Or the Little Mermaid, who has joined her as a subject of Oaxacan
folk pottery for sale to gringos and wealthy Mexican collectors, or
maybe Harry Potter. It's quite a phenomenon. As Steve notes, she made
some powerful paintings, and though hardly alone, she was one of a
relatively small sisterhood of woman painters in the period. But her
reputation it seems to me is overblown, colored by the legend she did
much to fashion (a telling recent show of photos of her, many by
top-rank photographers, were notably all posed, her persona carefully
groomed for the camera) and by her use of folk symbols that gratify
North American and European yearnings to believe in the supposed
childlike exoticism of the dusky races.
Mark
At 01:07 PM 8/11/2007, you wrote:
>Frida Kahlo is the Mount Fuji of Mexico.
>
>Hal
>
>"The more you throw tomatoes on Sopranoes, the more they yell."
> --Georges Perec
> (attrib. to Unsofort and Tchetera)
>
>Halvard Johnson
>================
>[log in to unmask]
>http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html
>http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
>http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
>http://www.hamiltonstone.org
>http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html
>
>
>
>
>On Aug 11, 2007, at 10:32 AM, Kenneth Wolman wrote:
>
>>The August 10 entry cuts the insides out of me. "Everything is
>>broken." I once went to see my mother in the nursing home. She
>>took one look at me and started to cry. What a comment! She was
>>younger than your mother but everything was broken far earlier. I
>>sometimes think it broke in 1927 and this was 1992. "What's wrong,
>>mom" asks the idiot son. "EVERYTHING!" she wails.
>>
>>Everything was broken. She didn't have your mother's facility with
>>words. She had bitterness but no humor to flavor it. No truth
>>except in delirium. Flavors of lye and lie, always.
>>
>>As for Frida on a skateboard, nothing is sacred and maybe that's a
>>good thing. I doubt Ms. Kahlo would mind. Mobility where hers was
>>robbed from her.
>>
>>ken
>>
>>--------------------
>>Ken Wolman rainermaria.typepad.com
>>
>>We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good
>>We'll do the best we know.
>>We'll build our house and chop our wood
>>And make our garden grow...
>>
>> Bernstein/Wilbur, "Candide"
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