Author details Kahlo’s ‘breakthrough’ in U.S.
San Jose writer spent years researching iconic artist’s American evolution
Is there an artist whose body of work is more instantaneously identifiable than that produced by the pride of Mexico, Frida Kahlo? Her iconic style, suffused with bright color, deep symbolism and arresting, often shocking imagery, was forged over a short time period (1907-1954) marked by tragedies and triumphs, pain both physical and psychological and by her pure passion for life itself. The focus is intense and razorsharp in a significant new book, the first major biography in more than three decades, which posits that Kahlo’s emerging style largely came into its own in this country. “Frida in America” (St. Martin’s Press, $29.97, 400 pages), by San Jose author Celia Stahr, argues that the tumultuous years from 1930 to 1932, which she began as a new bride traveling with her famous and much older muralist husband to San Francisco, New York and Detroit, transformed her from Senora Diego Rivera to the independently renowned artist we know today. Stahr, a modern art professor at the University of San Francisco, worked on the book for more than a decade, producing a heavily footnoted account that, by necessity, delves deep into Kahlo’s psyche while examining and interpreting the work she did here. Stahr’s research benefited greatly from Kahlo’s voluminous correspondence with family and friends, such as fellow painter Georgia O’Keeffe, and from a diary kept by her confidante Lucienne Bloch, daughter of the composer Ernest Bloch. The book comes just as the de Young Museum in San Francisco readies a major new exhibit, “Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving,” set to open March 21. We had questions, beginning with what Stahr hoped to uncover that would give us new insight into the artist.
AObviously, a lot has been written about her — she has become an icon. But I realized I didn’t know a whole lot about how Frida got to the point at which we consider her a mature or great artist. … I wanted to know more about that breakthrough. She had all the ingredients of a great artist before she came to the United States, and what happened was a confluence of factors, personal things that happened in her own life and also what was happening in the U.S., and I think this kind of combustible energy helped bring out what was already inside her.
QWhat interests you the most about Frida the artist and Frida the human being?
AWow! Everything! I don’t use this word casually, but I think she was brilliant. She was knowledgeable about so many different kinds of art forms and cultural traditions, both in Mexico and even outside of Mexico. And she was able to take all of these different ideas and imageries and then synthesize them somehow in her own work and also make it very personal. And that’s not something that just anybody can do. I think she stands out as an artist, but also as a person, because she also defied gender norms in so many different ways. And she did it with flair — yes, she did! And it took a lot of courage.
QHere’s a silly question — why did Frida give herself that unibrow in, am I right, all of her self-portraits?
AI think it’s because one of the things that was inside her, probably from a young age, was this sense of androgyny, that she had both male and female aspects within her. And the unibrow was a part of that.
QOur readers will be especially interested in how that early year in San Francisco impacted her development.
AI think San Francisco is a period where as an artist, she is doing a lot of work trying to figure out her signature style. She’s working with a lot of cross-cultural elements, doing these portraits of people who are living in San Francisco, but the style of the paintings often incorporates aspects of colonial painting from Mexico (such
as) the color palettes she chooses. In San Francisco, she is trying to figure out her relationship with Diego and her art style.
QHas Frida as an artist surpassed Diego Rivera?
AFirst off, it depends on whom you talk to. Everyone can have a different opinion on this . ... Frida’s fame really starts to take off in the 1980s, where you start to see more and more exhibitions and interest in her work This has a lot to do with, from the time of the ’70s, the feminist art movement and art historians (asking) where are all the women artists? What happened here? And so Frida is one of the beneficiaries of this new kind of approach to art history. And going back to what I said earlier, I think her work is highly personal, but she also is able to make it universal, in the way that she utilizes certain imagery, symbolism, etc. So I think people really feel a connection on an emotional level to her work. And she also was somebody who didn’t shy away from taking on difficult subjects — she showed her pain, but she also showed her joy. And I think with Diego’s work, because of the nature of it, those murals that are talking about sweeping aspects of history — which are very important — it makes it a little bit harder for people to grasp on such an intense emotional level.
QFrida was fairly appalled with what she encountered in 1930s America — the sharp contrast between rich and poor, but also with what she regarded as a certain amount of phoniness versus authenticity. Do you AUTHOR EVENTS • 5 p.m. today at Book Passage, 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco • 7 p.m. March 12 at Pruneyard Books, 1875 S. Bascom Ave., Campbell • 5 p.m. March 24 at University of San Francisco’s Fromm Hall, 2497 Golden Gate Ave., San Francisco • Noon-2 p.m. May 23, lecture and signing at “Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving” exhibit at de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco think her views would change much if she were here today?
AHuh. Wow. That’s a good question. Probably not. I have to say when I started working on the book around 2008, we were having the big financial crisis. And I thought, wow, that’s interesting, the Depression is going on in the 1930s. But I had no idea at the time I started where it would be now, and how the issues that are front and center for us in the country right now, having to do with the discrepancy between rich and poor, the focus on issues of race and gender — those were all there when Frida was here in the early ’30s. So that’s why, yes, I think she’d probably feel the same way.