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CCharisma is something you can’t fake Frida Kahlo he had it before he became an artist, let alone a modern hero. In the photos, a young Frida is seen wearing a silk dress looking boldly out from under her already bushy black eyebrows, looking like a man in a suit and tie. In a home video her husband, Marxist muralist Diego Rivera, seduces her and they embrace. Those were good times. Rivera is fat and ugly next to his wife, you’d think he would appreciate his opportunity.
Every portrait of Kahlo is interesting but no one can describe her in the way she portrayed herself. He took his own image to new levels of inner revelation, mind and body. Influenced in part by the surrealists and in part by the Catholic tradition of depicting suffering, Kahlo isolated and reassembled herself in images of suffering, survival and triumph. In his 1937 painting The Heart, he stands clean and calm as a sword pierces his chest and his disembodied arms are also seen in two floating, possibly bare, dresses. A very fit Fridas has braces on her left foot that would be a Freudian symbol except it actually speaks to the struggles she has faced throughout her life after being seriously injured in a bus accident at the age of 18.
His most terrifying works reflect the danger directly. In a 1926 painting, Kahlo depicts mangled bodies surrounded by the wreckage of cars on the road, while in the foreground lies a hospital bed. In another project he recreates the accident with a cart and a toy. These memories have a high quality as if this devastating event was the end of an innocent childhood. One of the surgical corsets she wore is in a glass case nearby. Above her is painted a red hammer and sickle, while the sculpture is made to her breasts: below, above her belly, is the image of an unborn child swinging in the womb.
Magic, myth, double and dream: Kahlo takes you inside, in her mystery. She even lets her hair down, literally, in a 1947 photo that shows her dark locks hanging like a river. The result is disarmament. You are looking in the mirror and Frida is looking into her dark eyes.
Tate’s blockbuster exhibition about this beloved artist questions why he became an “icon”. But I have never seen an exhibition of how Picasso became known or the creation of Rembrandt’s culture. We know that they are good artists and how they have already been recognized by professionals. Here, those ideas have been changed. The image and popularity of Kahlo are taken by surprise when her work suddenly disappears to be replaced, almost half, by honors, restagings, deconstructions and, finally, sales.
An artist, it turns out, can be very famous. Kahlo’s “icon” status has made it difficult to borrow her works. In short, there are only 36 of them here. Kahlo collectors, it seems, don’t care about supporting museums or sharing their treasures — I’m talking to you, Madonna. As a result, this is a work of covering up the cracks, returning Kahlo’s original artwork first with the works of her contemporaries, and then with artists from the 1970s who were inspired by her in some way.
Sometimes this is interesting, a filibuster in which the conservatives throw in all possible situations and agree to explain what would be a small demonstration. One beneficiary is Rivera. He gets some amazing work, including a stunning painting of his naked wife and a portrait of his love interest. And you can begrudgingly admit that the contemporaries of Olga Costa and Maria Izquierdo did some great pictures, but they’re not in Kahlo’s league.
Neither do many of the artists who have honored him since the 1970s. Comic book, pop art of Kahlo’s unknown face is not enough to bring the show to life. Is Kahlo a plastic “figure”? No, he was a real person who made a lot of autobiographical art. This is almost lost when young artists take pictures of her face or dress up as her. Does Yasumasa Morimura have the right to pose like Kahlo in her painting The Broken Column, with her breasts drawn apart to reveal, in her version, a straight arm wrapped in a fist? No, it’s terrible garbage. The original shows Kahlo’s spine as a broken classical piece. It is a picture of his pain. Of course, The Broken Column itself, like the rest of Kahlo’s art, does not exist here.
Then, triumphantly, Kahlo steals the show. His 1951 Self-Portrait with Dr Farill shows him in a wheelchair gazing intently at his easel, where there is a large portrait of the doctor he admired: he appears as a Soviet leader in social art.
Of course following her rediscovery by the artists of the 1960s who associated with the art of the body and performance, Tate has a point: the way we see Kahlo is shaped by the modern ideas in which life and art can be understood as one. A photograph by Mary McCartney depicts Tracey Emin lying in bed, dressed and made up as Frida. That’s an amazing similarity Tate Modern they want you to see it, because Kahlo’s exhibition meets Emin’s A Second Life right down. Inside Emin’s, the crowd is captivated and silent – seduced by the artist’s authenticity. They were supposed to be hypnotized by Kahlo a lot, but I don’t think it will be when his magic is reduced by the most rubbish.
