Frida Kahlo
She has overshadowed all other artists in her country. Her audience is spellbound, whispering her name over and over again. Frida Kahlo, the unibrow woman with her Tehuana dress, has become an artistic commodity. She is both loved and hated, and her paintings, which are mostly self portraits, are transformed into a painful litany people relish and glorify.
Her Mexican spirit, the accident that changed her life when she was barely 19, and her tumultuous relationship with Diego Rivera, have imbedded her in our collective imagination. “I suffered two grave accidents in my life…One in which a streetcar knocked me down and the other was Diego.”
She probably did not wish to be remembered in such a way, but her innate dramatic flair made countless women across different generations empathize with her. Her work cannot be placed into one particular aesthetic canon. She knew that. Actually, she began to paint because she was bored of lying in bed after the accident. While she may not have complied with any canon, her paintings forever changed the face of Mexico.
Surrealists like Breton embraced her, but she never said she belonged to that circle. She simply painted as a way to exteriorize her pain. Now we see her plastered across t-shirts, handbags, and bookmarks. Any object is now open to include her iconic visage.
Many scoff and say she is overrated; some suggest Diego Rivera finished her paintings and was the mastermind behind her unique way of dressing. Her sarcastic wit and her unconventional social ways made her, without a doubt, a fascinating woman. She was gifted with a vibrant and tormented spirit, which moved the hearts of those who wished to be closer to her and her work. What are the qualities in her paintings that set her apart? Is her worth as an artist devalued because of the marketing furor that surrounds her?
Basquiat
Jean Michel Basquiat, l’enfant terrible, also had a reputation for being overvalued. “A marketing triumph,” “talentless,” “no artistic training” are some of the epithets once used to describe Basquiat, yet his artistic discourse was pretty clear from the start: support the black community against racism, which was more than prevalent in the eighties while living in New York.
His paintings appeared to be made by a small child who continued to play with dinosaurs and dream of becoming a fireman or astronaut. The distorted figures he etched reminds us of Picasso’s ladies of Avignon, and it must be noted that Basquiat deeply admired the king of cubism. Is this enough to not appear overrated?
Despite his fervent social and political speech, Basquiat had been raised by a Haitian father who earned a living as an accountant and a Puerto Rican mother who was a greatly respected graphic designer. At the age of 16 he was enrolled in a school for gifted children and he was swiftly expelled because of his rebellious spirit. At this point he began to experiment with drugs and the surging subcultures of New York. He left his home and lived on the street for two years. He made a living by decorating t-shirts and postcards; his trade was street art, and he’d paint the subway cars, dubbing them “SAMO” (SAMe Old shit).When he began to gain notoriety and his work was presented at the greatest galleries of the city, Basquiat was one of the first to introduce street art and vandalism into these great, hallowed halls.
Just like Kahlo, Basquiat suffered a small accident and found succor through art. The hours he spent at the hospital and the book his mother gave him sparked his interest in anatomy. When he stepped into the spotlight, Warhol was hard at work dissolving the borders between art and publicity, and galleries were amassing conceptual and minimalist works. Basquiat was another kettle of fish altogether; he was sarcastic and acidic. He admired the work of children far more than those of consecrated artists, and this belief and respect for childlike wonder were reflected in his creations.
Basquiat never truly had control over the sale of his art but the despair, injustice, and racism was present in his work. A social art that ultimately snowballed into a massive, marketing success.
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Without a doubt placing these two icons side by side is a peculiar exercise. Both colored outside the lines and refused to be pigeonholed into one single category. They both graduated from the school of passion and deviancy, and they both witnessed their rise to fame. It is after their passing that we continue to debate whether they have value or not. Basquiat picked up the baton of social injustice and brought street art into the limelight. Frida Kahlo is a mine ready to be exploited by artists, publicists, and designers, for she has a direct access to the heartstrings of the masses.