The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

dared to be that person”. She “had the courage to be who she was”, and to be “different”
in spite of social expectations, and “she never apologised”. For some, Frida had
succeeded in relating the “compelling story” of a woman and artist who could
“transcend pain and create supreme beauty”. 60 For other reviewers, however, the
“heroic love story and survivor’s tale” failed in its attempt to convey “the delicate,
damaged texture” of Kahlo’s life, and “the triumph of her will over intimidating defeat”.
It did not reveal “the depth of Kahlo’s artistic struggle”, focusing instead too much and
“overly sympathetic[ally]” on artist and muralist, Diego Riviera, with whom Kahlo had
a “turbulent marriage and lifelong alliance”. Instead, Frida turned Kahlo’s “tragic and
courageous life” into “biopic banality”, instead of examining the process by which Kahlo
became an “extraordinary artist and feminist cultural icon”. The result was “an
incomplete portrait” of Kahlo by a film, which “only scratches the surface” of her
“flamboyant” life. 61
Beyond questions of completeness and accuracy, the research of Margaret Lindauer
enables us to consider Frida as the latest product in a history of mediation and cultural
production of Frida Kahlo’s life and artwork, through which a posthumous
transformation occurred “from forgotten painter to celebrated heroine”. Lindauer has
reflected upon the increasing circulation of Kahlo’s story and self‐portraits, and the
cultural and social structures through which Kahlo’s life has been recalled and
recounted. In the 1970s, Kahlo’s life and work was a subject of interpretation only
among a small circle of art critics and academics. From the late 1970s, a shift started to
occur, mainly in the United States “from seeing Kahlo as unsung artist to Frida as a
venerated heroine”. References to Kahlo simply as ‘Frida’ from this time were indicative
of a sense of intimate familiarity that accompanied this shift to icon and mythology. By
the early 1990s, when a Kahlo self‐portrait was used by the Metropolitan Museum on
New York billboards to advertise a large travelling exhibition, Kahlo’s legend entered
popular culture in the US. Fashion magazines and look‐alike contests sought to copy the
60 Discussion between Oprah Winfrey, Salma Hayek and Julie Taymor, Oprah, e.tv, 27/2/03.
61 Desson Howe, ‘So much material, so little Frida’, Cape Argus Tonight, 13/1/03; Serena Klein,
‘“Frida” paints an incomplete portrait’, Cape Times, 17/1/03.
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