Seeing the Frida show at the Philadelphia Museum was like visiting an old friend that you hadn't seen for a long time although you didn't really know why you drifted apart. Suspiciously absent from the narrative, although curated by Hayden Herrera, one of my original sources for all things Frida, were her affairs with women. I found this odd because they did mention Noguchi and Trotsky and of course those of Diego the frogs'. It was however lovely to see the beautiful Frida cross-dressing in her family photos and no one seemed to mind.
Of course I enjoyed seeing Frieda in the collection of Dolores Huerta that I saw when in Xochimillo, Mexico after a ride in the floating gardens. The paintings somehow belonged there, in their context. I couldn't help thinking what Madge has in her collection--I think the great one with the white lace around the face. I was compelled to buy that image as a scarf.
A highlight was the mini Moses mural--a cross between something you'd see in El Barrio and a head shop for it's cosmic elements. Damn, she packed a cast of Cecil B. DeMille in such a relatively small frame!
The overarching theme of intense pain made my spine curl into a spiral twist, but all was greatly assuaged by the excellent mini-mall of visual merchandising; life sized, 3-Dimensional representations of the best portraits bowled you over as if one of the baskets of bloody fruits that you just left seeing in the show hit you smack in the head—I got dizzy! Her work became one giant vanitas, and, I had to cling to life by swiping my credit card mightily with big swoops and my friend’s 10% off membership discount. He had to hold me back from buying coffee mugs with any of the more bloody depictions, but I’m sorry I did not buy the fake mustache kit!
