“I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.”
Frida Kahlo
The world’s current It Girl is not being photographed by paparazzi’s outside a Las Vegas nightclub. She’s not Instagraming from a yacht in the Mediterranean. She isn’t wearing Balmain or getting glittered up at Coachella. She’s not even alive. But one thing is for sure: Frida Kahlo is the contemporary fashion and pop culture icon.
While the Mexican painter acquired plenty of notoriety in her life, she has garnered more fame and admiration from the entire world since her death. The images and works being plastered on every t-shirt, coffee mug, and dorm-room poster are the same ones that were available to the public years ago. And yet there is a slight mystery and interest every time someone mentions Frida.
While it’s true that the artist had a way of always showing her personality to the public, it’s the creation of her persona that we all identify with. Her brightly colored traditional dresses, which she adopted during her relationship with Diego Rivera, presented a shared memory of cultural heritage and cult of personality. She embodied the celebrity style. Her distinctive fashion is proof of that, since it shows how she controlled the way people perceived her then and even now.
There are a few scholars who believe Frida’s search for distinction amongst other women or artists of the time came at a price. The public loves her. Yet they pick and choose which parts of her life are okay to show and which they prefer not to see or know about. We’ve all heard the story of the accident that left her in constant pain for the rest of her life. We know about her tumultuous relationship with Rivera, the man who she married twice. But we don’t see the person behind it all.
Dr. Lis Pankl and Kevin Blake wrote an article regarding the material obsession of our present culture with Frida. “According to some critics, Kahlo’s strong and persistent exploration of gender and alternative sexualities throughout her life is glossed over in an attempt to make her the fit into the category of ‘woman’ and, unfortunately, victim as well.”
We are all guilty of this. We’ve objectified Frida and other famous people, to the point where we see them as movie characters who don’t live outside the image we have of them. Frida was a complex person who struggled against the constraints of the society of her time. If we only think of her as a woman with unfortunate situations, then we lose sight of her accomplishments. When we idealize her, we miss out on her originality.
“Because of Kahlo’s international fame and ability to cut across cultural and gendered borders, it is often forgotten (or at least rarely mentioned) that she is undeniably Mexican and this Mexicanness was repeatedly demonstrated in her work through the use of iconic symbols and material culture drawn from her native environment.” (Pankl and Blake)
One complicated subject when it comes to Frida is cultural appropriation. Was the artist guilty of this? And is the trend that has erupted from her fame, where women all over the globe wear hair flowers and particular dress styles, also a form of cultural appropriation? Well, yes and no.
The painter’s love of Tehuana outfits comes with a catch. While Frida was Mexican and shared, to an extent, part of that cultural heritage, she wasn’t actually part of the community in Oaxaca from where those dresses and head coverings came from. There are those who believe she also used the colonial fetish for native peoples to her advantage when she adopted this clothing style.
If we stay on this point we might realize that as an audience we’ve sexualized her “exoticness,” instead of paying attention to the actual story of her sexuality. We rather see her as a mysterious mystic woman dressed in bright colors, than as a person who tried to break with the societal norms and standards regarding gender and sexuality. In other words, when we only see the picture Frida presented of herself, we fail to see the boundaries she pushed towards modernity.
We can like her colorful clothes and perception of the world around her. But we should also see the story of the woman who used art as a way to speak her mind during a time when it wasn’t allowed. Frida continues to lure us into her life and creativity, but we should focus on seeing the side we’re more likely to overlook: the woman behind the flowers and broken heart.
“I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.” Frida Kahlo
Source:
Pankl, Lis, and Kevin Blake. “Made in Her Image: Frida Kahlo as Material Culture.” Material Culture, vol. 44, no. 2, 2012, pp. 1–20.,
