An Intimate Look at an Icon: Frida Kahlo Comes to the Brooklyn Museum

One of the most recognizable faces in all of art history is making her big debut at the Brooklyn Museum this weekend. The highly anticipated blockbuster exhibit Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving is the largest U.S. exhibition in ten years devoted to Frida Kahlo, and the first in the United States to have the privilege of displaying a collection of her personal possessions usually housed at the artist’s lifelong home in Mexico City, the Casa Azul (Blue House). Known for her deeply personal self-portraiture that is imaginative and surreal, the exhibition explores themes of politics, gender, clothing, national identities, and disability, as they play out in her life and works.

While taking in the captivating self-portraits she is known for is a wonderfully direct way to get to know this iconic artist, the diverse collection of personal objects on display gives us an even more intimate encounter with Kahlo. More than 100 of her personal artifacts, including the artists’ own clothing, jewelry, cosmetics, and orthopedic corsets, as well as photographs, letters, and drawings, give us a fuller picture of the lived experience behind the now iconic paintings.

Born in Mexico in 1907, Kahlo had plans to become a doctor when a tragic bus accident at 18 badly broke her back and left her infertile. Those injuries on top of a weakened leg resulting from childhood polio led Kahlo to have dozens of surgeries throughout her adult life, with intermittent periods of convalescing, and she often lived with considerable pain. Kahlo had a tumultuous marriage to the painter Diego Rivera, who she met a meeting of the Mexican Communist Party and wed in 1928. With him, she traveled the U.S. and Mexico, and forged her own artistic voice. She died at 47 after a prolonged illness.

Throughout her life, Kahlo carefully crafted her own image, both in real life and on the canvas. She chose the traditional dress and elaborate headpieces of her mother’s Tehauna people, to show her cultural pride, as well as to disguise her orthotics and injuries under the brightly colored billowing skirts and flowing blouses. Through the 10 major paintings on display, her clothing, and ephemera, we can see an artist taking control of her identity in the face of an illness that was threatening to control her life. Because of her strong political convictions, pride, and self-determination, Kahlo insisted on defining herself and her life through both her daily rituals of self-presentation and her self-portraits.

While this exhibition originated at the V&A in London, the Brooklyn Museum is putting their own twist on it by placing special emphasis on Kahlo’s visits to New York City. Her international art career was launched by a 1938 exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery, arranged for by surrealist poet André Breton. Photos from this period by photographer Nickolas Muray bring Kahlo and 1939 Greenwich Village to life in vivid color. The Brooklyn Museum also provides larger context to Kahlo’s life and love of her native land through the display of objects from their collection of Mesoamerican art.

Though successful in her lifetime, Kahlo did not become famous until the 1970s. Since then, her influence and fame has continued to increase, and she is now one of the most famous artists in art history and a feminist icon. Appearances Can Be Deceiving gives us an intimate look at a figure that has become larger-than-life.

Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving in on view through May 12, 2019, at the Brooklyn Museum.