablos are generally small narrative paintings expressing thanks for blessings and healing miracles believed to be received from saints. They must have appealed to a woman craving healing for her damaged body. She and Rivera collected more than 400 ex votos, Bermeo says. Kahlo channeled the energy of these raw, passionate, bloody, visionary Catholicism artworks.<\/p>\n

Ex votos inspired Kahlo to paint on metal\u2014as in her family tree painting\u2014and provided a model outside the rules of academic painting. She frequently adopted the ex voto motif of the banner filled with text, as in her 1939 painting \u201cEl suicidio de Dorothy Hale (The Suicide of Dorothy Hale)\u201d (on view here) of a woman falling from a building to her death.<\/p>\n

\""Peres<\/a>
“Peres Maldonado Ex-voto,” after 1777 Mexico, oil on canvas. (Davis Museum at Wellesley College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cShe is inspired by folk art. But she is not a folk artist,\u201d Bermeo says. \u201cKahlo created an entirely new painting, neither portrait nor retablo.\u201d<\/p>\n

The French Surrealists embraced her as a kindred soul. Andre Breton and Marcel Duchamp organized a 1939 exhibition in Paris of her painting along with Mexican folk art. \u201cOne of the reasons she was frustrated was Breton was not showing folk art as an inspiration for Frida Kahlo\u2019s painting, but as equivalent,\u201d Bermeo says. In part, her objection was Kahlo \u201cfirmly associated folk art as something from the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kahlo\u2019s paintings often look surreal, but they\u2019re right out of her life. In \u201cSelf-Portrait with Hummingbirds and Thorn Necklace,\u201d for example, the cat and monkey were actually her pets. The silver butterflies were actually broaches that she owned. Her paintings are a sort of visionary realism freighted with symbolic meanings. They\u2019re rooted much more in Mexican religious painting of miracles and bloody martyrs than in, say, melting clocks.<\/p>\n

Kahlo\u2019s necklace of thorns evokes the imagery of Christian suffering and martyrdom, referencing the crown of thorns placed on the Jesus\u2019s head during his torture and execution. The thorns may be a metaphor for how she suffered through injuries, surgeries, miscarriages.<\/p>\n

Hummingbirds symbolized reincarnation to the Aztecs, Kahlo biographer Hayden Herrerz notes in her 1991 book \u201cFrida Kahlo: The Paintings.\u201d In Mexican folk tradition, hummingbirds served as a charm that could \u201cattract a lover gone astray or an unrequited love,\u201d Zomudio-Taylor notes. So perhaps this canvas\u2014painted during Kahlo and Rivera\u2019s year of breakup and remarriage\u2014is an allegory of heartbreak over the wayward Rivera.<\/p>\n

Kahlo said a year before her death in 1954, \u201cI never painted dreams, I painted my own reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

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If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"Frida<\/a>
Frida Kahlo, “Girl with Death Mask (She Plays Alone),” 1938, oil on tin. (Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Jaguar<\/a>
Jaguar mask made in Guerrero, late 19th century, glass, painted wood, animal teeth, boar bristle. (Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\""\u00c1rbol<\/a>
“\u00c1rbol de vida (Tree of Life),” 1950\u20131975 Mexico, earthenware, plaster, paint, and varnish. (Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Framed<\/a>
Framed Milagros, late 19th\u2013early 20th century Mexico, silver, flannel, glass, tin, and metal. (Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Tehuana<\/a>
Tehuana dress made in Tehuantepec, Oaxaca (top and skirt), 1930s-1940s, cotton, hand-embroidered with a chain-stitch needle or crochet hook. (Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Trunk<\/a>
Trunk made in Olinal\u00e1, Guerrero, late 19th century, lacquered and painted wood. (Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kahlo\u2019s riveting 1940 painting \u201cSelf-Portrait with Hummingbirds and Thorn Necklace\u201d is all the reason you need to see \u201cFrida Kahlo and Arte Popular\u201d at Boston\u2019s Museum of Fine Arts from Feb. 27 to June 16, 2019. Here\u2019s Kahlo in her early 30s, at the peak of her artistry, staring out at us from under her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10462,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[37,216],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10449"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10449"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10487,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10449\/revisions\/10487"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}