I have officially finished all 500 pages of the Hayden Herrera biography!!! It was an epic book. Her research was detailed and expansive. I’m pretty sure she interviewed anyone who ever smelled, tasted, heard, touched or saw Frida Kahlo. She even got her paws on personal photos and love letters.
Pretty much the second I put down Frida, I picked up the next book in my pile, Finding Frida Kahlo, which is about the very controversial stash of Frida belongings found a couple years ago. These newly discovered trunks and suitcases were full of personal documents, diaries, clothing, and art that appear to have belonged to Frida Kahlo. This has not been authenticated. Most people believe it’s a total fraud. I wanted to see for myself, being the amateur Frida scholar that I am, so I went through page after page of glossy photographs and descriptions of the items until I came to a conclusion:
They’re a complete and total fraud.
The signatures are all wrong. Every item in this stash is signed “F.K.” or “Frida K.” and I mean EVERYTHING, even recipes and doodles. It doesn’t make sense that she would have signed things like a list of ingredients for stew or random doodles of monkeys. Plus, Real Frida (as she shall henceforth be known) signed her name differently depending on whom she was writing to, and it was usually a nickname or even just lip prints. Why then, would she sign every letter and piece of artwork “F.K.”??? In addition to this Real Frida meticulously dated all of her letters, not only the year but the month and the day as well. She was very organized. Conveniently, none of the letters or documents are dated.
What’s really interesting though is a bunch of sexual drawings and descriptions of her sexual affairs with women. These are totally faked. Real Frida loved sex, but she NEVER spoke of her own sex life. In addition her bisexuality was never an issue. Diego preferred her to have affairs with women. Her affairs with other men made him furious.
Even more annoying are the hundreds of letters and diary entries calling Diego names and depicting him as a pretty ruthless monster. This is also completely false. Real Frida loved Diego. One of the most compelling things about their relationship is that they were both deeply flawed people who loved each other not in spite of, but because of those flaws. Frida knew that she always came second to his art and that she usually came second to his womanizing. She also knew that her love for him transcended the pain he caused her.
Clearly, whoever forged all these documents wanted to stir up the Real Frida mythology. They wanted to shock the public. They wanted to create a new person, one that was angry and hopeless and pathetic. These are things that could never describe Real Frida. She was sexual, vibrant, funny, graceful, and a belligerent drug addict in her last days.
I did some research online to find out what other people were saying about this new discovery. This article appeared in the NY Times and it pretty much validates my opinion:
No comments:
Post a Comment