How Is Mexican Folk Art Related to Frida Kahlo
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA),
February 27 through June 16, 2019
Throughout her entire career, Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) avidly collected traditional Mexican folk art—arte popular—equally a commemoration of Mexican national culture. She drew inspiration from these objects, seizing on their political significance later the Mexican Revolution and incorporating their visual and material qualities into her now-iconic paintings.
The showtime-e'er Kahlo exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA),Frida Kahlo and Arte Popular (through June xvi, 2019) focuses on the artist's lasting engagement with Mexican folk art, exploring how her passion for objects such every bit decorated ceramics, embroidered textiles, children's toys, and devotionalex-voto paintings shaped her own creative exercise.
Eight Kahlo paintings—including important loans from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Los Angeles Canton Museum of Art (LACMA) and the Harry Bribe Eye at the University of Texas at Austin—are brought together with approximately forty representative examples ofarte pop, many on loan from the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA), as well as photographs and of import illustrated publications from the period. On view from February 27 through June sixteen, 2019 in the Saundra B. and William H. Lane Galleries, located in the MFA'south Art of the Americas Fly, the exhibition features interpretation in English language and Castilian.
"We're thrilled to bring our visitors the MFA'due south showtime exhibition on Kahlo, which provides a distinctive view of the creative person," said Layla Bermeo, Kristin and Roger Servison Assistant Curator of American Paintings. "While many exhibitions focus on the artist's biography and interpret her paintings equally straight illustrations of life events, our exhibition brings fresh attending to Kahlo as an ever-evolving and ambitious painter, who actively responded toarte popular. It likewise opens broader discussions about the influences of anonymous folk artists on famed modern painters."
Powerfully linking art and politics, the termarte popularwas used publicly for the first time in 1921—i year after the end of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920). Following this devastating civil war, regime officials and artists played overlapping roles, trying to construct patriotic histories and images that could unite Mexico's divided peoples. Kahlo herself was not a folk creative person, but drew inspiration from ceramics, carvings and other handmade objects made in rural communities. She and other urban intellectuals championed these works ofarte popular as expressions of truemexicanidad, or Mexican national culture, and as celebrations of United mexican states'southward indigenous and working-class people.
By examining some of the social and political ideas of the postal service-Revolutionary period, this exhibition offers contexts for both Kahlo'southward paintings andarte popular, equally well equally explores dialogues between the 2.
Upon inbound the exhibition, visitors are greeted by an eight-foot-tall"Judas" Figure (2018) commissioned by the MFA from gimmicky artist Leonardo Linares, whose grandfather Pedro Linares made like papier-mâché sculptures for Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera. Comparable Judas figures, along with other objects in Kahlo'south drove ofarte popular, can exist seen in photographs taken effectually 1940 by Bernard Silberstein at the Casa Azul—Kahlo and Rivera's shared habitation in Coyoacán, and so a hamlet outside Mexico Metropolis. The photographs are on loan from the Detroit Institute of Arts and displayed in the exhibition. The introductory section also provides historical context for the display ofarte popular at the MFA, highlighting a pick of objects that were shown at the Museum effectually 1930 as part ofMexican Arts, an exhibition that traveled to thirteen institutions across the U.South. Following the introduction,Frida Kahlo and Arte Popular is organized thematically into five sections.
Exhibition Overview Art of the People /Arte del Pueblo
Kahlo nervelessarte popular every bit an act of national pride, to show her knowledge and appreciation of Mexican artists working outside European-style institutions. Around the same time that muralists promised to liberate painting from easels and make art attainable to the public, arte popular was defined every bit a form of art for the people, by the people. This department brings together for the first fourth dimension two paintings from different periods in Kahlo's career: the MFA's recently acquired
Dos Mujeres (Salvadora y Herminia) (1928), which in 1929 became the beginning painting sold past the artist,
Self‑Portrait with Hummingbird and Thorn. Frida Kahlo (Mexican, 1907–1954). 1940. Oil on masonite. *Nickolas Muray Collection of Modernistic Mexican Art, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin. © 2018 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
and the iconic Self-Portrait with Hummingbird and Thorn Necklace (1940, Harry Bribe Center at the University of Texas at Austin).
Painted more than a decade apart, these works demonstrate the progression of Kahlo's painting practice while also showing her politics and dedication to Mexico's various histories, peoples, plants and animals.Dos Mujeres is a dignified portrait of two mixed-race women who were muchachas, or domestic workers, in Kahlo's mother's household.
The dense foliage background of the painting evokes the organic patterns on many works ofarte popular, such equally aGlassy Jar (almost 1930, San Antonio Museum of Art, The Nelson A. Rockefeller Mexican Folk Art Collection) decorated with explosively bright flowers and leaves.
A lush foliage background also appears inSelf-Portrait with Hummingbird and Thorn Necklace, in which the artist poses herself alongside imagined creatures and her ain pet monkey. The painting is shown most 2 ceramicarte pop monkeys (about 1930, San Antonio Museum of Art, The Nelson A. Rockefeller Mexican Folk Art Collection)—one is a whistle and the other is meant to hold the alcoholic beverage mescal. They exemplify everydayarte popular objects that unified beauty and function, representing longstanding artistic traditions and patterns of use within rural communities.
Aesthetics of Babyhood /Estéticas de la Infancia
Kahlo was fascinated by the world of children, sharing this interest with many other Mexican modernists. Toys were one of the most prominent categories ofarte pop—dolls, wooden marionettes and ceramic animals absorbed collectors with their sculpted details and sophisticated color combinations, all rendered in miniature. The allure of such modest objects perhaps helped Kahlo see the monumental visual power that could be developed in small dimensions.
Niña con máscara de la muerta (Girl with Decease Mask). Frida Kahlo (Mexican, 1907–1954). 1938. Oil on tin. *Nagoya Metropolis Art Museum. © 2019 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, United mexican states, D.F. / Artists Rights Order (ARS), New York.
Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Measuring about six by v inches, Kahlo's paintingDaughter with Death Mask (She Plays Alone) (1938, Nagoya City Art Museum) depicts a child—likely the artist herself—wearing a pink, lace-trimmed wearing apparel and hiding her face backside the rounded yellow optics and clenched teeth of a skeleton mask. The jaguar mask next to her is connected to notions of physical and supernatural forcefulness.
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Máscara de tigre (Jaguar Mask). Mexican Artist (active Guerrero) late 19th century. Glass, painted forest, brute teeth, boar bristle. San Antonio Museum of Art, The Nelson A. Rockefeller Mexican Folk Art Collection.
Photography by Peggy Tenison. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The painting is displayed alongside a woodenJaguar Mask(late 19th century, San Antonio Museum of Art, The Nelson A. Rockefeller Mexican Folk Fine art Collection) that is representative of the type collected by Kahlo.
Additional works on view in this department include the cartoonUntitled (Portrait of Girl with Orange Bow) (most 1937–38), Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College) by Diego Rivera
andGirl with Doll (1943, Andrés Blaisten Collection) by Rosa Rolanda, Kahlo'south shut friend and fellow artist. Rolanda depicts Kahlo herself as a work ofarte popular, in the course of a unibrowed doll tightly clasped in the easily of a broad-eyed niggling daughter.
Painted Miracles /Milagros Pintados
Kahlo collected hundreds of devotionalex-votopaintings, which represent one of her almost powerful creative influences. Tiny images painted on tin,ex-votoslimited the original owner'due south gratitude for miracles and answered prayers.Ex-voto, from the Latin term for devotional offering, is often used interchangeably withretablo, which refers to sacred images placed on altars.
Kahlo and her contemporaries redefinedex-votos asarte popular, admiring them for their visionary compositions rather than their religious purpose.
The shifting perspectives, combination of standing and floating figures, and metal support of her paintingMy Grandparents, My Parents and I (Family Tree) (1936, Museum of Modernistic Fine art, New York) recall the ex-votoformat. In place of saints, still, Kahlo painted her ain ancestors.
This section besides features another Kahlo painting,The Suicide of Dorothy Hale(1939, Phoenix Art Museum),
andGirl (1925, Andrés Blaisten Collection) a painting past Kahlo'south contemporary Gabriel Fernández Ledesma, which renders theex-voto every bit a motion picture within a picture.
Ex-votos from the 19th and 20th centuries are on view,
too every bit a rare 18th-century instance:Peres Maldonado Ex-voto (1777, Davis Museum at Wellesley College), a trigger-happy even so beautifully painted work that shows a woman undergoing breast cancer surgery. In 1939, Surrealist André Breton, who had caused thisex-voto during a visit to Mexico, displayed information technology alongside paintings by Kahlo in an exhibition in Paris titledMexique.
A letter written by Kahlo, in which she critiques Breton's curatorial vision, is besides on view in this section.
Living Still Lifes /Naturalezas Vivas
Kahlo engaged with the fine art historical genre of yet life, especially in the subsequently stages of her career, only innovated the tradition even as she worked inside it. She aggressively filled small-scale-scale compositions with round, vividly colored forms that look like they might tumble out of the picture. She painted fruits and rocks as though they had eyes, skin and feelings, giving them humanlike qualities that are also visible in many works ofarte pop.
Like the springySkeletons (about 1940, San Antonio Museum of Art, The Nelson A. Rockefeller Mexican Folk Art Drove) originally made for theDía de Muertos (24-hour interval of the Dead) holiday, Kahlo'snaturalezas vivas—"living" still lifes—disobey the categories of inanimate and breathing, things and beings, expressionless and living.
Three lively and colorful Kahlo paintings are included in this section—
Withal Life: Pitahayas (1938, Madison Museum of Contemporary Fine art),
Still Life with Parrot and Fruit (1951, Harry Ransom Center, The Academy of Texas at Austin)
andWeeping Coconuts (1951, LACMA)
—alongsideCupboard (1947, Andrés Blaisten Collection) by María Izquierdo, Kahlo's contemporary and a fellow collector ofarte pop.
Invented Traditions /Tradiciones Inventadas
Just equally Kahlo used paint to create pictures, she used clothing to create her own image. Garments, headdresses and accessories from Mexico'due south rural and indigenous communities became her most visible collection ofarte popular, worn during international travels and immortalized in photographs. Thehuipil(rectangular blouse),rebozo (traditional shawl) and regionalTehuana dress were not only critical to Kahlo's cocky-fashioning, but also represented broader notions of ideal, "authentic" Mexican femininity. Kahlo made the Tehuana fashion her signature look—wearing, painting and fifty-fifty gifting the distinctive dresses to people outside of Mexico.
The garments in this section include a two-pieceTehuana dress (top and skirt) (1930s–1940s), on view for the first time since it was acquired by the MFA in 2017. Although Kahlo did non wear the wearing apparel herself, it was purchased with her help by Jackson Cole Phillips, the original possessor of her paintingDos Mujeres.
Source: http://arthistorynewsreport.blogspot.com/2019/04/frida-kahlo-and-arte-popular.html
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