Laying the groundwork for a free trade agreement that would remake his nation's economy, Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortari loaned crates of art to the United States in the autumn of 1990. Bolstered by a $10 million advertising campaign, the works were destined to be shown in a series of one hundred and fifty exhibitions and events intended to counter Americans' derisive views of Mexico. Illustrating many of the ads was a self-portrait of Frida Kahlo.
Frida Kahlo, Untitled [Self-portrait with thorn necklace and hummingbird] 1940. Nickolas Muray Collection of Mexican Art.
The selection of Kahlo's mestiza visage as the face of Salinas's neoliberal propaganda was as prescient as it was improbable. Within a decade, Frida would become one of Mexico's leading exports. Championed by celebrities including Madonna – who deemed Kahlo her "soul mate" – the artist grew into a global brand in the years that Salinas privatized the Mexican economy and NAFTA lifted his country to the pinnacle of globalization. Mattel brought a Frida Kahlo Barbie doll to market. Frida's name and likeness, known only to an elite in her lifetime, have been licensed for products ranging from sneakers to cosmetics. For those manufacturers, and for the neoliberals who appropriated Kahlo to sell free trade with Mexico, her life of political radicalism is left unmentioned. (Mattel never considered making a doll of her lover Leon Trotsky.)
The peculiarities of "Fridamania" provide the leitmotif of Frida: The Making of an Icon, a sprawling exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, now on view at Tate Modern. The MFAH curator Mari Carmen Ramírez suggests an underlying cause for Kahlo's many conflicting representations in the opening paragraphs of her astute catalogue essay. Kahlo's iconicity "is not limited to a single image but is plural, resulting from the seemingly infinite number of competing icons that today comprise and perpetuate her myth," Ramírez writes, making the case that the myth entails much more than even the legends of Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso. "The Frida phenomenon is unlike anything else in past or recent history. It is not limited to Kahlo's art-making but extends to all aspects of her social image, innermost character, as well as her attire."
As a "polyvalent" icon with a lifelong habit of narcissistic theatricality, Kahlo has been put in the service of causes ranging from Chicano identity to Mexican dignity, from socialism to feminism, from queerness to disability. All of these have a basis in her life, which also included the role of devoted wife and muse to the muralist Diego Rivera, and the part of avant-garde painter creatively mixing Mexican folk art with Surrealism. Each of these dimensions of her character has attracted different constituencies to the cult of Frida. And many aspects of her identity have come into fashion recently, decades after her premature death in 1954.
Frida Kahlo, Untitled [Self-portrait with thorn necklace and hummingbird] 1940. Nickolas Muray Collection of Mexican Art.
The selection of Kahlo's mestiza visage as the face of Salinas's neoliberal propaganda was as prescient as it was improbable. Within a decade, Frida would become one of Mexico's leading exports. Championed by celebrities including Madonna – who deemed Kahlo her "soul mate" – the artist grew into a global brand in the years that Salinas privatized the Mexican economy and NAFTA lifted his country to the pinnacle of globalization. Mattel brought a Frida Kahlo Barbie doll to market. Frida's name and likeness, known only to an elite in her lifetime, have been licensed for products ranging from sneakers to cosmetics. For those manufacturers, and for the neoliberals who appropriated Kahlo to sell free trade with Mexico, her life of political radicalism is left unmentioned. (Mattel never considered making a doll of her lover Leon Trotsky.)
The peculiarities of "Fridamania" provide the leitmotif of Frida: The Making of an Icon, a sprawling exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, now on view at Tate Modern. The MFAH curator Mari Carmen Ramírez suggests an underlying cause for Kahlo's many conflicting representations in the opening paragraphs of her astute catalogue essay. Kahlo's iconicity "is not limited to a single image but is plural, resulting from the seemingly infinite number of competing icons that today comprise and perpetuate her myth," Ramírez writes, making the case that the myth entails much more than even the legends of Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso. "The Frida phenomenon is unlike anything else in past or recent history. It is not limited to Kahlo's art-making but extends to all aspects of her social image, innermost character, as well as her attire."
As a "polyvalent" icon with a lifelong habit of narcissistic theatricality, Kahlo has been put in the service of causes ranging from Chicano identity to Mexican dignity, from socialism to feminism, from queerness to disability. All of these have a basis in her life, which also included the role of devoted wife and muse to the muralist Diego Rivera, and the part of avant-garde painter creatively mixing Mexican folk art with Surrealism. Each of these dimensions of her character has attracted different constituencies to the cult of Frida. And many aspects of her identity have come into fashion recently, decades after her premature death in 1954.
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