Frida: The Making of an Icon review – forget her iconic status, just show us more of her art
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Tate Modern's "Frida: The Making of an Icon" exhibition contains only 36 of Kahlo's works, a thin haul blamed on collectors — including Madonna — who refuse to lend to museums
- Diego Rivera benefits from the curation, with impressive works placed in the show including a nude drawing of Kahlo and a tender portrait
- Kahlo's 1951 painting Self-Portrait with Dr Farill is singled out as the moment she "steals back her show," depicting her in a wheelchair beside an easel
- Yasumasa Morimura's restaging of The Broken Column, with prosthetic breasts parted to reveal an upright arm with clenched fist, is dismissed by the reviewer as "egregious trash"
- Olga Costa and Maria Izquierdo are shown as flamboyant self-portraitists but, in the reviewer's view, not in Kahlo's league
- Tate placed the Kahlo show on the same floor as Tracey Emin's A Second Life, drawing an implicit comparison between Emin's "truth" and Kahlo's, which the reviewer finds unfavorable to the Kahlo exhibition
Why it matters: Tate Modern — one of the world's most-visited museums — has built a major Kahlo retrospective around just 36 of her paintings, padding the show with derivative homages and merchandise rather than the art itself, which raises a structural question about how celebrity status can actively prevent museums from mounting substantive shows on the artists collectors most prize.
Ask SkimNews
