Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Unibrow Central


Mexico City's Palace of Fine Arts is staging a comprehensive retrospective of the great Mexican painter Frida Kahlo this Summer, because it is her 100th birthday. Expect lots of feminists and women with facial hair to attend.
All kidding aside, Frida Kahlo was a great artist. So I urge you to drop everything and book yourself tickets to the D.F. so you can see it with your own eyes.
You will find she was her own favorite subject by far, but her self-portraits are unique in the history of art. She had a very interesting life and she was a fascinating, larger than life character, which is the reason why now there are t-shirts, and notebooks and doormats and tampons with her name and effigy on them. Here in the U.S. she was hijacked by some enterprising women who felt she symbolized true female independence, etc, and who marketed the shit out of her (something that would make the staunchly unrepentant communist Frida twist like a tornado in her grave).


But try to forget all that, and do forget that very Disneyfied movie with Salma Hayek, and just see the work. It will blow your mind.
I'm partial to her powerful still lives of Mexican fruit (with flies and all). It's like all of life and death and nature in a bowl.

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