Thoughts about Frida's "commodification"
06 January 2019
Starting from the visit to the Bendigo Art Gallery, now exhibiting "Frida Kahlo, Her Photos" the journalist poses interesting questions about the Fridamania that started everywhere in the world at the end of the 80's .
"The 257 pictures from Kahlo’s collection include her own, but also some by contemporaries such as Man Ray and Pierre Verger.
Here, Kahlo’s political beliefs are clearly represented. There are photos of indigenous Mexicans living simpler lives, and of figureheads such as Leon Trotsky, the Russian Marxist who briefly lived with Kahlo and her husband, the painter Diego Rivera. (After Kahlo’s death, Rivera would drape her coffin in the Soviet communist flag.) It begs the question: would an anticapitalist, whose 1932 painting Self-portrait on the Borderline between Mexico and the United States contrasts indigenous Mexican flowers and artefacts with the smoke-belching chimneys of a Ford factory, be pleased by the commodification of her image?"
Has Frida's face really become a commodity?
Can Frida be defined "the queen of the selfies"?
Click the link below to read The Guardian's article.
