{"id":346112,"date":"2026-03-18T20:03:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T20:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/346112\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T20:03:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T20:03:17","slug":"the-canonization-of-frida-kahlo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/346112\/","title":{"rendered":"The Canonization of Frida Kahlo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Art Review<\/a><\/p>\n

An exhibition blasts apart any crystallized conception of the artist until no easily digestible singular figure emerges. <\/p>\n


\n \"Liz
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Liz Kim<\/a><\/p>\n

\n March 17, 2026
\n \u2014 5 min read\n <\/p>\n

\"\"Mary McCartney, \u201cBeing Frida, London\u201d (2000), gicle\u00e9 print (all photos Liz Kim\/Hyperallergic)<\/p>\n

HOUSTON \u2014 Frida Kahlo is already a canonical Mexican artist, but Frida: Making of an Icon<\/a> at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston positions her as an emblem of the metaphorical and geographical borderlands. With an emphasis on the reception of Kahlo\u2019s work across times and cultures in the past century, the exhibition blasts apart any crystallized conception of the artist until no easily digestible singular figure emerges. That is, indeed, the point.<\/p>\n

The show is organized by theme and consists of both Kahlo\u2019s work and those by artists who were part of her community as well as those she influenced. Three of the sections, consisting of a majority of the 35 works total, are dedicated to the artist’s work, while a whopping 13 explore her impact and influence via more than a hundred works by related and subsequent generations of artists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

Left: Frida Kahlo, \u201cUntitled (known as Pancho Villa y Adelita)\u201d (1927), oil on canvas; right: Frida Kahlo, \u201cRetrato de Miguel L. Lira\u201d (1927),\u00a0oil on canvas<\/p>\n

The section \u201cEarly Experimentation\u201d displays four of Kahlo\u2019s works from the mid-1920s, made during her student years, alongside two family photos. Here, Kahlo was finding her voice, and not all of her experiments were successful, including her brief foray into Cubism in \u201cUntitled (known as Pancho Villa y Adelita)\u201d (1927). Kahlo\u2019s stylistic interest in Mannerist Renaissance portraiture, on the other hand, is a revelation, as seen in works that showcase shallow depths of field and delicate linearities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSurrealist Affinities\u201d brings into view Kahlo\u2019s connection to Andr\u00e9 Breton, who organized a Parisian exhibition of her works alongside that of Jos\u00e9 Guadalupe Posada and Manuel \u00c1lvarez Bravo in 1939, titled Mexique. This section also highlights self-portraits from Kahlo\u2019s contemporaries, such as Mar\u00eda Izquierdo, whose \u201cSue\u00f1o y presentimiento\u201d (1947) depicts the artist holding her own decapitated head. Taken together, this part of the show situates the artist as not only a Surrealist, but also an active participant in larger regional and artistic circles.<\/p>\n

\"\"Mar\u00eda Izquierdo, \u201cSue\u00f1o y presentimiento\u201d (1947), oil on canvas<\/p>\n

The exhibition\u2019s strength is in historicizing how Kahlo came to mean so much to so many, crediting Chicana\/o artists with rediscovering her to forge an art history in their own image. This began with the exhibition Homenaje a Frida Kahlo at Galer\u00eda de la Raza in San Francisco, curated in 1978 by Carmen Lomas Garza with committee support. The section \u201cOn the Other Side of the Border\u201d reveals how Chicana\/o artists such as Santa Barraza tread in her footsteps by painting odes to their Mesoamerican roots, and how those like Joey Terrill began turning Kahlo into a pop symbol. <\/p>\n

The extensive \u201cGendered Dialogues,\u201d meanwhile, connects Kahlo\u2019s work to the feminist canon of the late 20th century. Among the works included are Judy Baca’s theatrical imagery, Carrie Mae Weems’s intimate black-and-white photographs, and Delilah Montoya’s shocking symbolic stillbirth. Here, Kahlo\u2019s unflinching representations of the body and womanhood, such as the immensely painful work about her miscarriage, \u201cHenry Ford Hospital\u201d (1932), find affinities across space and time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

Left: Judy F. Baca photographed by Donna Deitch, \u201cJudy Baca as La Pachuca, from the Las Tres Mar\u00edas installation and performance\u201d (1976), suite of nine pigment prints; right: Carrie Mae Weems, from \u201cNot Manet\u2019s Type\u201d (1997), silver gelatin print<\/p>\n

\u201cNeo-Mexicanisms\u201d gathers works by Mexican artists during the late 1980s and 1990s, who embraced Kahlo\u2019s interests in subversion and folk art. Julio Gal\u00e1n\u2019s self-portraits, for instance, satirize the cult of personality, while Astrid Hadad\u2019s sumptuous cabaret costumes amplify Kahlo\u2019s theatricality. In the uncanny section \u201cEmbodying Frida,\u201d Graciela Iturbide poses as Kahlo in her bathtub for the series El ba\u00f1o de Frida, Coyoac\u00e1n (2005), and Mary McCartney captures Tracy Emin appropriating the modernist in \u201cBeing Frida, London\u201d (2000) as part of a reverent, self-referential ritual. Finally, in \u201cQueer Interventions and Decolonization,\u201d artists like Rafael Amorim and Martine Gutierrez deliver apt tributes to the openly bisexual icon via a staged gay pairing in \u201cLas dos Fridas\u201d (1939) and a decadent 2018 self-portrait embodying queer rage, respectively. <\/p>\n

The exhibition misses some opportunities to juxtapose Kahlo\u2019s works with those that emulate them, such as \u201cLo que el agua me dio\u201d (1938), the painting Iturbide referenced, and \u201cLas dos Fridas\u201d (1939), which Amorim visually quotes. In the grand scheme of the show, however, this matters little \u2014\u00a0it is all about Frida the signifier, and her miracles are already in our minds, our hearts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Installation view of Frida: The Making of an Icon\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

Left: Frida Kahlo, \u201cDiego y yo\u201d (1949), oil on canvas mounted on wood; right: Frida Kahlo, \u201cEl suicidio de Dorothy Hale\u201d (1938-39), oil on Masonite on painted wooden frame<\/p>\n

\"\"Joey Terrill, \u201cIf Andy Warhol Had Been Born in Mexico\u201d (1978), Xerox collage and colored pencil on cardboard\"\"Frida Kahlo, \u201cMi vestido cuelga ah\u00ed\u201d (1933\u201338), oil and collage on Masonite\"\"<\/p>\n

Rafael Amorim, \u201cDois rapazes de m\u00e3os dadas\u201d (2021), digital photographic print <\/p>\n

Frida: The Making of an Icon<\/a> continues at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (1001 Bissonnet Street, Houston, Texas) through May 17. The exhibition was curated by Mari Carmen Ram\u00edrez. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Art Review An exhibition blasts apart any crystallized conception of the artist until no easily digestible singular figure…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[437,434,435,436,438,146,85,46],"class_list":["post-346112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}