In one of the most visually striking pieces of the exhibition, "The Suicide of Dorothy Hale," Kahlo takes aspects of the ex-voto, a Catholic folk art tradition that celebrates miracles, and subverts it by showing tragedy: the suicide of a socialite who jumped off her luxury apartment building in New York City. "For someone who is arguably the most famous painter to ever come out of the Americas, Kahlo doesn't really have a place in a lot of 101 art history classes," Bermeo told me. But at the MFA, Bermeo offers a deeper, art historical understanding: Themes of childhood were a common area of interest for the global modernist movement in the '30s. How easy, also, it is to assume that Kahlo's insistence on painting children stems from her own miscarriage or lament of not having children. "Girl With Death Mask (She Plays Alone)," is painted on a metal support, a direct reference to arte popular and a testament to Kahlo's thoughtful technique that's so rarely explored. At the MFA, Bermeo positioned an actual jaguar mask made in late 19th century Mexico - a common object of arte popular - next to the iconic painting. In "Girl With Death Mask (She Plays Alone)," Kahlo painted a small child holding a yellow flower, wearing a skeleton mask with a jaguar mask to her right. Kahlo would implicitly or sometimes quite literally reference it in her work. Indigenous craft art came to imbue "Mexicanidad," a uniting national culture. After the 10-year Mexican revolution came to a halt in 1920, both artists and politicians sought unifying national symbols. Kahlo - part of a thriving modernist scene in the '20s and '30s - was deeply influenced by arte popular. She also wore indigenous clothing - a statement that in modern times would be condemned as cultural appropriation, but that in Kahlo's era was a symbol of political solidarity. Kahlo collected these decorated ceramics, embroidered textiles and artisan toy objects, made by indigenous communities almost always in rural Mexico. "It was a way to embrace art forms that developed outside of European style institutions - a way to think about a Mexican history that did not simply privilege a European past." "Collecting arte popular was in itself a political act," Bermeo said in a recent interview. with 40 objects of "arte popular," or Mexican folk art. Layla Bermeo, the museum's Kristin and Roger Servison assistant curator of American paintings, has brought together eight Kahlo paintings from various public collections in the U.S. The Museum of Fine Arts' " Frida Kahlo and Arte Popular" offers a deeper, more rigorous appreciation of Kahlo's artistry that strays from the overused trope of an artist in anguish. There's a compulsion that's satiated only through consuming Kahlo's agony. We imagine her affairs with women and men, her tumultuous marriage to Rivera, that tragic bus accident that left her in chronic pain all of her life. Even the scholarship about Kahlo centers - almost voyeuristically - on the tragic experiences of her life more than her artistry. It's this obsession with Kahlo's biography and how these events come through in her art that dominates the narrative about her. The hummingbird could represent Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of war or perhaps just a love charm? Her husband, the famous painter Diego Rivera, gifted her a monkey, so could the animal symbolize how Rivera imposed suffering on her? Scholars have fretted over the symbolism in this painting. There's a bittersweet contrast in that lavish, natural background and the cutting death of the foreground.Īll while Kahlo confronts us straight ahead with her unruffled stare - as if pain has forced her to numbness. Kahlo is positioned in front of lush, richly hued fauna, with buoyant dragonflies (or perhaps just flowers with wings?) floating above her head. A dead hummingbird dangles from the thorns. A monkey sits on her right shoulder, pulling the necklace, which snakes down her chest like the roots of a tree. One of Frida Kahlo's seminal paintings remains the resplendent "Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird," in which the artist stares stoically ahead as a thorn necklace carves into her neck and blood trickles down her bust. Frida Kahlo's "Self‑Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird," painted in 1940. Twitter facebook Email This article is more than 4 years old.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |