Luckily the summer
holidays are over. Ninety-five per cent of my holiday time consisted of
scrubbing, painting and re-painting and tidying up: you can easily picture it.
At the end of it, we had made our house like new, not only the house but also
the garden, the garage and the driveway. But there were some hard moments.
We went on holiday in
turns, as usual, as someone of us had to stay at home with my autistic daughter
Valentina. I had a week in Italy, where I finally had a forced rest at my
parents’ place. Though I did have my fun when I started my job in the south.
After two days of induction, we had an unusual party altogether (about eighty
teachers) in central London (London Bridge
to Blackfriars) on pedal buses, drinking, singing, cheering on...and pedalling.
Passers-by and cars stopped to take pictures of our crazy bunch: it was
exhilarating. The following week we started the proper, hard work with students
(which I really enjoy) and paperwork (which I don’t always enjoy but it needs
to be done).
All in my next
articles.
Decorating and
scrubbing your own house can be a rewarding pastime. Last Easter holidays we
started repainting walls, ceilings and doors. But when it was time to go back
to work, there was still a lot to be done. We happily postponed it until the
long summer holidays, when the warm weather allows you to work outside as well.
And the day came.
I stuck to my schedule,
working mostly inside the house: cleaning the windows, scrubbing the bathrooms
and the kitchen, repainting the radiators and front door. It took longer than I
thought and absorbed all my energies day after day. When I stepped outside on a
gorgeous sunny day I noticed that I had neglected the garden, the garage was in
a mess and the timbers which connect the walls and the fascia of the roof (I
think the right word is soffit) weren’t white any more. I thought, insanely, it
was a must-do job. I sweated in the sun for days, dreaming of stretching out on
a sunbed in the back garden with nothing to do or worry about, a cold drink in one
hand and a good book in the other. But I also yearned to finish the job and
bring the timbers back to their immaculate condition. In a way (an
incomprehensible way, looking back) it was fun, and tremendously rewarding. At
the end of the tour de force the front door had a nice grey-green colour
(‘green glade’ to be precise), the new door number was shining on a white gloss
background, the timbers under the roof were finally white and the garage was
tidied up. It was a revelation, the potential of my house surfacing.
While I was away for a
week in Italy my husband did even better. He completed repainting the walls and
ceilings inside, painted the garage floor and the summer house (‘wild thyme’
this time, an olive green shade), and, wonder of wonders, rubbed the tarmac,
which became an unexpected sand colour instead of mossy brown. He was pretty
exhausted, I must say, but the house was at its best.
In July I managed to
escape the work for a few days. I took a day in Oxford for an open day with my
third son, a day in Glasgow and two days in London (in August) with my daughter
to visit exhibitions.
At the beginning of
July I followed my son to his open day in Oxford. It was an excuse to see
Oxford again and to visit the colleges. We also attended a lecture in the
physics department at the end of the day but I can’t remember what it was
about. It’s likely I dozed off for a while. We went mainly from one college to
the other, taking advantage of the refreshments (it was a hot day) and
following the students who kindly volunteered to be our guides. I must say it
was enchanting. Everything was so beautiful, not only the ancient buildings
with their unique architecture but also the walled gardens perfectly kept, the
libraries, some of them with precious engraved furniture, and the Halls. It is
a world apart, different from all the other universities I visited previously
with my children. It’s a whole town dedicated to study and culture. Simply
wonderful.
In Glasgow I visited
Pollok Park with my daughter. We went to the Burrell collection and Pollok
House. The Burrell collection is in a new building that both respects the
ancient artefacts and works of art that it displays (the front entrance looks
like a facade of a Romanic church) and incorporates the park that surrounds it,
thanks to glass walls and roofs. There are mainly Medieval and Renaissance
pieces, but also Chinese and Islamic art and French paintings, which William
Burrell, a shipping magnate, collected throughout his life and donated to
Glasgow. Unfortunately the first floor, which displayed most of the paintings,
was closed. We enjoyed the ground floor with sculptures by Rodin, the
reconstruction of 15th century rooms and embroidered textiles.
The park itself is
worth seeing, with its huge trees, endless lawns and ginger cows with thick
fringes and long horns (Highland cattle, I understood). The day we went to
visit, it was full of people having picnics, walking dogs, cycling or strolling
around.
The other important
building on the site is Pollok House, a mansion with striking Italian style
gardens which belonged to the Maxwell family. The entrance, displaying Roman
style marble busts, displays double stairs leading to the upper floor. The
elegant corridors and rooms with classical stuccos and ionic columns are
decorated with a large collection of Spanish paintings. It’s a bit weird to see
portraits of the emperor Charles V or Phillip II in a Scottish house and
hearing the story of a Spanish dynasty ending in madness. Unfortunately the Lady in a fur wrap by El Greco wasn’t
there, probably lent to some exhibition elsewhere, but I could admire the
portrait of Lady Stirling Maxwell by
Sir James Guthrie. She is seen from the back reading a book (which is pretty
unusual in portraits of aristocrats, but apparently she was very shy), her
yellow and ochre silk gown, with its unfinished folds, spilling across the
bottom of the picture. In the smoking room I was surprised to find a series of
William Blake’s paintings, minutely detailed, almost a decoration, similar to
some 15th century Italian paintings (just think of the Hunt by Paolo Uccello). We took pictures
of the amazing garden and headed back home.
When I go to London I
always plan my visit carefully: there is so much going on, that I need to know
what the priorities are. We had only two days and five or six exhibitions I was
interested in and I was dying to go to the theatre.
It was a well deserved
holiday after all the scrubbing, sanding, painting and re-painting at home. The
first day we managed to go to two exhibitions (Making colours at the National
Gallery and Wedding Dresses at V&A) as well as shopping in Oxford Street.
My daughter wasn’t
happy to go to the theatre, though, and we had forgotten to book in advance.
I’d have liked to have seen Matilda
or The Phantom of the Opera but both
were sold out. Eventually I managed to get two tickets for the Mousetrap. It
was good: we enjoyed it and my daughter, in the end, said it was a great idea
to have a night out. When the curtains
came down the actors made the audience promise to not reveal the ‘trap’
to anyone. I can only say it was an unexpected ending. Probably most of the
audience kept the secret, as the play has been performed for about forty years.
Our first exhibition in
the list was at V&A: wedding dresses. Gorgeous, beautiful things, the
wording explaining social habits and fashion trends in a clear and captivating
way. Apparently dressing in wedding white was not a tradition (as it is now all
over the world) till Queen Victoria wore a white gown for her wedding in
1840. One reason was that women usually
used their dresses after the wedding: a white dress wouldn’t be appropriate in
everyday life. In 1933 the aristocrat Margaret Whigham Hartnell wore a wedding
gown made for the occasion and never wore it afterwards. Tulle veils started
only in the 1830s, expensive lace or more approachable caps and bonnets having
previously been worn instead. As marriages were celebrated mostly in churches,
removable sleeves or short cloaks were added to strapless gowns to cover upper
arms and deep cleavages. This was in the past. Contemporary brides rarely care.
There were all kinds of dresses and colours, even black, violet, purple, red
and blue. Some dresses were inspired by Chinese, Indian or African traditional
clothes. My favourite ones were light muslin dresses (early 19th
century). They looked comfortable, easy to wear and charming. Certainly better
than the terrible corsets and crinolines that preceded and followed it. Here
attached, and I can’t help showing it off, is my wedding dress. It was very
simple, no corset included. I loved it and my husband and I look so young and
slim...twenty-two years ago.
At the V&A shop we
bought some cards and two booklets, as all the rest was incredibly expensive,
though some items were ‘on sale’. My daughter bought a card saying: ‘I wish my
boyfriend was dirty like your policies’. Why should you wish for a dirty
boyfriend, I wondered. She explained the pun over and over but I couldn't get
the joke. It must be the generation gap!
Making Colour at the
National Gallery was engrossing. It explained the development of pigments
throughout time: the way past artists mixed ground pigment with yolk or oils
and the skills painters acquired in combining colours. The most interesting
fact was that some colours changed, the pigment deteriorating, fading or
becoming another colour, usually darker, especially when painters used cheap
material. Blue could become grey, some greens turning brown, yellow fading,
purple becoming blue and silver becoming dark brown (e.g. the armourers in the
three Battles by Paolo Uccello at the National Gallery, Louvre and Uffizi).
Some colours maintained the original shade such as the blue from lapis lazuli,
which was a very expensive semi-precious stone transported from Afghanistan via
the silk road. Its colour is impressive, the blue shade so bright and intense
you would like to dive into it. The reds came from plants and animals (mainly
insects), their hues different one from the other. The range goes from an
orange hue to deep scarlet.
In conclusion, some of
the pictures we look at today (e.g. Renaissance, Dutch or 18th
century pictures) had very different colours when they were painted, the
original colours fading or changing quickly, the painting becoming of necessity
duller. I wonder what will happen to the chemical colours artists use today:
will the shades fade in two or three hundred years? I won’t be there to judge.
In London we visited
the Mall Galleries, Matisse Cut-Outs and the Malevich Exhibition at the Tate
Modern.
The Mall Galleries (www.mallgalleries.org.uk/) had some beautiful watercolours on display. I
loved David Poxom’s pieces (depicting a door and a window), both solid, simple
in choice of subject and elaborate in technique and style. The layering of
paint and attention to detail made them look like the complex decoration of
some important palace. There was also a painting by Shirley Trevena, an artist
we often referred to during my last art course. Her way of working is relaxed
but focussed: she is able to keep her mind open to new suggestions around her
yet master the technique of producing unique works. I like her almost cubist
way of looking at objects from different sides; finding the right space in the
picture to obtain a well balanced composition which seems also ‘natural’ and
‘spontaneous’. The piece at the Mall Galleries wasn’t particularly colourful,
but most of her work is so bright and joyful that it communicates the essence
of spring.
The Matisse Cut-outs
were absolutely enchanting. He started sculpting with scissors after a
difficult operation that saved him from abdominal cancer but left him very weak
and incapable of standing upright for long and, consequently, painting. He was
seventy-one and spent the rest of his life in a bed or wheelchair. But
resurgence came from otherwise sad circumstances. He had already used shapes cut
from coloured paper to experiment with different compositions on a canvas, but
now he was obliged to use only scissors to express his vision. He never used
readymade paper but instead asked his assistant to paint white paper with
gouache in the shades he chose (around seventy-seven shades of coloured papers
were on display showing how many different kinds of greens, yellows, oranges,
reds, pinks and purples he used). Looking at them you can see brush marks and
varied paint-drying techniques, leaving traces of diluted pigment and tiny
blank spaces. This gives texture to his work or, as he said, ‘sensitivity’,
which is lost in print. In the video clip showing Matisse cutting paper, I
could clearly see how inspired he was in this creative act. He seems in a trance,
lost in his dreams, like a child playing with a favourite toy, blissful in his
own world.
The first finished
product of this incredible experiment was Jazz,
an illustrated book inspired by legends or myths (Icarus), circus and theatre. Matisse’s
text is handwritten and, he said, accompanies the images. It is often unrelated
to the images and the main themes are love and the total freedom of the artist.
Another work, Oceania, started from a casual gesture:
creating a shape to cover a spot in the wall which irritated him. Then he
carried on cutting out shapes and asked his assistant to pin them on the wall
too. He took inspiration from memories of his earlier voyages to exotic lands.
In some compositions he
layers paper shapes over coloured backgrounds, strikingly contrasting them: yellow on scarlet, red on
black, vermillion and cobalt on orange, purple on orange. The influence of
Mediterranean light and bright, southern colours is obvious.
At the Tate there were
also examples of his work: the Domenican Chapel in Vence and the famous Blue
Nudes, They are absolute masterpieces. The women's silhouettes are almost
alive: still, sensual and captured in classical postures. The last piece,
Escargot (snail), is the final demonstration of Matisse’s sense of colour: a
bright adieu to the visitor. It was a
marvellous experience.
Malevich's world is
totally different. His vision started with a sort of Expressionism (with
influences of Delaunay and Futurism) in the use of colours, reaching a strictly
essential abstraction during the Russian revolution and ending with the famous Black Square. Everything beforehand is
erased in the hope of building something new, different and maybe better. No
joy, no Mediterranean light, only harsh commitment: a stark black square. It is
meaningful, of course, but fundamentally empty.
Malevich painted
several versions of the black square from 1915 on, but unfortunately the paint
is cracking in all of them. The deterioration may be interpreted in a symbolic
way, but it’s pretty easy to paint a black square on canvas and anyone can do
it!.
In a dark room there
was also the projection of the film Victory
over the Sun, an example of a futurist opera in which Malevich collaborated
in designing the costumes and scenery.
The story, I read in the captions, is about a ‘strong man of the future
who captures the sun [symbol of power and life], ushering in a new era in which
time itself has been abolished’. The libretto was by Aleksei Kruchenykh,
written in the deliberately unintelligible zaum
and recited with deadpan incantation. Other works by Malevich recall Kandinsky
but with less freedom in shape and colour.
When the ‘strong man’
(Stalin) finally rose, disappointment was hard to bear. Malevich painted less
and less. One of his works of this period, a big head of a peasant in red and
white, recalls a watchful and powerful Big Brother. Malevich was arrested and
some of his work destroyed. In 1935 he died of cancer and his pictures
disappeared. Some of his paintings reappeared only after the 1950s and the Black Square wasn’t exhibited till the
1980s. Probably the Black Square, for
Stalin, was the black spot in Treasure
Island.
When comparing Malevich
to Matisse, I can say that both artists used monotone or a limited colour
range. Matisse chose colours using his imagination to re-invent reality,
producing new shapes and creating an inspired, dreamlike world. Both artists
represented their time, comment on it, give it their inspiring, challenging
visions or solutions: dreams, life and imagination in Matisse and a totally
new, blank but unrealistic beginning in Malevich.
At the bookshop I
bought books on Matisse and some graphic guides on sale: Modernism,
Post-modernism, Marxism and Capitalism.
By the time I set off
on my holidays, I was so exhausted that at Manchester Airport I went to the
wrong terminal. I even started queuing for the check in! Luckily a clever guy
was going around asking people if there was someone not flying with Ryan Air
and if so I needed to go to Terminal 1. It was only ten minutes walk but I
would certainly have missed my flight if I hadn’t been advised on time. Besides
there was a long queue at security control which delayed the whole thing even more.
In Rome it was so warm
and I was so tired that I couldn’t wait to reach my parents’ house. It was very
good to be with them again, to see my sister and her family waiting for me at
my parents’. We had a good chat updating each other on family news and a great
dinner altogether. She is working hard for her school. I told her I was going
to start a new job soon.
I found my parents
pretty well though slowing down in their activities, forgetting things now and
then but perfectly capable of looking after themselves. They have their
routines and little obsessions like everybody else. Of course they were
overjoyed to see me, have the opportunity to spend a bit of time with me, share
their life and ideas and go out together (especially my mum).
I slept a lot at first,
then read a bit and spent time with them watching TV, mainly DVDs of old
Italian films or recorded comedies by Eduardo De Filippo and Pirandello. The
films dated back to their youth, the 40s and 50s, with actors like Totò,
Alberto Sordi and Aldo Fabrizi. It was another world, depicting simple stories
of love and friendship without major problems or complexities and with happy
endings which meant, inevitably, marriage. Portrayed was an apparently easy
society whose essential aim was to forget the war. I must say the actors were
excellent.
It was hot in Rome but
still bearable compared to a few years ago when I couldn’t sleep at night and
sweated the whole day just staying still. Mosquitoes were quite annoying
especially in the afternoon and evening. I used all kind of creams to prevent
their bites or stop the itching afterwards but it was a lost battle. I found
out that if you resist scratching for at least half an hour it stops itching.
The hard bit is to hang on.
My parents took me to a
big supermarket for their weekly shopping, which is one of the rare occasions
they go out. Though I am perfectly adapted to my Anglo-Italian food habits, I
couldn’t help my mouth watering at the sight of so many kinds of fresh egg
pasta, different hams and salamis, biscuits I can’t find in England, like ferratelle, taralli, ciambelline al vino...I
finally bought a good supply to bring back home.
I also tried out some
new recipes with my mum. It was a way to have fun and to spend time with her.
My dad helped me to browse through books and DVDs as I needed ideas for my new
teaching job, an exciting experience I was looking forward to starting. I knew
there was a good selection of Italian and foreign authors in my father’s
bookshelves and cupboards, which I used
to search when I was young, looking for more and more to read. It was like
going back in time when I revisited old authors: Hemingway, Pirandello, Zola,
Roth, Pavese, Natalia Ginzburg, Oriana Fallaci, Moravia, Sibilla Aleramo and
Grazia Deledda. The books were old, dusty books whose pages came out, the
covers yellowing, though the emotions I’d felt a long time ago came to my mind
fresh, alive and precious like all powerful memories.
My mother gave me some
old photos and a diary she’d been keeping since I was born. She’d written down
my height and weight from babyhood to starting primary school, all the
preparations for my birth, the names they chose, the vaccinations, presents I
received, illnesses, schools I attended, clothes I wore, my behaviour, my first
drawing, the poems I learned by heart and she kept some photos. It must have
been a massive task. She made me write a few notes here and there when I was in
middle school,. They brought me down to earth. Attached is a photo taken when I was at nursery school
from my mother’s diary, I look cheeky indeed. She also gave me some pagelle (reports) from primary and
middle schools. My linguistic and artistic tendencies were manifest right from
the start. Later on, Latin was my big problem, I don’t regret having dropped
it.
I had time to go around
Rome with my mum by bus. Surprisingly we only ever waited five minutes for a
bus and they were air conditioned. Besides we always found empty seats, maybe
due to the fact that it was August and most people were on holiday and out of town.
I bought presents for my children (stylish shirts for the boys and perfumes for
the girls and girlfriends). I also managed to convince my dad, who rarely goes
out, to come with us to an exhibition.
We went to Villa
Torlonia, a park in via Nomentana not far from where my parents live. The Villa
belonged to powerful Roman families, first to the Pamphili then to the Colonna
and finally to the Torlonia. It has interesting buildings which in the past
were restored by the architect Giuseppe Valadier. He gave them an elegant,
classical outline and reorganized the garden with paths and fountains. My dad
was just complaining that I was pushing them too much when he realized that the
whole thing was very interesting and enjoyable.
The most important
parts you can visit are: Casino dei Principi (House of Princes) with its
temporary exhibitions, Casino Nobile (Noble House) with the museum, and Casina
delle Civette (House of Owls). There are also Old and New Stables, Jewish
catacombs, the Lemon House, the Medieval House and the Red House. In 1925
Mussolini lived there with his family till 1943.
The Casino Nobile is
beautifully restored with interesting frescoes and remarkable stuccos,
especially on the ground floor. Going upstairs I noticed an elegant detail: the
plaster patterns on the ceilings mirrored the patterns of the marble floor. On
the first and second floors there is a collection of paintings of Scuola
Romana, paintings from the 40s to the 90s by pretty famous painters who worked
in Rome before and after the war, like Turcato, Greco, Mazzullo, Guttuso,
Mafei, Matta, Cagli, Burri and Fausto Pirandello. It’s called ‘realismo magico’
(magical realism), dedicated to blending great painting skills, profound links
with Rome, experimentation of new approaches and opposition to Fascism. That’s
why the painters chose intimate, homely subjects and hidden corners for their
pictures. It was engrossing. Strangely there weren’t many people around, only a
few tourists. I know that in Rome there are so many major monuments and museums
to see that people don’t take into account a place like Villa Torlonia. They
should. It’s definitely worth visiting.
We also went to Casino
dei Principi, hosting an exhibition of Antonio Paschetto, a famous graphic
artist and decorator who worked in the first half of 20th century.
He is not so well known to the general public but his work is definitely
inspiring. He came from the north of Italy and was Waldenese. His work was
strongly influenced by W. Morris, A. Beardsley and C.R. Mackintosh. He decorated
mostly the interiors of public buildings, villas, restaurants and churches
(e.g. Baptist and Methodist churches in Rome). He also made stamps, posters,
furniture, pottery and tapestries with the help of his wife, Italia Angelucci.
He saw art as a privileged way to spread beauty and culture at all levels and
to apply it to everyday objects. He even made advertisements for Peroni, winter
sports, gardening and Italian products in general.
Looking at his work at
the exhibition, I realized he also created the emblem of the Italian Republic
in 1946, which is on every official document and Italian passport to this day.
It contains the Italian star in the centre (representing Venus, who guided
Aeneas to Italy according to the legend), on the background there is a wheel
that symbolises work and progress and it is framed by two branches: olive
(peace) and oak (strength). It was an emblem of hope for a peaceful and
hard-working future.
His most beautiful
works are the ink and watercolour sketches for stained glass windows whose
final realization I could see in the Casina delle Civette. This is a unique
building which was originally a Swiss cabin, or rustic chalet. Giovanni
Torlonia liked to live there so much that he transformed it, adding annexes and
altering parts. The final result is complex,
multi-faceted, incredibly attractive and mysterious. From outside it
looks like a neo-something, a mixture of medieval, rustic, Renaissance and
vaguely northern style. Inside it there is a special charm in its narrow corridors,
wooden stairs and floors and variably sized rooms, all decorated with
astonishing glass windows (pictures are attached). Simply beautiful! The emblem
of the owl is recurrent, probably hinting to Giovanni Torlonia’s passion for
esoterism. You find owls on stained glass, capitols, stuccos and tiles. It is
so intimate, elegant and fascinating that it’s said he preferred this small
house to his rich palaces. On the front door is his motto: wisdom and solitude.
It took four years to
refurbish the Casina delle Civette after it was completely abandoned for more
than forty years (I remember it fenced and decaying when I used to stroll in
the park with school friends in my teenage years). Now it’s really worth
visiting. My favourite glass pieces, apart from the owls, were the balcony of
the roses, the peacocks and the room of the swallows, all lovely. No doubt I’ll
go back there with my daughter at Christmas.
It was hot in Rome last
summer but there were floods in the north of Italy. The crazy weather affected
agricultural production and the tourist season. Some people went to seaside
resorts in July and it was too cold to go to the beach. Unbelievable in Italy!
For my parents, who spent the summer in Rome, it was heavenly compared to a
‘normal’ Italian summer.
Looking for places in
Rome I hadn’t already seen, I opted for the Ara Pacis museum in Lungo Tevere.
The Ara Pacis Augustae is an altar built between 13 and 9 BC in honour of the
goddess Pax (peace) to celebrate the end of wars and the beginning of a
peaceful time under the emperor Augustus. The Romans could finally enjoy the
wealth accumulated and maintained during the expansion of the empire.
The monument has a
simple structure but is richly sculpted. It conveys a vision of a civil
religion deeply rooted in the power and supremacy of Rome. The friezes on its
external walls show members of the imperial circle in procession, the myth of the
founding of Rome and a seated female figure, probably representing Peace or the
Earth (Tellus). They are symbolic figures, meant to reinforce the universal
mission of Rome and its power based on military prominence, fertility (the
female figure) and civic superiority over the subjected populations. This
ideology was often emulated in the following centuries by kings and emperors
all over Europe.
The lower part was my
favourite. It has beautiful friezes, spiralling out from a central acanthus to
represent unity and multiplicity, richness and variety together with order. A
natural, organic movement springing from one source: Rome. A great variety of
plants are engraved in the spirals: grapes, lilies, laurels, bellflowers, water
lilies and many others which were originally brightly coloured but are still
beautiful in the creams and greys of the marble. They represented the cyclical return of the
reign of Augustus: the Roman empire should have been eternal. They were also
compared to fractals, something spontaneous and apparently confused but
suggesting specific, underlying organization. On the inside walls there are
festoons, attached to alternate ox-skulls which strongly reminded me of Georgia
O’Keeffe’s skulls.
An exhibition on the
ground floor highlighted how Augustus' legacy is often present in European
kings’ and emperors’ propaganda. Some examples are: Charlemagne, Frederick II
Hohenzollern, Cola di Rienzo, Ivan II the Terrible, Elizabeth I and Charles V.
Even the discovery of America was compared to the Augustan golden, peaceful
era. Augustus and Gens Julia claimed
to be descended from Aeneas (again a legend, found all over Europe). Welsh
rulers claimed to be descended from Brutus, a relative of Aeneas, and the Forum
and Ara Pacis erected in Rome were to establish and make permanent its
authority. The Aeneid by Virgilio is
the other, paramount pillar supporting this ideology. In the Aeneid it is stated that the Roman
mission was to exercise power with peaceful rule conveniently interpreted as
‘forgive the populations that surrender and expose those who stand proud’. The
exhibition ended with pieces of music linked to the Aeneid, like Dido and Aeneas by Purcell and Lulli, then Francesco
Gasperini, Handel, Mahler and others.
The last exhibition I
visited during the summer was of Frida Kahlo's work at the Scuderie del
Quirinale. I was there with a friend of mine, an art enthusiast as much as I
am. We spent almost two hours at the exhibition. It was so well planned,
exploring Frida Kahlo’s career from beginning to end. Nevertheless I expected
to see more of her most famous pictures, like the Little Deer and What the
Water gave Me, but it had some pictures by Diego Rivera as well, her lover,
husband, teacher and master. It was a good opportunity to compare their works.
After reading the poetry collection by Pascale Petit (What the Water gave Me) inspired by Frida Kahlo’s work the pictures
at the exhibition spoke loudly to me.
She mastered painting
techniques more and more effectively throughout her life, producing original
work at the same time. The exuberant colours together with an almost
trompe-l’oeil technique make her pictures rich and sensual. The crowded earlier
scenes reveal political and social comment, but the most interesting pieces are
undoubtedly the portraits, especially the self-portraits. The androgynous face,
with its full red lips, continuous thick eyebrow (Rivera called it ‘the wings
of a black seagull’), hinted moustache and complex hairdo, conveys all her
strength, ambition and deep suffering (she had had a bad accident as a teenager
and survived against all odds but had physical problems all her life). An
underlying, proud impotence also emerges in the self-portraits. Her great
talent couldn’t make her as visible as male painters like Rivera. Some
portraits reveal this lack of freedom, for example the self-portrait with the
crown of thorns around her neck and the humming bird hanging from it, or that
of a broken column, probably representing her accident, where a column passes
through her body and nails pierce her skin.
The constant presence
of death in life (in her own life, not only in the accident and in her many
disabilities, but also in her abortions and in the unstable relationship with
Diego) and of the violence every woman has to suffer, are recurrent themes
(e.g. My birth and Unos cuantos piquetidos). However, she
also demonstrates an untamed, unconventional personality in her love life,
expressed in surreal paintings like The
flying bed.
Later in life, in her
maturity both as an artist and as a person, she transforms herself into a sort
of saint, a goddess, to re-establish her charm and complete her legend. Her
wild passion for life, the stress of her disabilities, her uncompromising
independence and her projected image all contribute to create the character.
This is very clear in the photos and in some of the portraits. She is
over-decorated, ornate and strikingly colourful, similar to some religious
statues of Madonna covered in jewels and precious clothes. The transformation
is of a clever and talented woman who, to be believable and to be accepted,
needs to be part of a tradition. A woman can be only a mother, a
goddess/saint/witch or a prostitute. So she satisfies a cannibalistic and
voyeuristic public which feeds on new but comprehensible imagery and easily
destroys its idols.
Her work can be
considered baroque, sometimes overloaded but always skillful, tremendously
daring and interesting. Her portraits and still lives are vibrant, standing out
from the canvas with the power of their tones and masterly painted details.
They are never flat, predictable or boring. They are the work of a great
master.
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