The “Third Eye” exhibition by Frida Kahlo, which is exhibited in Malba. Photo Juano Tesone.
Goes very well with mugs, thermos, backpacks, pins, tattoos, notebooks, wallpapers, stickers, prints, wallets, mates, handbags, masks, thermos, magnets. Brad Pitt wore a mustache Inglourious Basterds. Would Frida Kahlo’s challenge today be to overcome platinum hair?
Known as much for her self-portraits as for her eyebrows and mustaches, most of Frida’s work shows a special interest in herself. selfie mother, his personal self-inquiry has honesty, concept and an excessive desire to feel admired. And she succeeded: probably the current fetish for the Mexican painter derives from this representation of the self.
Frida was not a political artist and, if she was, she did so on the one hand typical, that is, marginal. Post mortem has become spirit of an era marked by claims, hopes, claims, escraches and cancellations.
the painting of the stars
We are in Malba trying to see the photo Diego and I-of FK- in the new sample named Third eye. The latest acquisition cost $ 34.5 million. I mean? Today it is the most expensive work of Latin American art.
Diego and me (1949) is the protagonist of a two-frame show and the truth is the consequence of a 25 minute waitas announced at the ticket office.
There is a difficult question because it is essential, and therefore also simple: to know the fridomania. What would the plastic artist have done to become a cultural, ethical, aesthetic reference and a symbol of the feminist movement?
It was there wife (from Diego Riverathe Picasso of the murals, who introduced her to painting and scene Communist). Also known for his love affair with Leon Trotsky, it is known that she was the victim of a car accident, that she suffered from her state of health at work and that even as a child she suffered from polio. On her (frida), a third of her works were mirrors of pain.
Arriving at the exhibition you are realizing that Frida Kahlo is one rock star. Queue on Wednesday. We thought about the importance of the androgynous mustache, about that face style that made the hair go a little too much. The exact length to attract attention, but without falling into parody. It’s not a thick mustache, it’s little more than a fuzz on the upper lip. With an excess of testosterone, Frida could have worked in a western spaghetti.
“Eyes that can only be remembered by closing yours,” he wrote of her John Berger.
There is no rush …
The sample lasts exactly another year, so don’t rush. Above the row leads to an exhibition the size of a telephone booth: two paintings and a quick look at them, please pass, thank you, there are many people outside waiting …
We take advantage of the wait to ask for things:
-Sorry, what explanation do you find for Frida’s mustache? –In front of a couple of Brazilian tourists who speak Portuñol perfectly.
-Mmmm … -We understand perfectly-, I don’t know.
-Would it be a pre-Columbian style?
-He was rather left-wing – intervenes a man of the lineage, dressed as a dandy and with the air of belonging to the Friends of Malba Association-. She was a wonderful plastic artist, an admirable woman.
Was she a feminist?
-Nah, she was submissive and a conscious cuckold. Her biggest act of rebellion was growing her eyebrows and mustache.
We are about to enter – finally! -and a woman with a bachata voice makes us the “quick” gesture. implies that the 450 pesos of this Wednesday’s registration serve not to dwell on the details.
The famous “third eye” of the work – as small as the Mona Lisa – is the elephantine image of Diego Rivera. Always keep this in mind. “Between the eyes”, the curator Laura Isola emphasizes gracefully. It is a very small job. It takes two and a half minutes. We stare at the other one, the one with the monkey. Technically, Self-portrait with monkey and parrotwhich was already in the museum collection.
It is as if Frida had discovered how nature works through the eyes of a zoo. “There are works that are forms of research and others that are sketches for masterpieces”. She comments on someone who looks like a guide. In what case could it have been Frida?
How is it possible that an artist so obsessed with her image never becomes a narcissist? Berger himself wondered. We might ask the same of Van Gogh, another animal of the selfie.
Unless the mustache has become a symbol of female beauty, inside the tiny room dedicated to Frida it is legitimate to resist the thought that feminism can use a figure as a flag for its capillary, epidermal, superficial emission.
Dejected, we ask Google: why is Frida a feminist icon?
Frida decided to create her image as if it were a work, and she wanted to focus it on the struggle for equality. He masculinized his appearance, allowing and accepting facial hair and forgetting the gender stereotypes, which were so followed at the time. Frida is a symbol of feminism not only for her paintings.
WD
Hernan Firpo
Source: Clarin
