The "Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris: A Friendship with Mary Reynolds" show at the Art Institute is small. Not Caravaggio small — that 2023 offering had just two of the master's paintings, plus three works influenced by him.
The Kahlo show is a handful of her paintings over three rooms, well larded with ephemera — a love letter from Kahlo, in English, not particularly poetic ("I love you my Nick. I am so happy to think I love you, to think you wait for me..."), Kahlo's Parisian address book. Too many examples of books assembled by Reynolds, an American bookbinder who had a salon in Paris, supercharged by her partner, Marcel Duchamp, and his work, along with surrealist pals like Salvador Dali, and various pals such as Alexander Calder and Jean Cocteau, are included.
We took in the show Sunday — the place was packed, Kahlo having exploded over the past few decades into a cultural icon for her general badassery — the unflinching gaze at herself in all her broken strangeness, her unstoppable back story. Salma Hayek's smoking portrayal in a 2002 biop didn't hurt.
To me, she's folk art — too inexpert to be anything else, but making up in color and panache what she lacks in technical skill. You can't but admire someone willing to paint themselves as an arrow-ridden stag, even if the stag isn't quite standing in the forest so much as floating above it.
Enough. I'm not going to be the guy dissing Frida Kahlo. She made the most of the talents she had, which is all any of us can do. And I cared enough about her to make a point to go see the show. Perhaps the most amazing thing about the show is expressed in the museum's web page about it, which opens: "Unveiling Frida Kahlo’s work for the first time in the Art Institute galleries, this exhibition..." Really? The first time? Kinda late to the party, are they not? The Art Institute has been taking pains to be more inclusive, to try to proactively avoid the lash of the cultural warriors, and Kahlo checks a lot of boxes: female, Mexican, struggling with disabilities.
Not to transgress against art by reducing her to her specific qualities, which is the original sin of identity politics. To be a great artist, you need to combine image and impact, to transcend your materials and your limitations and become something more than what you are. Kahlo clears that bar with room to spare.
"Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris: A Friendship with Mary Reynolds" runs until July 13.
"Unveiling Frida Kahlo’s work for the first time in the Art Institute galleries, this exhibition..." Really? The first time? Nope. I don't think so. My first wife was a painter, and was very much into Frida Kahlo, so of course we trekked downtown to see the Kahlo show at the Art Institute. That would have had to be some time in the mid-80s, as we were a couple from 1979 to 1992.
ReplyDeleteSo I'm thinking it was around forty years ago, give or take a year either way. Probably before whoever wrote that blurb for the web page was born. And they didn't do their homework, and didn't learn that there was a Kahlo show in Chicago decades ago. They didn't check, they just assumed...or didn't search back far enough. Never assume.
Clearly remember learning about her horrible bus accident from that show...which left her severely injured and permanently disabled at 18.. Not something easily forgotten. Kahlo had been a promising student, and was headed for medical school, until the accident, which caused her lifelong pain and medical problems..
During her long recovery, Kahlo returned to her childhood interest in art. Her interest in politics led her to join the Mexican Communist Party,, through which she met fellow Mexican artist Diego Rivera. They married, and lived in San Francisco, Detroit, and Mexico City. She and Georgia O'Keeffe were the two female artists my wife admired the most.
Fascinating. I wonder how they parsed that "first time in the Art Institute galleries." The earlier show was someplace other than a gallery? Weasely, either way.
DeleteWent last week only because I saw it as I walked by and as a member could get in right away.was underwhelmed but only spent about 30 minutes there. In glad Neil wrote about it and you commented since that give some inventive to try again one day during member hours ( that is what I usually b do - see an exhibit quickly a to get a taste and then return when I have more time and can take sometime to learn.) I know little about her so I think Ill do a bit of reading first . She does intrigue me.
DeleteI was there last Thursday and actually wrote the Art Institute to complain about how the show was marketed. There were maybe three Kahlo paintings there and that was about it. If I was interested in Mary Reynolds or in bookbinding in particular I would have loved the show. I have to believe there were quite a few disappointed folks.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the next show should be something like "Henri Matisse's week in Detroit. A friendship with Edsel Ford". Then they could exhibit one of Matisse's paintings along with two or three rooms of car parts culminating with an actual Edsel. I actually would have been much more interested.
Same here. Went to the Crawford Auto and Aviation Museum, here in Cleveland, a few weeks ago. To see the "60 Years of Mustangs" exhibit. They had the same one I had, a '66. And one of the cars in their permanent collection is an Edsel, with the notorious "horse collar" grille. Rude and tactless folks have likened it to a female body part--but I'm too genteel for such a fox paw.
DeleteIf you describe her work as "folk art" and "too inexpert to be anything else," I wonder how you describe Matisse's Icarus because that piece could have been achieved by a five-year-old wielding safety scissors on a few sheets of construction paper.
ReplyDeleteArt makes me wish i did other things and was able to spend more time roaming galleries.
ReplyDeleteShe is not one of my favorite artists, but she is definitely unique. I do think her "folk art" is far more nuanced and thought out. I'm having the vapors. I've done too many art critiques in school. "Notice the monkey's wish to be elsewhere, blah, blah, blah "
ReplyDeleteForget art! I've got to read the Chicago Sun-Times summer reading list!
ReplyDeleteYeah, there's that. Remember: I just work there; I don't run the place.
DeleteBut that comment about that thing on the Sun Times' Bluesky account was just so WEIRD. "We are looking into how this made it into print..." What, a 64-page section just snuck into the printing plant by itself when no one was looking?
DeleteSee above.
DeleteCoda: Well, at least they took their medicine in today's paper. Good for them.
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