Críticas Magazine

Adriana V. Lopez

Frida Kahlo Gets Dissed
March 28, 2008

Did anyone read that bizarre article in The New York Times Magazine last weekend about the state of Latin American Art entitled "After Frida"? Despite there being too much mumble jumble about the art worlds’ mercurial svengalis (curators,scholars, wealthy patrons), it did bring up quite a touchy topic for Latin arts and culture in general: Who
should get included and who should not.


Allow me to summarize this full length feature: Latin American art is now hot (!). It’s been ignored far too long (!). It’s hard to define (!). And that Frida Kahlo isn’t a good painter (Ouch). This last statement, from the mouth of a fascinating curator of Puerto Rican descent named Mari Carmen Ramírez who was the focus of this article, as the “Mover and Shaker,” and force of nature behind all this lustful bluster.

So what are they (and Mari Carmen) fighting about? Defining what modern Latin American art is while trying to distance it from stereotypes (without loosing its soul and politics, of course). In a perfect world, there would be equal representation for this enormous territory’s various kinds of artists: its Surrealist politicians, the U.S. Latino movement, and the more neutral artists of Abstraction. But because so little Latin American art has been featured in museums, who and what gets chosen is the sore point.

Like us folks who work with Spanish-language and Latino literature, I found this article strangely captivating for its hard to pin point arguments. It echoes a lot of the same types of debates we who work with books by Latino, Latin American and Spanish writers face in our decision making and categorization (The Golden Age, Novela Negra, Boom writers, the Crack writers, the McOndo writers, U.S. Latino writers, etc). It’s the same kind of argument—but very worth having. Why? At least it makes a stink and gets people to pay attention. Seems because of Ramírez’s first class stink, museums and galleries worldwide are now muy interesados.

This is what Ramírez, 52, Curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston said about Frida:

“My objection to Frida Kahlo is the phenomenon of Frida Kahlo and the way it obscures Latin American art. She was a woman with an exceptional capacity to present her own suffering through an amazing and rather unique style. But she didn’t have many followers. You can’t use her as an emblem for an entire continent. It’s absurd.” Then she flashed a mischievous, gap-toothed grin. “And of course, she wasn’t such a great painter either.”

 
Hey, I am a fan of the Frida. Yet I agree with Ramírez that she can’t represent all of Latin American art. But one thing: Maybe Frida didn’t have a lot of “followers” for her art, per say, but she did put the “I” in icon.

Posted by Adriana V. Lopez on March 28, 2008 | Comments (0)