Frida Kahlo: National Homage 1907-2007
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
Frida Kahlo: National Homage 1907-2007 Details
During the summer of 2007, the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City hosted the most complete exhibition ever of the work of Frida Kahlo. Marking the centenary of Kahlo’s birth, the Palacio showed 354 works, including 64 oil paintings, both beloved and virtually unknown, 45 drawings, 11 watercolors, 5 etchings, plus scores of letters, photographs and other personal ephemera. It was a labor of love, as well as a loving gesture, for Mexico’s greatest artistic ambassador. It was also timely; Kahlo is in the air again, as young contemporary artists revisit and recast psychoanalytic, Neosurrealistic figuration.In 1953, when Frida Kahlo had her first solo exhibition in Mexico--the only one held in her native country during her lifetime--one critic wrote: “It is impossible to separate the life and work of this extraordinary person. Her paintings are her biography.” Kahlo herself puts it better: “They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.” This essential catalogue, based on the Palacio de Bellas Artes exhibition, presents brief essays by a wide range of Kahlo scholars, poets, anthropologists, architects, psychologists and experts in many other disciplines, both from Mexico and abroad--as well as a more extended appreciation of Kahlo by the novelist Carlos Fuentes, along with Kahlo’s own paintings, drawings, prints and ephemera.
Reviews
This book is the catalogue for a huge exhibition held in 2007 at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico organized as a celebration for the centennial of Frida Kahlo's birth. Self-proclaimed "the most important devoted to the artist in recent decades", the book starts with an introduction by Carlos Fuentes which can be read like a poetical biography of the artist, with vivid descriptions of the various influences, whether literary or political, that shaped her art (an interesting parallel is made by the writer at the end between Kafka and Kahlo, who shared their initials, and their relationship to their native cities, Prague and Mexico City).After that introduction come the numerous colorplates of the works (many paintings, portraits, landscapes, self-portraits, still-lifes), each one accompanied by an essay written by a different personality (writer, art historian, critic, essayist)who gives his or her own personal views on the particular work he or she was assigned to comment and describe. This choice of making this book a literary study of Frida Kahlo's paintings,more than a mere exhibition catalogue based on art historical references, undoubtedly makes for good reading and sheds a different light on the works. Unfortunately, the quality of the reproductions is poor, which is why I only give it three stars.
