Fridas for Everyone

Just when you thought that everything Frida had been Frida-ed—a hundred books, a million fashion moments, a jillion selfie homages, and a veritable continent of accumulated Frida tchotchkes, from mugs to oven mitts to compression socks to Christmas tree ornaments in the form of a gold-trimmed frame with an image of a dog dressed up as Frida, not to mention a movie or two1—this spring High Art Frida returned. There was an exhibition at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City of works from the Gelman Collection, among them a large number by Frida and Diego Rivera.2 There was an exhibition of the work of Frida and her followers that started at Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts and is currently at Tate Modern, and El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego at the Metropolitan Opera, together with a small installation at the Museum of Modern Art of works related to it. To counter the socks and dog-faced Fridas, the culture seems to have felt the need to reestablish a connection with the flesh-and-blood artist, the profoundly original woman who used her own face as both a mask and a revelation of a soul stripped bare, who wore ethnic dress as a conjuration, and who spent her life painting not just he...