I’ve been celebrating my blog with an art event. The event honors the woman who inspires me to keep it going as an artist: Frida Kahlo.
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For 10 Tuesdays, I have been creating/posting 10 different portraits of Frida Kahlo (plus some additional posts here and there) in some form/medium or another. It may be a drawing, an object, a doll, multimedia, whatever… A surprise.
Inspired by Tove Jansson‘s “Lilla My” from Moomin.
My “Lilla My” fan art (china marker on newsprint)
It is simply this: do not tire, never lose interest, never grow indifferent—lose your invaluable curiosity and you let yourself die. It’s as simple as that. – Tove Jansson
Here, Frida as Lilla My chews on her Diego cookie. She wears the hand earrings sculpted for her by Picasso:
The most curious thing about the supposed lies of Diego, is that in the long and short of it, those who are involved in the imaginary combination become angry, not because of the lie, but because of the truth contained in the lie, that always comes to the surface. – Frida Kahlo
Acid and tender, hard as steel and delicate and fine as a butterfly’s wing, lovable as a beautiful smile, and as profound and cruel as the bitterness of life.
So Diego Rivera describes his wife, Frida Kahlo, and so we describe by post street’s first limited edition iPhone case Calavera Karl, our artistic interpretation of our Fashion Saint, featuring our signature by post street portrait street art, embossed in white and available in all iPhone styles.
Since my subjects have always been my sensations, my states of mind and the profound reactions that life has been producing in me, I have frequently objectified all this in figures of myself, which were the most sincere and real thing that I could do in order to express what I felt inside and outside of myself. – Frida
Our relationship with our journal is important. It’s a safe place to purge in, to refocus, to process. By researching an artist and using our journal as a notebook, we develop the relationship further and connect ourselves with art history by becoming it ourselves. Write in your journal about your relationship with it and your relationship with Frida.
I just wrote in my journal: Deep breath. Fall back and see who catches you. Trust that the net is there. And if no one catches you- then start flying. That’s what these new wings are made for. They’re not just baby sprouts anymore. They are fully formed and strong. You just have to start exercising them.
The entry brings to mind Frida’s words:
Feet? Why do I need you, If I have wings to fly.
Frida certainly is in everything I create. My Frida series is one of my favorite series I have done. My Frida sock monkey is one of my favorite crafts I have done.
What about Frida’s relationship with and influence on other artists? What do other artists say about Frida?
Research online and in books.
Frida with photographer Nickolas Muray
The one of me is eternally grateful for the Happiness that the half of you so generously gave. – Nickolas Muray to Frida
Through her paintings, she breaks all the taboos of the woman’s body and of female sexuality. – Diego Rivera on Frida
Frida with hand earrings from Picasso
The art of Frida Kahlo is a ribbon around a bomb. – Andre Breton about Frida
The Other Surrealists: Trotsky (sitting), his wife, Natlia Sedova,the Painter Diego Rivera (back right), his wife, the Painter, Frieda Kahlo, Behind Kahlo, the French Surrealist, Andre Breton
… Breton arrived in 1938 and was enchanted with Mexico, which he found to be a ‘naturally surrealist’ country, and with Kahlo’s painting. Partly through his initiative, she was offered a show at the fashionable Julian Levy Gallery in New York later in 1938, and Breton himself wrote a rhetorical catalogue preface. The show was a triumph, and about half the paintings were sold. In 1939, Breton suggested a show in Paris, and offered to arrange it. Kahlo, who spoke no French, arrived in France to find that Breton had not even bothered to get her work out of customs. The enterprise was finally rescued by Marcel Duchamp, and the show opened about six weeks late. It was not a financial success, but the reviews were good, and the Louvre bought a picture for the Jeu de Paume. Kahlo also won praise from Kandinsky and Picasso. She had, however, conceived a violent dislike for what she called ‘this bunch of coocoo lunatic sons of bitches of surrealists.’ She did not renounce Surrealism immediately. in January 1940, for example, she was a participant (with Rivera) in the International Exhibition of Surrealism held in Mexico City. Later, she was to be vehement in her denials that she had ever been a true Surrealist. ‘They thought I was a Surrealist,’ she said, ‘but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.’
Find photos of Frida, cut, print etc. and glue them in your journal.
