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| Kiss: This undated photo shows a painted lipstick on a photo of Frida Kahlo's husband, Mexican artist Diego Rivera. Mexico celebrates
the centennial anniversary of Khalo's birth this summer. Frida Kahlo Museum/AP |
Mexico celebrates the real Frida Kahlo
Two new exhibitions in Mexico City reintroduce the artist's many facets.
from the July 6, 2007 edition
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She has been a symbol for many others as well: leftists, feminists, lesbians, and the disabled. Many admirers have drawn morals and courage from the life of a woman who was injured in a trolley-car accident, unable to bear children, suffered the infidelities of her husband muralist Diego Rivera, and reportedly had an affair with Marxist Leon Trotsky.
Not a few art historians have bristled at her current cult status, in which she has been understood as a caricature that has not always been to her benefit as an artist nor to the causes she came to represent.
"There is a certain sense of identifying with her," says Margaret Lindauer, author of "Devouring Frida: The Art History and Popular Celebrity of Frida Kahlo" and an associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va., particularly among those who suffer social stigmas. But Ms. Lindauer says Kahlo's works are far more complex than just a documentation of her biography or emotional state. "They are also a critique of women in society: expectations that a woman should be a mother, expectations that a woman should dress a certain way because it pleases her husband."
Standing in the gallery where Kahlo's most iconic and colorful paintings hang is Karen Uno, a sixth-grade teacher from Washington State, on a two-week vacation with her husband. The two had walked across the street from their hotel and happened upon the exhibit. Ms. Uno says she knows the works in this room – some she's shared with her students back home – but not the rest. "I'd say my knowledge is on the low end," she says.
"Well, but you know who she is," pipes in her husband, Doug Uno.
After all, many Americans wouldn't.
"Of course," she says, taken aback.
After all, there has been a movie.
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