Martin Gayford

A self examined

As this V&A exhibitions proves, the work of art was herself

In 2004 Mexican art historians made a sensational discovery in Frida Kahlo’s bathroom. Inside this space, sealed since the 1950s, was an enormous archive of documents, photographs and personal possessions. This hoard forms the basis of Frida Kahlo: Making Herself Up, an exhibition at the V&A.

Oscar Wilde once remarked that ‘one should either be a work of art or wear a work of art’. Kahlo opted for both, and she didn’t stop there. Though she was a Marxist who numbered Trotsky among her many lovers, she also channelled the role of saint and martyr.

She was neater than Francis Bacon, whose studio-floor detritus has also been subjected to zealous forensic analysis — but the clutter Kahlo left behind her was similarly eclectic. Some of the exhibits were required because of her multiple disabilities. Kahlo suffered polio at the age of six followed by a near-fatal bus crash in 1925, which shattered her spine.

On show are the medicaments she took and the plaster corsets she had to wear, and, most poignant of all, a prosthetic limb necessary after Kahlo’s right leg had been amputated towards the end of her life. These pathetic items have the air of religious relics about them, her version of the crown of thorns. Of course, Mexico is an intensely Catholic culture. Kahlo’s ‘Self Portrait as a Tehuan’ (1943) resembles a baroque Madonna. Her tears are those of a mater dolorosa, and poor Frida, who underwent some 30 operations before dying aged 47, certainly had lots of sorrows to suffer. The idea of the artist as holy victim and outsider goes back to the 19th century. Van Gogh and Gauguin were fascinated by it.

In addition to this role, Kahlo emphasised her exotic origins, at least as viewed from the perspective of Europe or the USA.

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