{"id":899279,"date":"2026-09-20T20:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T20:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/899279\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T20:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T20:18:09","slug":"inside-the-lucas-museum-of-narrative-art-opening-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/899279\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, opening soon"},"content":{"rendered":"

A rare but familiar Frida Kahlo self-portrait<\/p>\n

A Frida Kahlo<\/a> portrait hung in a prominent spot in the museum\u2019s fourth-floor galleries will look as familiar to many visitors as some of the surrounding superhero art. But that belies how special it is. It may alone make a visit worth it for her devotees.<\/p>\n

The 1940 \u201cAutorretrato Dedicado al Dr. Eloesser,\u201d or \u201cSelf Portrait Dedicated to Dr. Eloesser,\u201d was acquired by the Lucas Museum in 2020, and became one of the few such portraits from the artist held outside her native Mexico.<\/p>\n

It shows her with a bloom of flowers in her hair, wearing a thorn necklace with drops of blood, and silver earrings that were a gift from Pablo Picasso, whose work is also in the museum collection.<\/p>\n

Soon after the museum acquired it in 2020, the director at the time told the Los Angeles Times she considered it \u201cThe Mona Lisa of Mexico.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

The painting is dedicated to Leo Eloesser, a San Francisco Bay Area physician who helped Kahlo with her chronic pain.<\/p>\n

A banner across the bottom calls him \u201cmi m\u00e9dico y mi mejor amigo\u201d \u2014 my doctor and my best friend.<\/p>\n

Dogs playing poker show the museum\u2019s high and low cards<\/p>\n

In a perfect encapsulation of the museum\u2019s merger of high and low art, just a few steps from the Kahlo portrait is Cassius Marcellus Coolidge\u2019s 1894 \u201cPoker Game,\u201d which shows a group of dogs playing cards.<\/p>\n

Often considered the height of lowbrow, kitschy barroom art, it\u2019s the first in a series of 18 oil paintings on the theme from the American artist. It gets a new, elevated view in a museum that specializes in it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A rare but familiar Frida Kahlo self-portrait A Frida Kahlo portrait hung in a prominent spot in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":899280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":["post-899279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=899279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/899280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=899279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=899279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=899279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}