Frida Kahlo

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BIOGRAFIE, ARTICOLI, COMMENTI  TROVATI IN RETE SU FRIDA KAHLO

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Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter, born on July 6, 1907 and dead on July 13, 1954. 

Frida claimed to be born on 1910, the year of the outbreak of the Mexican revolution, because she wanted her life began together with the modern Mexico. 

This detail well introduces us to a singular personality, characterized since her childhood by a deep sense of independence and rebellion against social and moral ordinary habits, moved by passion and sensuality, proud of her "Mexicanidad" and cultural tradition set against the reigning Americanization: everything mixed with a peculiar sense of humour. 


Her life was marked by physical suffering, started with the polio contracted at the age of five and worsen by her life-dominating event occurred in 1925. A bus accident caused severe injuries to her body owing to a pole that pierced her from the stomach to the pelvis. The medicine of her time tortured her body with surgical operations (32 throughout her life), corsets of different kinds and mechanical "stretching" systems. 


Lots of her works were painted laying in the bed. Because of these physical conditions Frida was never able to have any children and this was a great sorrow for her.  


She had a great love, Diego Rivera (she married twice with this man and dedicated to him a passionate diary) but also a lot of lovers, men and women, such as Leon Trotsky and André Breton's wife....  


It is impossible to sum up with few lines the complexity and the charm of Frida's life. It is advisable to read one of her numerous biographies (personally I suggest "FRIDA. A Biography of Frida Kahlo" by Hayden Herrera, Harper & Row).

 

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Frida Kahlo was a painter whose work fascinated prominent and diverse artists around the world. The wife of world-renowned Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, Kahlo forged a place in the art world that was completely of her own. Her dramatic work consisted primarily of self-portraits, although she did capture her family and friends on canvas on occasion. Some critics contend that Kahlo's paintings were reflections of her personal history, her relationship with Diego Rivera; her damaged physical condition, her philosophy of nature and life, and her individual and mythological worldview. Although Kahlo never had formal training in art, she developed into an artist who fascinated wide range of fellow artist, including Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, painter Pablo Picasso, and novelist Andre Breton. In addition to these literary and artistic luminaries, her circle included political figures such as Leon Trotsky and the Rockefeller family.  

Frida Kahlo lived between 1907 and 1954 in a time of incredible worldwide movements and changes. The Mexican Revolution occurred just three years after she was born, a development that triggered dramatic social and economic change in Mexico. A new sense of nationalism surged throughout Mexico as the people rejected dictator Porfirio Diaz and his policies, and a renaissance of cultural renewal glorifying Mexico's native roots took place. The Mexican muralist tradition grew out of these changes and proved to be an enduring method of expressing national pride. Kahlo was an active participant in the social, economic and political landscape that characterized that life. Frida Kahlo was born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderon on July 6, 1907, in her parents' house in Coyoacan, Mexico a suburb of Mexico City. 

In about 1935 she dropped the "e" in her first name. Her father one of Mexico's foremost photographers, was the son of Hungarian Jews from the German town of Baden-Baden who emigrated to Mexico. Guillermo Kahlo married her mother Matilde Calderon, a Mexican of Indian and Spanish ancestry. The family home, called the Casa Azul ("Blue House"), was built by Guillermo Kahlo a few years before Frida's birth. She was born, raised, lived and died in her family's home. Kahlo's father had a profound influence on her life. Her mother was a meticulous housekeeper and devout catholic whose conventional patterns of thought created some distance between her and her daughters. Kahlo's father, on the other hand, recognized and encouraged her intellectual independence and curiosity. 

At the age of seven, Kahlo was afflicted with polio, a disease that left her right foot turned outward and stunted the growth of her entire right leg. Her father nursed her back to health and subsequently encouraged her to play various active sports not typical for a Mexican girl at that time. Kahlo's bout with polio held her back in school, so in 1922, when she entered the National preparatory School, she falsified her age. Some historians have speculated that she chose 1910 as her birth date to coincide with the year of the Mexican Revolution started. Kahlo was adamant in her commitment to ideals of revolution. She expressed her bond to the Mexican people in her art, in her dress, her behavior, and the decorations of her home. During her days at the National Preparatory School, Kahlo became known as something of a prankster and was a highly visible presence. She often wore elaborate indigenous jewelry and colorful native clothing, and was fond of piling her hair upon her head and decorating brightly with ribbons and bows in the fashion that the natives of Oaxaca, Mexico, favored Kahlo regarded every occasion as a cause for rejoicing, and celebrated birthdays, baptisms, and all the popular holidays with great enthusiasm. 

It was at the National Preparatory School that she first met Diego Rivera, an artist whose work she admired. Her attraction to the painter was considerable, and one story from that period of her life alleged that she declared to her school friends her ambition to have a child by Diego Rivera. In 1925, however, Kahlo was involved in a tragic accident that dramatically changed her life. Traveling home from school on a bus, the vehicle collided with a trolley car, driving a piece of iron into her pelvis an back. Kahlo struggled with the effects of this accident and the pain it caused for the rest of her life. She underwent as many as 35 operations over the course of her life, most of them on her spine and her polio-deformed right foot. 

It was during Kahlo's convalescence from the bus accident that she began painting. Kahlo was required to spend long periods of time flat on her back in bed, so her mother bought her a special easel that she could use despite her physical limitations. She began to express her explosive feelings trough painting. 

Kahlo never returned to school after her release from the hospital. Instead, she concentrated on her painting. About this time, she met the Italian-born American photographer Tina Modotti. It was through her friendship with Modotti that Kahlo was introduced to an exciting new sphere of art and leftist politics. Diego Rivera was a member of this circle, and he and Kahlo soon became involved. Kahlo joined the Young Communist league, an organization that Rivera founded and led the 22 year old Kahlo married the 42 year old Rivera in a a civil ceremony in 1929. 

The marriage proved to be a tumultuous one. Kahlo lamented that she suffered through two accidents in her life; one was the trolley car incident, the other her marriage to Rivera. Both had extramarital affairs, and several of Kahlo's relationships were with other women. Kahlo and Rivera separated for a long time, divorced, and eventually remarried. All during their stormy association, however, they served as the hub of an international intellectual circle. Their political activism continued, unaffected by the state of their marriage, as both Kahlo and Rivera used their artistic talents to express their social and political views. 

In 1938 Andre Brenton visited her in Mexico and remarked that she was a surrealist. Kahlo disagreed, arguing that she painted her reality. She did, however, travel to Europe and New York to show her work in a surrealist exhibitions. Later, she firmly rejected the surrealist label, contending that her work dissolved the distinctions between reality and fantasy. 

In the 1940s Kahlo taught art, her students became known as Los Fridos. Although her students spent a lot of time with her at home, in her studio, an out in the streets, they never saw her paint. She painted alone, a practice that led some critics and friends to describe her paintings as a form of therapy. 

Kahlo's marriage to Rivera was but one of the difficulties she grappled with during her adulthood. She suffered numerous miscarriages that caused her great grief. In addition, the injuries suffered in the bus accident continued to hound her, relegating her to her bed for months at a time and keeping her in a state of almost constant pain. Finally, in 1953, her right leg was amputated to gangrene. Throughout all of these difficulties, Kahlo continued to paint. She became addicted to the medicine prescribed for pain. Despite her failing body, Kahlo endeavored to maintain the old ways of gaiety, excitement and drama. 

Her last public appearance was at a demonstration protesting C.I.A. intervention in the overthrow of leftist President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala. She died seven days later on July 13, 1954, at the age of 47. 

Dictionary of Hispanic Biography by Joseph C. Tardiff, L. Mpho Mabunda 

Biography by Las Mujeres: Frida Kahlo 

 

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There is a moment in the early life of Frida Kahlo that uniquely illumines the evolution of her myth. It is not one of her many luckless moments - not her childhood contraction of polio, nor the bus accident that fractured her skeleton and left her in unremitting pain, nor any of the more than 30 operations that followed; it is not even her first, ill-omened glimpse of Diego Rivera, the great painter who married her and then deceived her at every opportunity. It is the moment, apparently sometime in her 18th year, when, gazing into the mirror, she decided to stop trimming her eyebrows - to let those two sumptuous pieces of fur grow into one. It is when she found, you might say, the pluck to not pluck - a decision she would never regret. For those eyebrows made possible the Cult of Kahlo: they were the providential precondition of her celebrity. 

Of all our 20th-century icons, Frida Kahlo is the only one whose business it was literally to create icons, votive pictures of herself. Such images have to lend themselves to instant recognition, and that is what her eyebrows afforded. They perched upon her brow, as Rivera used to say, like a blackbird's outspread wings. They were a banner, a blazon. 

At her death, in 1953, Kahlo was regarded as a marginal figure. Since then, her fame has steadily risen. In 1977, the first of her pictures sold at auction fetched $19,000, but by 1995 a self-portrait brought in $3.2 million, the highest sum ever bid for a painting made south of the border. By now, like Georgia O'Keeffe and Botero and Andrew Wyeth, she has entered the dubious demimonde of "beloved" painters. Kahlo's worldwide constituency is composed not only of Mexicans and other Latinos but also of art students, leftists, feminists, the genuinely ill, the merely miserable - anyone who can identify with her tale of grief and grit. 

If Kahlo hadn't created her self-devotional icons, nobody would notice her today. Yet these tediously rendered images are portraiture at its least imaginative; her best work consists of her pictures of other people and her still lifes. Folkloric painters often feel pledged to extreme representational fidelity, but Kahlo's literal-mindedness was as confining as one of her orthopedic corsets. To convey unhappy feelings, she painted herself weeping. To project her physical suffering, she showed herself bleeding or with a pole slammed through her body. Death is indicated by corpses. And because she had almost no sense that paint is a metaphorical and not a literal medium, most talk about her pictures rapidly turns into an exercise in biographical reference hunting: her explicators sound as if they're translating glyphs or solving a rebus. 

For some it may be tempting to condescend to Frida's fans. However - and I say this as something of a fan myself - this impulse should be resisted. If Kahlo's life often seems a prolonged lesson in the uses of hysteria, some of those uses turn out to have been rather exhilarating. Her best paintings, like "El Defuntito Dimas Rosas" or "Do–a Rosita Morillo," are nothing to sneeze at. She was terrifically photogenic and helped reveal the international fashion potential of Latin women. She designed one of the world's most buoyantly expressive rooms, the kitchen of her Casa Azul, in Coyoacýn. She is also, like very few of her contemporaries, a peculiarly illustrative historical figure, a key to an entire generation of Mexican artists. 

In her fascinating biography "Frida," Hayden Herrera tells us that Kahlo was "never maudlin or self-pitying." But maudlin and self-pitying is just what she almost always was, and though her self-pity itself is boring, her willingness to break the taboo against it was a stroke of genius. "So you can't make art out of feeling sorry for yourself?" she seems to be saying. "Watch me." This, of course, is the secret of her success. For millions of people the world over, what, after all, is art, what has it ever been, if not a license to tell all your sorrows, to force people to look at you, to spill out your guts on stage? Of these multitudes, Frida Kahlo is the patron saint. 


Dan Hofstadter is the author of "The Love Affair as a Work of Art."


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The New York Time Magazine: an article written on July 13, 1954 - the day of Frida's death
Wednesday, July 14, 1954

Frida Kahlo, Artist, Diego Rivera's Wife

MEXICO CITY, July 13 -- Frida Kahlo, wife of Diego Rivera, the noted painter, was found dead in her home today. Her age was 44. She had been suffering from cancer for several years.

She also was a painter and also had been active in leftist causes. She made her last public appearance in a wheel chair at a meeting here in support of the new ousted regime of Communist-backed President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman of Guatemala. 

Frida Kahlo began painting in 1926 while obliged to lie in bed during convalescence from injuries suffered in a bus accident. Not long afterward she showed her work to Diego Rivera, who advised, "go on painting." They were married in 1929, began living apart in 1939, were reunited in 1941. 

Usually classed as a surrealist, the artist had no special explanation for her methods. She said only: "I put on the canvas whatever comes into my mind." She gave one-woman shows in Mexico City, New York and elsewhere and is said to have been the first woman artist to sell a picture to the Louvre. 

Some of her pictures shocked beholders. One showed her with her hands cut off, a huge bleeding heart on the ground nearby, and on either side of her an empty dress. This was supposed to reveal how she felt when her husband went off alone on a trip. Another self-portrait presented the artist as a wounded deer, still carrying the shafts of nine arrows. 

A year ago, too weak to stand for more than ten minutes, she sat daily at her easel, declaring: "I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint." 

 

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Frida Kahlo e il Teatro

 

"Frida K"
monologue written by Gloria Montero
performed by Allegra Fulton

Monologue in one long act by Gloria Montero, first performed at the Toronto Fringe Festival in 1994; subsequently reworked and performed at Tarragon Theatre in 1995. It featured Allegra Fulton, was directed by Peter Hinton, sets and costumes by Ken Garnhum, lighting by Bonnie Beecher. Subsequently translated into Spanish, it has also played in Madrid and Barcelona. The play may prove to be a work seminal in post-feminist theatre as it veers away from many trends of early feminist theatre (victimization, wariness of men, strong Lesbian through-lines) and presents a whole person - rather than a message - who also happens to be a fascinating figure in art history. The work is about the noted artist and diarist Frida Kahlo. It succeeds on about a dozen levels; not simply as a cogitation on womanhood, but as a magnificent journey through the world of art, a discussion of Third and First World values and culture and as an anomalous love story (Kahlo was married to muralist Diego Rivera). Even the staging Montero suggests is interesting so that here we have a finished play; not a work-in-progress, not a Fringe Fest monologue, not a too-intimate (and therefore incomprehensible) spoken word diatribe. Kahlo merely talks, but the possibilities for staging - beyond what Montero suggests - are endless, especially given the interest in Kahlo's wonderfully weird and wildly illustrated diaries. Montero wrote the work for her daughter, Allegra Fulton, who played it all the way to a Dora Mavor Moore Award. The play itself was also nominated for a Chalmers Award.
http://www.canadiantheatre.com/m/monterog.html
A review by LISA WILTON -- Calgary Sun
http://www.canoe.ca/TheatreReviewsF/friedak.html 

"Frida K"
di Gloria Montero
interpretato da Allegra Fulton

Monologo in un unico atto scritto da Gloria Montero, messo in scena per la prima volta al Toronto Fringe Festival del 1994 e replicato al Teatro di Tarragona nel 1995. Interpretato da Allegra Fulton, diretto da Peter Hinton, con scenografia e costumi di Ken Garnhum, luci di Bonnie Beecher. Successivamente è stato tradotto in spagnolo e messo in scena a Madrid e Barcellona.
Questo lavoro è considerato di grande rilievo nell'ambito del teatro post-femminista, in quanto segna un cambiamento di rotta rispetto all'approccio del teatro femminista precedente (vittimizzazione, diffidenza verso gli uomini, forte atteggiamento lesbico) grazie alla presentazione di un personaggio nella sua globalità - piuttosto che come veicolo di un messaggio - che si dà il caso sia stato una figura affascinante della storia dell'arte.
L'opera presenta l'artista Frida Kahlo procedendo su vari livelli. Non è solo una semplice riflessione sulla condizione della donna, ma al contempo un magnifico viaggio nel mondo dell'arte, una discussione sui valori e sulla cultura del Terzo e Primo Mondo e un'anomala storia d'amore (Frida e il muralista Diego Rivera).
La stessa Montero definisce interessante "Frida K" per la sua caratteristica di opera compiuta, non un work-in-progress, non un monologo da Fringe Fest, non una diatriba intimista di parole parlate (perciò incomprensibile). Frida Kahlo semplicemente parla, ma le potenzialità della sua presenza sulla scena - al di là di quello che le parole della Montero suggeriscono - sono infinite, considerato soprattutto il riferimento allo strano e selvaggio diario di Frida, meravigliosamente illustrato.
Gloria Montero ha scritto quest'opera per sua figlia Allegra Fulton, che ha ricevuto il premio "Dora Mavor Moore Award" per la sua interpretazione. Lo stesso monologo è stato nominato per il premio "Chalmers Award".

OPERA
"Yo soi la desintegration"
9th September 1997
"Théatre de l'Espace Go"
Montreal

The Montreal soprano Pauline Vaillancourt and her "Chants Libres" company created in 1997 a multimedia opera titled "Yo soi la desintegration", inspired by Frida Khalo's diary.
After reading the diary and obsessed by Frida' s personality, Pauline Vaillancourt decided to dedicate her new lyric work to Frida and declared: "Since the first pages I realized that it was a perfect sound-visual subject. Furthermore Frida is a great artist, unfortunately not so known in the Francophone ambient, and I hope my performance will help her discovery". "Yo soi la desintegration" was one of the biennial productions of the "Chants Libres" company, usually performed by a single actor on stage. This experimental formula allows the company to produce less heavy works and to use multimedia tools, usually not expected in the world of opera.
The artistic director would like to precise that "Yo soi la desintegration" is not the tale of Frida' s life, but a complete transposition to create a metaphor valid as a lesson for life. The autobiographical material was transformed, recycled and reconstructed to create a woman personality incarnated by Pauline Vaillancourt, used to giving life to women animated by a nearly superhuman vital energy.
The music was composed by Jean Pichée, professor at the Faculty of Music of the Montreal University, while the writing of the libretto was entrusted to Yan Muckle. The stage and costume designing, together with the video material, was realized by Anita Pantin, painter, stage and multimedia designer.
In the introduction the project is described in this way: "The opera shows the story of a woman, her struggle against pain after the accident that marked her life, her encounter with love and treason, her days of loneliness, her constant living close to death. It shows the inner and vital drama of a woman that tries with all her strengths to love, create and live". The performance is also defined "sweet and hard, tender and cruel, dark and coloured, overpowering and damped".
Pauline Vaillancourt finally adds that this opera talks about destiny, the one that marked Frida and also that afflicting all the people tried by misfortune. "The opera asks a fundamental question: what one can do with his life when destiny seems to decide on his behalf. Frida suffered the consequences of the youth accident during all her life. Obviously she had not decided to take this trial, but she managed to accept it and to overcome it, like all people surviving wars, hunger, personal and collective tragedies, everything that cannot be controlled by us but must not control us. Frida's life was an exceptional life thanks to her courage: her lived existence is a lesson of hope".
The soprano underlines again: "I did not try to tell a story. The opera was conceived as a combination of eight scenes corresponding to different phases of Frida's life, from childhood to death, with the central event of the accident. After having accepted her new constraints, the heroine enjoined again life and love, facing also their cruel side such as lies and malice, till her death. This metaphor was sang in Spanish and above all in French. The scene design was inspired by Frida's environment but also in this respect it is better to talk about a transposition: "It is not a comedy" Pauline Vaillancourt sums up. 

OPERA
"Yo soi la desintegration"
9 settembre 1997
"Théatre de l'Espace Go" Montréal.

La soprano di Montréal Pauline Vaillancourt e la sua compagnia Chants Libres hanno creato nel 1997 un'opera multimediale dal titolo "Yo soi la desintegration", ispirata al diario di Frida Kahlo.
Pauline Vaillancourt, ossessionata dal personaggio di Frida dopo averne letto il diario, decise di farne il soggetto della sua nuova creazione lirica e dichiarò:"Fin dalle prime pagine ho capito che avevo tra le mani un soggetto che poteva essere molto sonoro e molto visuale. Inoltre Frida è un'artista grandiosa, purtroppo ancora poco nota nell'ambiente francofono e spero che il mio spettacolo contribuisca alla sua scoperta".
L'opera dedicata a Frida rientra nelle produzioni biennali della compagnia Chants Libres, dedicate in genere ad un unico personaggio e con un unico intreprete sulla scena. E' una formula sperimentale che permette di realizzare lavori meno pesanti di quelli tradizionali e di utilizzare strumenti multimediali meno consueti nel mondo dell'opera lirica.
La direttrice artistica tiene a precisare che "Yo soi la desintegration" non è il racconto della storia di Frida Kahlo, ma una trasposizione, l'ispirazione per una metafora valida come lezione di vita. Il materiale autobiografico della pittrice è stato dunque trasformato, riciclato, ricomposto per creare un personaggio di donna incarnato da Pauline Vaillancourt, abituata a dare vita a personaggi femminili animati da una forza vitale quasi sovrumana.
La musica di "Yo soi la desintegration" è stata composta da Jean Pichée, professore aggregato della Facoltà di musica dell'Università di Montreal, e la redazione del libretto è stata affidata a Yan Muckle. La scenografia, i costumi e i video sono stati realizzati da Anita Pantin, pittrice, scenografa e realizzatrice di film d'animazione computerizzata.
Nella presentazione del progetto è scritto:"L'opera illustra la storia di una donna, la sua lotta contro il dolore in seguito ad un incidente che ha sconvolto la sua vita, il suo incontro con l'amore e il tradimento, i suoi giorni di solitudine, il suo coesistere costante con la morte. Viene esposto il dramma intimo e vitale di una donna che cerca con tutte le sue forze di amare, creare e vivere". Il lavoro viene anche presentato come "uno spettacolo dolce e duro, tenero e crudele, oscuro e colorato, travolgente e smorzato".
Pauline Vaillancourt aggiunge che questo spettacolo tratta infine il tema del destino, quello che ha segnato Frida ma anche quello che affligge tutte le persone provate dalla vita. "L'opera pone una domanda fondamentale: cosa si può fare della propria vita quando il destino sembra decidere per noi. Frida ha subito le conseguenze di un incidente di gioventù per tutta la vita. Ovviamente non ha scelto di passare per questa prova. Ma alla fine l'ha accettata, superata, come tutti coloro nel mondo che sopravvivono alla fame, alla guerra, ai drammi personali e collettivi, a tutto ciò che non si può controllare ma che non ci deve controllare. Frida ha fatto della sua vita una vita d'eccezione grazie al suo coraggio. La sua esistenza vissuta è una lezione di speranza."
Precisa ancora la Vaillancourt "Non si cerca di raccontare una storia. L'opera è stata concepita sotto forma di quadri, otto in totale, che compongono altrettante fasi di vita dall'infanzia alla morte, con il momento cardine dell'incidente, l'intervento infausto del destino. Il primo quadro ci porta ai ricordi dell'infanzia. Il secondo ruota intorno all'incidente". Dopo aver accettato le sue nuove costrizioni, l'eroina riprenderà a godere della vita e dell'amore, e a subirne le conseguenze a volte crudeli come la falsità e la cattiveria, fino alla morte.
Questa metafora è stata cantata in spagnolo e soprattutto in francese. La musica è stata anche registrata su nastro. La scenografia si è ispirata in parte a Frida, ma anche su questo versante è stata soprattutto una trasposizione. "Non è una commedia" sintetizza Pauline Vaillancourt.

"A bleeding palette"
Teatro delle Donne-Teatro Stabile of Parma
screenplay by Valeria Moretti
direction by Paola Donati
controtenore Maurizio Rippa

The script of this play is a combination of three portraits dedicated to three women painters coming from different countries and lived in different times:
Artemisia Gentileschi, from Rome - Italy, Caravaggio follower, lived in the 1600 Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, from France, painter at the court in the 1700; Frida Kahlo, Mexican painter lived in the first half of 1900.
A red wire connects these three women: a triumphant narcisism, an unusual life marked by a single dramatic event and a suffered artistic research in extraordinary hystorical times.
For all of them a central topic, a bleeding body: blood of a rape for Artemisia, blood of the Revolution for Elisabeth, blood of wounds for Frida. Three different bakgrounds: the Baroque Rome, the French Revolution, the Zapata's Mexico. 

"Una tavolozza rosso sangue"
Teatro delle Donne-Teatro Stabile di Parma
di Valeria Moretti
messa in scena a cura di Paola Donati
controtenore Maurizio Rippa

Il testo si compone di tre "ritratti" ognuno dei quali è dedicato ad un'artista donna di nazionalità diversa e vissuta in differenti epoche: Artemisia Gentileschi, romana, caravaggesca, 1600; Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, francese, pittrice di corte, fine `700; Frida Kahlo, messicana, moglie di Diego Rivera, morta nel 1954. Non si vuole ripercorrere la biografia di queste tre eccezionali figure di donne e di artiste, ma cogliere un momento preciso della loro esistenza, quasi come per un autoritratto. Artemisia, al centro di un processo per stupro perchè violentata da un amico del padre, dipinge Giuditta che scanna Oloferne caricandola di una voluttuosa e, ancora oggi, insuperata ferocia. Elisabeth, seducente e ambiziosa riesce a diventare la pittrice prediletta di Maria Antonietta fissandone il ricordo proprio alla vigilia della Rivoluzione. Frida, rimasta vittima giovanissima di un pauroso incidente stradale, segue ostinatamente il tracciato delle sue ossessioni consegnando allo sguardo altrui, con spavalda ed erotica visione, l'immagine del suo corpo ferito. Un filo rosso lega queste tre artiste: un trionfante narcisismo, un'esistenza singolare segnata da un avvenimento drammatico e una sofferta ricerca artistica al culmine di un momento storico sensazionale. Per tutte e tre, in primo piano, un corpo macchiato di sangue: il sangue dello stupro per Artemisia Gentileschi che, da violentata, nei panni di Giuditta divenne vendicatrice; il sangue della Rivoluzione per Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun che minaccia e travolge i corpi perfetti delle sue aristocratiche modelle, il sangue delle ferite per Frida Kahlo che subisce decine di brutali operazioni chirurgiche. Sullo sfondo la Roma barocca, la Rivoluzione francese, il Messico di Emiliano Zapata.
http://www.mclink.it/n/dwpress/dww87c/art1.htm

Multimedia Frida Kahlo Drama
"When Will I Dance? A Play About Frida Kahlo"

The GVSU (Grand Valley State University) Theatre Department will produce "When Will I Dance? A Play About Frida Kahlo" and include live classical guitar and slide projections of Kahlo's art. "When Will I Dance" is set in Coyoacan in the early 1950s and calls for only two main characters, one who plays the "social, everyday" Frida and the other portrays the "artistic, spiritual" side of the play's subject. GVSU senior Theatre majors Elena Garcia and Demetria Thomas will play the two roles. In addition, two Mexican servants will be played by GVSU drama students Aaron Hess and Aaron Cope. Garcia has appeared in Circle Theatre and GVSU productions. Thomas, who has performed major roles with Mississippi's Warehouse Theatre, makes her GVSU stage debut with this performance.
During the 75-minute production, concert guitarist Brian Morris will provide live Mexican and Spanish classical music to accompany scene transitions and underscore dramatic moments. Ellis has provided for a visual backdrop by adding projections of Kahlo's paintings and drawings as well as documentary photos of her and her friends. "When Will I Dance" author Claire Braz-Valentine will be present for a public reception in her honor following the November 15th performance. Braz-Valentine, a frequent lecturer about Frida Kahlo and women's issues, will also be meeting with GVSU Theatre Arts students during the second week of performances. 

Produzione multimediale su Frida
"When Will I Dance? A Play About Frida Kahlo"
di Claire Braz-Valentine

Il Dipartimento teatrale della Grand Valley State University ha prodotto questa opera multimediale ispirata a Frida Kahlo, che include l'accompagnamento di chitarra classica dal vivo e la proiezione su schermo di alcune opere di Frida. L'opera, ambientata nel Coyocan nei primi anni '50, è recitata da due personaggi principali: uno rappresenta Frida nel sociale e nella vita quotidiana mentre l'altro ritrae il lato artistico e spirituale dell'artista.
La musica di accompagnamento è di stile messicano e spagnolo classico, mentre lo sfondo propone immagini di quadri e disegni di Frida, oltre a fotografie della pittrice e dei suoi amici.

"Painted Bread"
a full-length play by Melissa Lucero McCarl, played by Therese Pickard as Frida Kahlo.

Industrial Arts Theatre at the New Denver Civic Theatre, 721 Santa Fe Drive CALIFORNIA, February 1997
reviewed at the following page: http://www.westword.com/issues/1997-02-20/theater2.html

 

"The Blue Apple"

An interpretive performance based on the life of Frida by Dana Petric.
Further info at her site http://www.interlog.com/~klorker/BLUEsp.htm

 

 

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All the latest imagery trends make use of human body: performers, visual artists, cyberartists, creatives, everybody uncovers bodies, opens bodies, ties bodies, cuts bodies, paints bodies, tatoos bodies.

Fragments of bodies are spread everywhere: mere brains in magazines and tech ads, heads in S/W logos, hearts in Benetton's ads...
Frida Kahlo made a little bit of all this 60 years ago, showing in her paintings
·         bloody births and deaths 
·         fetuses 
·         corpses 
·         disembodied organs
Other distinctive features of Frida's works reveal her as a forerunner of modern (or even better postmodern) extreme cultural tendencies, that explore the same ground Frida went over with a good deal of courage and anticonformism for her time: 
·         the vacillating limit between visible and invisible 
·         the strong attraction for transmutation, transformation, mutations of several kinds 
·         invasion of body by external objects 
·         the breaking of traditional separations such as body/mind, outside/inside.

  

 

Referring to this last point the following quotation from Jacques Derrida really stroke me when I read it. Derrida's words seem perfectly correspond to one of the most recurrent aspects of Frida's art: to let the outside show the inside eliminating phisical barriers such as skin, to exhibit outside the inside of her life.

"... from the invisible inside, where I c
taken from Decostruction on the Net 

 

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Molti hanno parlato della mania di Frida per gli autoritratti (circa 1/3 della sua opera) come di una sorta di terapia per la sopravvivenza, di una alienazione da sé della sofferenza e del dolore fisico, di una rimozione dell'azione devastante degli eventi esterni sul suo corpo (incidente, aborto, operazioni chirurgiche ed altri interventi con "marchingegni medici" dell'epoca).
Sicuramente Frida ha considerato il suo corpo al centro di qualsiasi riflessione, sia interna (su se stessa come donna, artista) che esterna (sugli aspetti culturali, politici e sociali del suo tempo).
Sicuramente il suo corpo ferito, forato, distorto dalla tecnologia (tram) e dalle tecniche mediche del tempo era il luogo ideale per una eliminazione delle barriere tra sé/mondo: se il mondo esterno ti trapassa con un palo dalle pelvi allo stomaco il tuo corpo diventa luogo privilegiato di comprensione, di passaggio e metabolizzazione di qualsiasi evento. Rappresentare il sé diventa quindi rappresentare il mondo.
Questa rappresentazione non va però interpretata come forma di idolatria del sé. Nonostante la predilezione di Frida per gli idoli della religione messicana, spesso presenti nei suoi quadri e soprattutto nei disegni del Diario, nonostante l'impostazione di molti dei suoi quadri come "retablos", Frida non idolatra se stessa perché non si pone come l'immagine del divino, non c'é in lei tensione mistica verso l'alto, non c'é l'esaltazione della propria soggettività, né la visione di un ipotetico sé ideale.
Partendo dalla definizione di M. Perniola del feticcio che "non é il simbolo, né il segno, né la cifra di qualcos'altro, ma vale unicamente per se stesso , nella sua splendida indipendenza ed autonomia" possiamo forse azzardare l'ipotesi che Frida sia stata mossa nel rappresentare (disegnare) se stessa ed il suo corpo da un atteggiamento profondamente feticista: così il suo corpo cessa di essere un oggetto identico e fissato nella percezione del soggetto (una forma determinata) e diventa una sorta di "cosa", acquista una "straripante" universalità astratta.
Tramite questa interpretazione é possibile comprendere uno dei paradossi della Kahlo: seppur trafitta e martoriata dal mondo e dalla malattia, Frida ha sempre mantenuto una grande energia, un sorprendente dinamismo. Ciò é forse stato possibile proprio grazie al feticismo che "non adora il mondo, non si fa illusioni su di esso, eppure si pronuncia senza riserve e con la massima energia a favore di una parte, di un dettaglio... ".
Ed in realtà Frida ha fatto di vari dettagli del suo corpo altrettanti feticci, attuando una vera e propria disgregazione del sé/corpo spargendolo nei suoi quadri e disegni.
La frammentazione é evidente soprattutto nel diario, le cui pagine sono piene di corpi e parti del corpo disposti in maniera casuale, a volte abbozzati, semplicemente delineati o creati da macchie, altre volte immessi in strutture a rete dove mani, piedi, organi genitali e volti si mescolano. Questo stile é stato spesso letto in chiave surrealista, secondo la tecnica dell'automatismo delle immagini e parole in libertà. La stessa Frida lo smentì - "Pensavano che fossi surrealista ma non lo ero. Non ho mai dipinto sogni. Ho dipinto la mia realtà." - e ci spinge ad una lettura diversa, dove questa concentrazione quasi "maniacale" sulla propria realtà diventa un "farsi cosa", attraverso l'eliminazione della distinzione tra interno ed esterno del corpo ("Le due Fride", "La colonna spezzata", "La mia balia ed io"), il confondersi con la natura, diventando a volte animale ("Il cervo ferito") altre volte pianta ("Radici"), l' inscrivere se stessa come oggetto tra gli oggetti ("Ritratto sul confine tra Messico e Stati Uniti" in cui Frida in abito rosa si erge come una statua tra oggetti che rappresentano da un lato la tradizione messicana e dall'altro il paesaggio tecnologico nord-americano).
Attraverso l'urlo visivo della scritta
YO SOI LA DISINTEGRACION
Frida urla
IO SONO LA COSA UNIVERSALE
  
 
My thanks to Mario Perniola for the hints I took from his book "The sex-appeal of the inorganic" 

 

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