In Honor Of Frida Kahlo At The Museum Of Fine Arts In Boston-
February 27 to June 16, 2019-
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Frida Kahlo and Arte Popular
February 27, 2019 – June 16, 2019
Saundra B. and William H. Lane Galleries (Gallery 332) and Saundra B. and William H. Lane Galleries (Gallery 334)
BUY TICKETSMEMBERS SEE IT FREESaundra B. and William H. Lane Galleries (Gallery 332) and Saundra B. and William H. Lane Galleries (Gallery 334)
The influence of Mexican folk art on Kahlo’s work and life
Like many artists in Mexico City’s vibrant intellectual circles, Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) avidly collected traditional Mexican folk art—arte popular—as a celebration of Mexican national culture. She drew inspiration from these objects, seizing on their political significance after the Mexican Revolution and incorporating their visual and material qualities into her now iconic paintings.
Following the recent acquisition of Dos Mujeres (Salvadora y Herminia) (1928), this is the MFA’s first exhibition on Frida Kahlo. It tightly focuses on Kahlo’s lasting engagements with arte popular, exploring how her passion for objects such as decorated ceramics, embroidered textiles, children’s toys, and devotional retablo paintings shaped her own artistic practice. A selection of Kahlo’s paintings—including important loans from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin—is brought together with representative examples of arte popular. Bringing fresh attention to Kahlo as an ambitious, ever-evolving painter, this exhibition also opens broader discussions about the influences of anonymous folk artists on famed modern painters.
The MFA’s mission is to be a meeting place of world cultures. Acknowledging the cultural heritage of the artist, gallery labels for this exhibition are provided in both English and Spanish.
La misión del Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) es ser un lugar de encuentro de las culturas del mundo. En reconocimiento a la herencia cultural del artista, los textos de la galería para esta exposición se ofrecen en inglés y español.
By Laura Perkins
Honestly although I have known the name Frida Kahlo since back in the 1970s when we down to Mexico and along the way went to the famous Blue House Frida and Diego Rivera shared I was not familiar with her work as I was with Rivera and the other male muralists for which Mexico was then famous. I got more familiar with her work indirectly through the film Frida although I would not say I was well versed even then. What I connected Frida to more than art, or rather who I connected Frida to, was the Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky who persecuted by Stalin and his agents was on the planet without a place to stay. Frida and Diego through their connections got Trotsky into the country. Although I had a Trotskyist boyfriend at the time I went to Mexico I was unaware, as I believe he was since he never mentioned it then, of the short love affair between Frida and Trotsky (which would culminate in a Frida painting dedicated to Trotsky now in the Women’s Art Museum down in Washington).
My real introduction to Frida, live and in person, was several years ago when the MFA displayed (as in this exhibit) her famous Two Peasant Women painting which in many ways shows her artistic skills to advantage and has the addition advantage of showing how close she was to her deeply held Mexican roots. That alone is reason enough to see this exhibition at the MFA if you are in or near Boston between now and June.
Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Frida Kahlo, the object of the "tempest in a teapot"controversy commented on below.
Commentary
What kind of madness have I unleashed? What kinds of monsters have I let loose? Recently (May 14, 2008) I wrote a little review of the film Frida, a bio-pic about the life of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo starring Salma Hayek, where I speculated about a scene where the old Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky hopped into bed with her during his exile in Mexico in the late 1930’s. My inquiry was based on whether that scene was an act of cinematic license or something more, whether the "Old Man" (an affectionate nickname that his followers used to describe him) was really a dirty old man. Simple, right? Not, my friends, in this confessional age. Now my e-mail message center is clogged with ‘inside information’ from every lonely heart with access to cyberspace.
And what is the nature of this 'information'? Is it some new discovery that Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution does not apply to third world countries today? No, unfortunately that theory is still very much in play, if not acted upon. Is it that chestnut that the old Stalinists liked to throw out that Trotsky really was an agent of Hitler or the Mikado? No, that stuff went out when they finally opened up the KGB files after the demise of the Soviet Union. No, what has filled the deepest recesses of cyberspace is news of Trotsky’s personal life and if one believes only a small part of it then comrade Trotsky was indeed an old dog. Let me give a few examples.
One e-mailer claimed that she was the illegitimate daughter born out of the affair between Trotsky and Frida Kahlo. That perked my interest until I asked for her date of birth. April 23, 1947. Hello! Trotsky was assassinated in 1940. Next came an old fisherman who claims that he sold Trotsky all his “Turkish” cigarettes (wink, wink). Trotsky did not smoke, Turkish cigarettes or any other, during the period of his exile in Turkey (wink, wink). Another, again from Turkey, talked about the old days when he and Trotsky shared the odd pipe of hashish together. Well, what of it? And it goes down hill from there.
Okay, so this is what we have now for a new Trotsky profile. He is not to be regarded as one of the great revolutionaries of the 20th century but rather some debauched rum-soaked, drug-addled, sex-crazy old man who led whole generations astray by his obviously perverted dreams that somehow humankind could organize itself better than was the current practice. No, that will not do. I think that he would have preferred to be called that above-mentioned agent of the Mikado than listen to this cyber-babble. I have said it more than once, although Trotsky still has not been vindicated by history (only a world socialist society could do that) he is not in need of any certificate of revolutionary good conduct by the reader, those bizarre e-mailers, or this writer.
