Art View

Some thoughts on the new Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which I recently saw with my friend Billy.

Frida Kahlo has never been my favorite artist, but I have always felt a certain power in her paintings, an undeniable brilliance, perhaps a bit too obvious for my tastes. However, I was very interested in seeing this exhibit to learn more about both her life and her work.

The exhibition itself will not disappoint. It is well laid out, chronologically, and contains a phenomenal line up of her greatest and most famous paintings. It is long, but not overwhelming. The audio guide was informative, but a little bit too basic. I quite enjoyed the exhibitions' overall emphasis on how Kahlo's life and work mirrored each other, and they were not afraid to intermingle artistic criticism with fascinating biography about Kahlo's dramatic, and rather , tragic life. Such an approach seems fitting for an artist who was almost obsessed with her artistic persona and whose most famous work are her haunting self-portraits. I found the collection of photographs in the beginning of the exhibition a fascinating look at the real Kahlo and her tumultuous marriage to the great Diego Rivera. Some of the photographs, showing Kahlo, Rivera, and men like Leon Trotsky were fascinating snap shots of 20th century intellectual history.

I certainly felt that I left with a greater appreciation of Kahlo's legacy and importance.