From: art reviews
Category: Art
Date: 23 July 2005
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
Frida made herself an icon. Obviously. Her painting have imaged power. She has the intelligence to be literal with her pictures. To show people joined by, or exposing, their blood and guts.
In terms of a show it would have been nice to see these paintings in context: the pictorial devices of socialist realism/ murals, the vernacular art of mexico, aztec stuff. What a rich show that would have been.
Kahlo's painting lack something en masse. Or perhaps they all have something in common. A dull laboured filling in with paint which drags down the extravagant fantasies. She doesn't seem to have developed a way of painting to match the directness of her ideas.
This means that I got no ecstasy of unworldly painting metaphysics from this show. Just the pleasure of a storybook.
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