'Her Dress Hangs Here': De-Frocking the Kahlo Cult Author(s): Oriana Baddeley Source: Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1991), pp. 10-17 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1360274 . Accessed: 29/09/2011 09:30 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Oxford Art Journal. http://www.jstor.org 'Her Dress Hangs Here': De-frocking the Kahlo Cult ORIANA BADDELEY The 1990s have witnessed a shift in the art establish- The enormous rise in the economic value of her ment's attitudes towards art produced outside of its work has developed in tandem with the increased traditional parameters. The work of previously critical and popular response to her particularblend marginalised artists has become an area of rich of naive style and incisive content. While the first speculation among art dealers priced out of the wave of popular interest arose with the 1982 'modern masters' market. Almost every year has Whitechapel exhibition instigated by Laura Mulvey witnessed the discovery of new artistic terrain - and Peter Wollen,' it was the publication of Hayden graffitiart, Soviet art, Australian art, the art of Latin Herrera'sbiography of Kahlo in 19832which has led America. The major auction houses have moved to her current cult status. Since that date she has with the times and have found new ways of selling been the subject of TV documentaries, a feature film works which in both form and content would have ('Frida' by Paul Leduc), a stage play, numerous proved an unstable investment a decade ago. The publications and the inspiration for designer cloth- current status of the work of the Mexican painter ing. In May 1989 Elle magazine ran a 16 page Frida Kahlo is a dramatic example of this change. feature on Frida Kahlo as the 'spirit of Mexico' Once known primarily as the wife of Diego Rivera, (Fig. 1), while in Vogue(Feb. 1990) there was a 10 her reputation outside of Mexico now far supercedes page interpretationof 'the romance of Frida Kahlo's his: since 1979, sale room estimates of her work have Mexico' (Fig. 2). Almost as a logical outcome of this risen from $40,000 to over $1 million, and in 1990 a media blitz, it emerged in the summer of 1990 that work by Kahlo broke all records at Sotheby's New Madonna, already a devotee of Kahlo's work, was York for a Latin American artist. commissioning a screenplay based on Kahlo's life. .. K/2/7r/K/.////v ^. '7, ul -ifj/ ! * ,'intZ{tii/' t/i 7 th a f !' n//.i r im .' 1/f hu/'ui fi lflfaf//ffi i mi fhl/i ,'' ,i:'tl mf nfi //;/t /// /ft/p'/.11ti? '/o/ . ,hr/.' f/l i a // Hit,ifidez (i/11/.r ' ! .jamh., ';/?A /-'fi.a o i' f.x f','ti ,,,. .tliffIJ /if/ il/lf .lf/ili/. .J l .,f/// i. //u im"htr/fiif ( ~' ....... 1I. 1 ~ tof/7l /.l7%/cxJt'o ~(i//q't'tlf f////'i/ I'. /D.j 1;' 1f'//.i'. 'iI, T i" i as,n me1eiom A31 i l/ i f t/t/ff''i// F/// '7 I"/.;,f t t / i l' . i' lfhf, /1/f i.t/.r n . - Z . l/. f . fiff'/'(* /(.'i/IJ-/, /s//e h,f '. f/? t'-"/ /)f/.'.i // -/. i /l t/JZ 'nAe//.f. ,e?ol.. i/~~~~~Arw Viila al', it ",otte 06l-~~~~~ N<nLX~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~tgt..pdh, Fig. 1. Elle Magazine,May 1989, p. 18-19. - 10 THE OXFORDART JOURNAL 14:1 1991 e passionate spirit IN CONTRAST TO FASHiON S TEMPERATE SIMPLICITY,ANOTHER PICTUREEMERGES. VIVIDAS AN ARTIST'SPALETTE. IT BLAZES WITH SOULFUL SPLENDOUR. RUFFLES,EMBROIDERY, SHAWLSAND OPULENT BEADING EVOKE THEROMANCE OF FRIDAKAHLO'S MEXICO THEART OF FOLKLORE:thspoge bickLo, grog.. bu-t.lr edg.ed-.h got l ...dn lary .nd _nbIe.l. by Mon.co C 3on C315 .r A L. M.d. 36 Hans Cres. SW1: uL-e-.. P -,lllpr 89 Knighlsbrrdg SW1: R-6 Bith 85 Marvl.bone Hgh Sr Wl C.lH.- l-1: -, beoded 5Irn-ing. b.u5 El1 000. .19b G-nn V.....e o-p- Rd. SW3 Gld pl-.6 ivn,pr- N2r. ehor byV.n aer Srae1en C12 orL'Or 21-23D.u. 5 Wl REF.ECTIO N OF A FALLESANGEL..pp-s,re. In a le .ll.d.. oh ?u- r-l?d h Ipar,lngbeads ar Gionir.ncoFerre 23 BrooLk5 W1 Gold-pl..lechoker, -orn , halobI . Var aer Sraelen l22 . Br LOr Noir Co.o...editor OralOneHo.oe. ,olr. Oribe ,orO.be r, Po-cbl-le boAk.-.p Fr-n ol. Nor? Fig. 2. Vogue,February 1990, p. 130-1. As with most artists who have become mythical personalities in the popular imagination, such attention has focused primarilyon the anecdotal and tragic details of Kahlo's admittedly fascinating life. The passionate obsession with her husband Diego Rivera, her flamboyant appearance, but most of all her physical and emotional pain have come to dominate responses to her work. While Kahlo's art helped her to deal with the vicissitudes of her life, for most audiences it is her life story which allows access to her art. In this one can draw obvious parallels to the appeal of Van Gogh, a traditionally popular artist recently made fashionable by the media attention generated during the centennial of his death. The archetypaldropout/spiritualist became an appropri- ate icon for the sixties revival of 1990's long hot summer. Yet despite the iconic status of Van Gogh's 'tragic'life,3 it is the appearance of his work by which he is ultimately signified, his thick impasto brush- stroke, his vibrantyellows, the urgency of his creative drive. In the case of Kahlo the popular image is of the artist herself, the characteristic brows, the elaborate hair, the Mexican costume (Fig. 3). It is rimarily her appearance, not the formal language of her art, that has graced the pages of Elle and Vogue magazines. The Elle feature transposed the 'Kahlo style' to Kahlo lookalikes in contemporary clothing balanced around segments of Herrera'sbiography of Fig. 3. Elle Magazine,May 1989, p. 28. THE OXFORDARTJOURNAL- 14:1 1991 11 the artist. In the later Vogue piece only the style remained as the far more overtly sexual, Kahloesque models lounged and pouted in their 'Mexican' interiors. There is a poignant irony in the way cloth- ing, which on one level served to hide Kahlo's broken body, falls or is lifted by the model to reveal a luxuriantly perfect physique (Fig. 4). The visual references in the two magazines are as much from photos of the artistas from her work. In both features she is also seen to embody a wider set of assumptions about Mexico itself; exotic, passionate, yet con- stantly struggling against pain and deceit. While Elle, Vogue and subsequently The Independent (Fig. 5), stressed different facets of Kahlo's public persona, they all shared the emphasis on 'her', as an encapsulisation of stereotypical images of Mexico, rather than her work. It is her body as the canvas, her appearance as art. The art of self-expression becomes self-expression as art. -iiI , Of course, the line between art and life is a :[:(! ,! '. jr hard one to draw in Kahlo's case. The !'^^?;-w particularly .re ..., j~~~ .. - - .~~~~..? majority of her work is self portraiture;her aesthetic concerns grew from her fascination with the of falsity __.:_ ..'.'_:___'_ . '"--'A appearance. Dressing up, role playing and masquer- ... ....................._'_';^ ade form the conceptual basis of Kahlo's work. In Self-Portraitwith CroppedHair (1944) (Fig. 6), she ThI, r<'li.-(-i<-,,,rv adf IIn v.,,rk 4,f M4'xi'it mi paints herself wearing Rivera's suit, challenging .i|)i(-' traditional expectations of femininity and attempt- i II,i'. It,lI unf' I -ii ''llli aIt t1aiit r ta tl ' litii i i I'- ing to appropriate his authority (while simultane- . l..l l il] lii, ti.u'-t '4 i.- ,t'ii lil.m' ously threatening castration). More disturbingly, in The Mask (1945) (Fig. 7), she throws doubt on too a of her as straightforward reading self-portraits Fig. 5. The Independenton Sunday, 8th April 1990, p. 37. revealing of her inner emotions. Where does the mask fall? Does not the ritual repetition of those familiar features 'mask' far more than it uncovers? There is, however, an inevitable logic to the appropriation of her meticulously constructed image, a process which the artist was mocking as early as 1933: '. some of the gringa women are imitating me and trying to dress "a la Mexicana", but the poor souls only look like cabbages and to tell you the naked truth they look absolutely impos- sible.'4The 'impossibility' stemmed from the failure of such followers to recognise the symbolic import- ance of Kahlo's choice of clothing, a failure also intrinsic to her recent magazine appearances. The particularities of post-revolutionary Mexico are frequently subsumed by the decorativeness of the ethnic, by the generalised attractiveness of the radical avant-garde. For Kahlo, however, choosing to don the costume of the Tehuana, as for example in Tree of Hope (1946) (Fig.