How Frida Kahlo mesmerised the fashion world
Last year, like thousands before me, I visited La Casa Azul in a smart, residential quarter of Mexico City, where Frida Kahlo was born in leafy, middle class comfort in 1907 and where she and Diego Rivera lived until her death in 1954. Like those thousands, I left feeling I had a special connection with her.
It’s that kind of museum. She’s that kind of artist. See where Frida and Diego fought and made up. Poke around their kitchen. Reach out and touch her pot of paintbrushes (actually I don’t think you’re allowed). Soak up the muslinfiltered air of the room where she died.
You’re emotionally ramrodded before you even look at all that weird, mesmerising art or discover how cross you are that, what with Kahlo being a woman and all, for most of her life she was overlooked by professional critics.
The reassessment got under way in 1982 with a joint exhibition with Tina Modotti (now much less celebrated) at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. A little later, once fashion caught whiff of Kahlo’s sensational personal style, there was no halting Fridamania.
She is simply too perfect a heroine for our age. The childhood polio, the calamitous tram accident that put her in a wheelchair and left her in permanent pain, the miscarriage, the philandering husband, the lesbian affairs (who can blame her, with Diego drunkenly snoring in the next room?), the fervent faith in socialism (she and Rivera gave shelter to Trotsky when he fled to Mexico) the gorgeous splashes of colour on canvas and confessional selfportraits… she was Tracey Emin with added Mexican texture. No, better, because there is no danger of you ever finding yourself sitting next to her and being harangued over dinner – which is not true of Emin herself. Also, while her claims that her German refugee father was Jewish have been disputed, she was impeccably bi-racial, her mother having indigenous Indian and Spanish blood.
She was beautiful in a unique way, which helps when someone wants to create a ballet around you (Tamara Rojo for the English National Ballet last year. It’s beautiful, and Diego’s role is satisfyingly reduced because it was customised for Irek Mukhamedov, who no longer dances much: the balletic equivalent of becoming impotent).
Oh, and the Hollywood film, Frida? Salma Hayek’s account in The New York Times last year of how Harvey Weinstein blackmailed her into filming some steamy girl-on-girl action adds yet more cultural topicality to the Frida saga. She’s the story that keeps on
She’s the story that keeps on feeding modern preoccupations
feeding our modern preoccupations. No wonder she has become a mascot for so many politically correct minority groups – and quite a few politically incorrect big businesses.
This is what drives the purists crazy. It’s a problem the V&A’S exhibition will only exacerbate. This time next year, we won’t want to see Kahloesque colour clashes, floral headgear and flowy skirts, embroidered blouses or plaited buns for decades to come.
But it’s not Kahlo’s fault she’s become an icon. Don’t dismiss her because she was as stylish as she was talented or because the people at Mattel are morons and produced a Frida doll with Barbie’s figure and no monobrow. There will be a lot more of this ilk in the coming months. Brace yourselves, breathe, take a deep dive into the art – and walk away from the headdress.