The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

‘Frida‐look’. Kahlo’s self‐portraits were distributed on post‐cards and T‐shirts, and
speciality shops commemorated Kahlo’s life through the sale of Frida shoes, Frida nail
polish and Frida clothing. As the popular persona ‘Frida Kahlo’ was constructed as
posthumous celebrity, Kahlo’s increasing popularity acquired cult status, and she
became a role model for many in search of a hero. 62
For Lindauer, the major interpretations of Frida Kahlo’s self‐portraits in the field of art
history accorded with this biographic politics of popular celebrity. An “entrenched
narrative of suffering” came to permeate the telling of Kahlo’s life. Various biographical
productions have generally narrated this suffering in relation to Kahlo’s marriage to
Riviera as well as the “indeterminable deterioration of her body”. Just as Kahlo’s life
was recounted as a “litany of physical and psychological symptoms”, her paintings were
interpreted as “self‐referential” documents of her pain, and Kahlo was revered for her
“‘triumph’ in creating art” in spite of bodily and emotional injury. In a “one‐to‐one”
association of life events and the meaning of paintings, artworks and producer were
merged into a single entity, giving rise to a “totalised narrative” of the artist and her
work. This “author‐corpus” approach, in which Kahlo’s paintings were conflated with
her pain, generated the same narrative of tragedy and triumph out of which the “mythic
Frida” was born. Lindauer has challenged these interpretations, arguing that Kahlo’s
paintings, indeed, went beyond self‐documentation and their meanings incorporated
explorations of broader political, social and economic questions as much as they were
implicated in dynamic political negotiations over gender. As “one among numerous
masculinist canons at work in Frida mythology”, art history had marginalized Kahlo’s
“creative political production” as a “private record”. Similarly, the production and
circulation of the mythic Frida had repressed, obliterated and “devoured” the
complexities of Kahlo’s work. 63
The film, Frida, reproduced the pervasive biographical theme of torment and triumph,
through which Frida Kahlo’s life had been appropriated and ‘devoured’ in art history
62 Margaret A Lindauer, Devouring Frida, pp 1‐3.
63 Margaret A Lindauer, Devouring Frida, pp 1‐12; 178‐9.
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