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Title: Frida : A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera ISBN: 0-06-008589-4 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.75 (20 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Seminal Study on Enigmatic Personality
Comment: This is an extremely important, long overdue and commanding work on one of the most significant artistic personalities of the 20th century. The author, Hayden Herrera, is perhaps one of the few best qualified writers to present this indepth, intense penetration into the tumultuous life and work of such a complex figure in the art world. Frida Kahlo, as readers/viewers in the United States by now are aware, created some of the most unconventionally brilliant --even shocking works of arts the world has seen. Herrera's impeccable scholarship and research skills are impressive and at the same time delicately compassionate and vibrant. The movie version, by the way, was wonderful and Salma Hayek was amazing in the lead role. Thank you Hayden; thank you Frida! Absolutely spectacular subject.
Alan Cambeira
Author of AZUCAR! The Story of Sugar (a novel)
Rating: 5
Summary: Thanks to this book, I discovered Frida!
Comment: It was thanks to this wonderful book that I discovered Frida Kahlo, who is now my heroine. I have read many books about her, but this is absolutely the best one. It made me laugh - and weep, too, because I could really feel Frida`s pain in my own body...
Today I am probably Sweden`s biggest Frida - fan, and I drive everybody crazy talking about her all the time! Thanks to her, I have started to paint and draw a lot, I dare to wear crazy clothes - and I dare to be my self.
Thank you, Hayden Herrera, for writing such a great book...
Rating: 4
Summary: A thorough rendering of an artist's life
Comment: This biography is a complete, engaging 440-page effort of sheer reportage. Herrera, an art historian and curator, has also written a book on Kahlo's art, and books on Mary Frank and Matisse, and you can see evidence of her thoroughness on every page. The book traces Kahlo's life by setting up the lives of her parents (her father was an Austrian immigrant to Mexico) all the way to her death and funeral with great detail. As Herrera follows the path of Kahlo's life, she includes letters to and from Kahlo, Kahlo's journal excerpts (illustrations, words and poems) and explicates Kahlo's art as it becomes relevant to the storyline of her life, either because paintings were done around the time of narrative points or because they illustrate incidents or themes in Kahlo's life. There are two color-plate sections and two black-and-white photo/painting sections to which the reader may refer.
Frida's life is certainly compelling, and Herrera doesn't need to resort to emotional language or hyperbole to make her interesting -- and, thankfully, she doesn't. The narrative is quite matter-of-fact, and illustrated with the subjects' own words, one feels that one can get to know Frida, and her husband, Diego Rivera, pretty well, for being somewhat removed from them (at least I feel that way living in the twenty-first century in Arkansas). The book incorporates the commonly known facts of Frida's life -- her devastating tram accident as a high-schooler in which she was impaled on a shaft of metal handrail, her turbulent and deep connection with and TWO subsequent marriages to Diego Rivera, her Mexicanista loyalties and sensibilities, her affair with Trotsky, her personal flamboyance and her great talent -- with the over-arching idea of Frida's alegría -- or happiness, joy -- in the face of her many hardships. As one of her friends said, Frida was a woman who "lived dying." Her many health problems and her problematic and sometimes painful relationship with Rivera were great obstacles to her, but her flamboyant alegría appears throughout her life as a constant, a will to enjoy, to overcome.
I think what the book offers most is Frida's personality, explicated as carefully and well as the paintings, and the effort helps inform the viewer's assessment and response to her work. Using Kahlo's own words often, Herrera allows Frida to tell us herself her reactions to incidents, events, her successes, her health problems.
She writes to her dear friend and medical adviser, Dr. Eloesser, in the United States when she is struggling with the decision to amputate her increasingly problematic foot: "My dearest Doctorcito: [The doctors] are driving me crazy and making me desperate. What should I do? It is as if I am being turned into an idiot and I am very tired of this f---ing foot and I would like to be painting and not worrying about so many problems. But, it can't be helped, I have to be miserable until the situation is resolved..."
This passage is emblematic of Kahlo, mixing her crass language with her charming endearments to her friends, her concern for her health and her resignation to the situation, "it can't be helped..." She often curses, refers to her reader as "kid" and to money as "dough," in English.
Herrera points out points at which Kahlo is not completely forthcoming with truthful details, for instance her age, the length of time she spent hospitalized at various stages, and her changing view on whether she was a Surrealist painter or not. She also illustrates Kahlo's changes in terms of the political situation of the international Communist party, her views about Trotsky, and her public vs. private comments on Diego's never-ending philandering.
In a book on Kahlo, these life details are relevant to her art because her art is confessional and personal. She's a "Sylvia Plath" of painting and mines her life and emotions for subjects until the end. Not long before she died, she had resolved her priorities, telling a friend, "I only want three things in life: to live with Diego, to continue painting, and to belong to the Communist party."
The people around her were deeply important to Frida Kahlo, and to the end of her life, she adored her friends, wrote winning and charming, caring notes to them, and wanted them around her at the end. Her love of others plays itself out in her political beliefs; she toured the world as an artist, but she drew her subjects and methods from Mexicanista traditions, and popular as well as pre-Columbian culture. Her personal illustrations are appealing because of that understanding of others, and Herrera's sound biography renders Kahlo's work and life even more poignant and remarkable. It's a good book. I recommend it.
(I do wish that this book had Frida Kahlo's own art or a photo of her on the cover, rather than a photo of Salma Hayek as Frida Kahlo.)
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Title: Frida Kahlo: The Paintings by Hayden Herrera ISBN: 0060923199 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 04 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title:Frida (Music from the Motion Picture) ASIN: B00006LLNV Publisher: Deutsche Grammophon Pub. Date: 22 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $13.49 |
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Title: Diary of Frida Kahlo by Carlos Fuentes ISBN: 0810981955 Publisher: Harry N. Abrams Pub. Date: 01 March, 1998 List Price(USD): $22.98 |
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Title:Frida ASIN: B00005JLPK Publisher: Miramax Home Entertainment Pub. Date: 28 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.99 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $16.39 |
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Title: Frida Kahlo 1907-1954: Pain and Passion (Basic Art) by Andrea Kettenmann ISBN: 3822859834 Publisher: TASCHEN America Llc Pub. Date: November, 2000 List Price(USD): $9.99 |
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