Book description
Beginning in the late 1970's Frida Kahlo achieved cult heroine status
less for her richly surrealist self-portraits than by the popularization
of the events of her tumultuous life. Her images were splashed across
billboards magazine ads, and postcards; fashion designers copied the
so-called "Frida" look in hairstyles and dress; and
"Fridamania" even extended to T-shirts, jewelry, and nail
polish. Margaret A. Lindauer argues that this mass market assimilation
of Kahlo's identity has consistently detracted from appreciation of her
work, leading instead to narrow interpretations based on "an
entrenched narrative of suffering." While she agrees that Kahlo's
political and feminist activism, her stormy marriage to fellow artist
Diego Reviera, and the tragic reality of a progressively debilitated
body did represent a biography colored by emotional and physical
upheaval, she questions an "author-equals-the-work" critical
tradition that assumes a :one-to-one association of life events to the
meaning of a painting." In kahlo's case, Lindauer says, such
assumptions created a devouring mythology, an iconization that separates
us from rather than leads us to the real significance of the oeuvre.
Accompanied by 26 illustrations and deep analysis of Kahlo's central
themes, this provocative, semiotic study recontextualizes an important
figure in art history at the same time it addresses key questions about
the language of interpretation, the nature of veneration, and the truths
within self-representation. MARGARET A. LINDAUER is an academic
associate at Arizona State University.
