The show also looks a popular opinion in that the commercialisation of her image is inseparable from capitalism and consumerism, but it can also be understood as a form of democratic ownership; a way for people anywhere to make Frida their own. There are mass gatherings around the world, where people turn up dressed and made up as Frida with her trademark monobrow. This is all quite similar to the worship and image of Che Guevara, where people only see and remember his freedom fighting and ignore and forget other important facts.
The worship Kahlo receives is due to her still feeling modern, whether in her interest in identity or in exploring her life experiences as a woman. Her open portrayals of pain certainly chime with the current trend for self revelation. She started painting in her late teens after a bus accident that caused very serious injuries to her spine and pelvis.
In her drawing The Accident (1926), she depicts the collision, surrounded by bodies, herself bandaged on a stretcher in the foreground is looked down on by her floating disembodied head. Parallels can be drawn with Tracey Emin, whose work is also now on display at Tate Modern. Emin has said “Women can relate to her,” Kahlo “did images of herself bleeding in the bath, of foetuses coming out of her, and pictures of her family and lovers”. Emin has been a fan of Kahlo since she was a student and made a painting inspired by the Mexican artist’s portrayal of her family tree. By way of tribute in 2000, Emin was photographed dressed like Kahlo in bed, as she often was due to injury and illness.
Kahlo’s art is still loved, but to a degree it has been taken over by the persona of the artist. In her lifetime, Kahlo’s art and her constructed identity as a cultural figure emerged as one. Stepping into the public eye at the age of 22 as the wife of Diego Rivera, she turned herself
into a character; a queen in a braided crown wearing Aztec beads and traditional dress and this is how she is remembered. In the 1970s, Kahlo was championed by the women’s movement, as an artist who painted her own reality, whose reputation in life had been overtaken by her more famous husband. In 1982, feminist theorist Laura Mulvey co-curated an exhibition of Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti’s work at the Whitechapel Gallery in East London and she emerged from the shadow of her husband.
The impact of this exhibition was huge, as she was seen as a female artist who had been making works about birth, abortion, miscarriage, illness and identity in the 1930/40s; then just after this Hayden Herrera published her bestselling biography. Together, the book and exhibition caused Fridamania and also Madonna became a fan, buying several of her paintings, which added to her fame.
In the modern day we like to sanitise, or censor those in the past whose lives or actions would not be seen as acceptable anymore. However, if we do this too much we will lose a lot of the history of great and important art, that has been passed on and impacted our lives today.
When Frida produced her work back then, she like many artists suffered with self doubt and did not always like her work. If we expect and demand, that only those that lived their lives like actual saints, are allowed to be remembered, rather than exploring those with more complex lives, then there won’t me much left to see and learn from.
Richard Embrey @richardembreyart
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LIVE24-SEVEN.COM
ENTERTAINMENT ART GUIDE
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