Fotos de Frida
March 20, 2012 11:46 AM   Subscribe

Frida Kahlo produced art that was self-reflecting — 55 of her 143 known paintings were self-portraits. A cache of her 6,500 personal photographs was unsealed in 2007, and a small selection of those -- 259 total images -- are now on display in an exhibition entitled "Frida Kahlo: Her Photos," at the Artisphere in Arlington, VA until March 25th. Images: Washington Post, WJLA and NPR. PBS: Interview with exhibit curator Pablo Ortiz Monasterio.

The exhibition was first shown at the Museo Frida Kahlo (at La Casa Azul.) Per the Washington Post, Kahlo took only some of the shots in the exhibition; some were uncredited, others were by "the most famous photographers of the day." Some were even annotated or sealed with her lipstick.

AVN (Arlington county television) has a video from the opening.

PBS has an additional set of photos from her personal collection, in a site associated with the 2005 documentary film, The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo, which can be viewed in its entirety on YouTube in six parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Additional Photos: Frida Kahlo Fans.

Frida, Previously on Metafilter
posted by zarq (8 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
A huge thank you to both questionsandanchors and sonika for pointing out the exhibition and NPR article. :)
posted by zarq at 12:00 PM on March 20, 2012


Unfortunately, one of my favorite places to eat in town, Frida's Mexican Grill on State Street, closed. Turns out they're converting part of that block of really old buildings to something new.

The place was great: Authentic Mexican food alongside Frida's artwork all over the walls. My daughter used to call it "the place where the lady has a mustache."
posted by thanotopsis at 12:15 PM on March 20, 2012 [2 favorites]


Frida's self-portraits were strangely un-flattering. She wasn't a conventional beauty, but she had a powerful allure, just the same. Her & Diego's whole story is one of the great romances of all time, really.
posted by Devils Rancher at 1:14 PM on March 20, 2012 [1 favorite]


Outstanding post.

Frida Kahlo is arguably one of the greatest artists of all time.

AnecdoteFilter: My sister-in-law who teaches art at a west coast college explained to me one sunny Thanksgiving in San Francisco that while I might not understand art for arts sake, it is undeniably art. She has since said that she visibly saw a light bulb illuminate above my head that day.

On a later Halloween I helped draw/fill in her eyebrows with two Sharpies so she could go to a costume party as Frida. She tried to get me to go to the party with her, due to my not insignificant resemblance to Diego Rivera.
posted by Sphinx at 1:21 PM on March 20, 2012


You know, when I think about things like Frida & Diego, Edward Jame's Las Posas, Weston's work in Mexico city and, Malcolm Lowry's sojourn in Cuernavaca, I get this powerfully wistful feeling that I was born in the wrong decade, in the wrong country.

The most powerful phrase in any language to me, and one which Frida seemingly embodied, was Lowry's epigram, No se puede vivir sin amar.
posted by Devils Rancher at 1:47 PM on March 20, 2012 [2 favorites]


Is the exhibition going to be travelling? Say, to San Francisco?

Two excellent (fictional) books featuring her: Kingsolver's Lacuna and Braverman's The Incantation of Frida K. -- I recommend them both to anyone interested in Kahlo.
posted by phliar at 5:46 PM on March 20, 2012 [1 favorite]


Thank you for this post, zarq. While I like her art, I love her story. Her life was so extraordinary, and she was such a strong and original voice. Often we hear complacent platitudes about how "everyone has potential and some kind of talent" - and then along comes someone like Frieda, and her character and her art are so striking and so unique that you'd have to search far and wide to find an equivalent, thus immediately proving that no, not "everyone". She happened to have been born in Mexico. But where are her sisters who would be her equals in, say, Germany, or Sweden, or...? Mexico is not what springs first to mind, when you think about the kind of artistic milieu that's been a fertile ground for the gathering of talent like Paris of the 20's or interwar Germany or in general, countries where the tradition of the "artist" was well developed and understood. And yet, she sprung from Mexican soil, which tells us immediately, that indeed - it's the individual, and s/he springs by chance, anywhere.
posted by VikingSword at 1:55 AM on March 21, 2012


Love her! I've been meaning to go to the Exhibit, I saw an ad on the metro. Thanks for the reminder and for the YouTube links!
posted by Kimberly at 10:42 AM on March 21, 2012


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