With a year to live, and confined to bed by injury and illness, the great Mexican artist transformed her bedroom into a sanctuary - and turned her pain into magnificent work.
"Vida Americana" at the Whitney tells a tale that should provoke some self-reflection in the present. It is undoubtedly true that Mexican people, the Mexican landscape, and Mexican culture are all inextricably linked to U.S. culture.
A look at a new and extensive retrospective of the outstanding Mexican artist’s work at New York’s Brooklyn Museum through more than 350 objects shows Kahlo’s political and artistic life in all of its complexities and contradictions.
Can photographers be participants in the social events they document? Eighty years ago the question would have seemed irrelevant in the political upsurges of the 1930s, in both Mexico and the United States. Many photographers were political activists, and saw their work intimately connected to workers strikes, political revolution or the movements for indigenous rights. Now a book and a recent exhibition should reopen this debate.
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