It's time to tele-transport again, this time to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, which is showing a retrospective of work by none other than Frida Kahlo. Despite the efforts of the Kahlo cult to beat us over the head with her visage on any number of trinkets and knick knacks, I'm still a huge Kahlo fan, and this is a rare chance to see a cohesive set of her fantastic paintings.And fantastic really is the word for them - her self portraits is pure fantasy, situating her intense gaze in any number of surreal situations. There's a terrific review of the show by Peter Schjeldahl in a recent New Yorker (he's a professed Kahlo-lover!). His description of the above oil on canvas, Me and My Parrots, from 1941, is so evocative:
"The tactility of certain self-portraits is, among other things, staggeringly sexy. In Me and My Parrots, it combines with sharp tonal contrasts of warm color to convey invisible moistness, as of a summertime, full-body, delicate sweat." Yowza!
Click here to view the New Yorker's great little slide show of some of Kahlo's work, plus a couple of photos and works by husband Diego Rivera.
I once visited Kahlo's gorgeous Mexico City home - where she was born, lived, and died - and seeing her wheelchair, resting silently beside her paints and easel, gave me such a tingly sense of unease and awe.
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