I just finished a biography of Frida Kahlo written by Hayden Herrera, and I highly recommend it. Kahlo, a seminal Mexican modernist painter who was a true original, always interested me and I thought I knew quite a bit about her life and philosophy. Obviously, reading 400 pages about one person's existence is destined to be illuminating, and it was. From the gruesome bus accident that nearly killed her in her teens to her encounters with Surrealists in Paris and the New York art world, Kahlo led an extraordinary life in which her art and the poetry of everyday experiences were inextricably bound together. I especially liked the fact that she put at least as much effort into constructing her colorful, eccentric persona as she put into her painting.
In Frida's first Self-Portrait she is dressed in a luxurious velvet Renaissance-style gown. In her second she presents herself as "one of the people" and, most emphatically, as a Mexican. Her lace-trimmed blouse is typical of the inexpensive clothes sold in Mexican market stalls, and her jewelry -- colonial-style earrings and pre-Columbian jade beads -- symbolizes the painter's identity as a mestiza (a person of mixed Indian and Spanish blood). "In another period I dressed like a boy with shaved hair, pants, boots, and a leather jacket," Frida said once. "But when I went to see Diego I put on a Tehuana costume." ...Even when she was a girl, clothes were a kind of language for Frida, and from the moment of her marriage [to fellow Mexican modernist, and celebrated muralist, Diego Rivera], the intricate links between dress and self-image, and between personal style and painting style, form one of the subplots in her unfolding drama.The costume she favored was that of the women from the isthmus of Tehuantepec, and the legends surround them doubtless informed her choice: Tehuantepec women are famous for being stately, beautiful, sensuous, intelligent, brave, and strong. Folklore has it that theirs is a matriarchal society where women run the markets, handle fiscal matters, and dominate the men. And the costume is a lovely one...
That is marvelous. There is so much to be said for being truly inspired by someone, or something, you admire. Especially as I am about the age that Frida was when she got married, and I can really identify with her desire to assume the characteristics of a Tehuana (or any other strong, bold, intelligent woman) through fashion in order to cultivate (or emphasize) them in herself.
The book piqued my interest in several new topics that you can expect to hear more about in the future: Mexican modernism and revolutionary art (which I plan to check out at El Museo del Barrio, free from 4-8pm on Thursday), Mexican textiles(I just bought a beautiful blanket at a thrift store in San Francisco's celebrated Mexican/Hispanic Mission neighborhood last week), and of course, on a grander scale, the Frida Kahlo museum in Mexico City. In the meantime, I'm also going to see the gorgeous film that Herrera's biography of Frida inspired.
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