Spent some quality time with the in-laws, catching the traveling Frida Kahlo show which celebrates the 100th anniversary of Kahlo’s birth by gathering together an astonishing number of her works and hundreds of photographs of Kahlo and her family and friends. It was organized by the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and in between Minneapolis and San Francisco, the show spent a few months at the at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which is where we caught up with it.
(Small New Yorker mention when the show first opened: Peter Schjeldahl, “All Souls: The Frida Kahlo Cult”)
It was an amazing show, but it was depressing. Deeply depressing. Profoundly depressing. Astonishing and completely worthwhile, yes, but deeply sad. Husband and I skipped the audio tour. Most of the people in the show had picked up the headsets, which was nice because it meant you could hear a pin drop even in rooms that were crowded. On the other hand, by the end of the exhibit the people who’d listened had a hundred yard stare that made me want to make sure the museum had locked the stairs to the roof and put away all of the sharp objects.
The show features over a hundred photographs of Kahlo and her family and friends, plus a dizzying array of her paintings. Many of these works have never been displayed publicly in the U.S. before, and certainly have never been displayed together. Arranged chronologically rather than thematically – although you could argue that in this show that’s really the same thing – the groupings represent the major periods in her life. Spinal surgeries, the miscarriage in Detroit, the first divorce from Diego, etc.
The show wrings the viewer out and plops them on the floor of the final room, wherein the last grouping of works is a series of cheerfully bright still life paintings.
These final works were introduced with words from Kahlo’s diary about her own death, “I hope the exit is joyful — and I hope never to come back.” They represent the agony of Kahlo’s final year as she coped with pneumonia and the amputation of her leg. These are mostly works she created because she knew they would sell and she could use the money for her medical bills. Look closely at the festive paintings and you can see she was so doped up that she must have struggled mightily to maintain her focus on her subject and to control her every brushstroke.
People exited the show looking like they’d just been released from Azkaban. To further disconcert the viewer, they then get to try to shake the dementors off their back while walking straight into a Frida Kahlo emporium with more licensed tie-in products than I think I’ve ever seen for any show. Rooms of neckties and paperdolls and jewelry and clothing and other happy household objects festooned with images of Frida and her monkeys. Looking at the reproduction necklace – complete with thorns and hummingbird – threatened to bring back the migraine I’d just gotten rid of. (Actually, I have to admit that piece was so weird, it was oddly attractive).
It’s a brilliant show and was well worth the trip, but before we left town we went back to the museum to hang out with the Buddhas and look at the stone temple for a while to recover.
Monday’s journey in the rain was no fun, but Tuesday’s trip back still took well over 4 hours and started to make us both a little stir crazy in the car. At one point I thought Husband brightly exclaimed, “Let’s pretend we’re Canadian!” When asked him what he meant, he couldn’t remember what he’d just actually said, because we immediately became preoccupied with ending every sentence with, “eh?”
It’s good to be home. Now I have to clean the house because Husband’s mother-in-law is on her way to stay with us.
