SCHALKWIJK Frida Kahlo’s masterpiece "The Two Fridas" (1939) is a puzzle of iconography, not adequately understood just by looking at Kahlo’s personal life. To emphasize this point, she had me stand before "The Two Fridas," the artist's undisputed masterpiece which has, amazingly, never been shown before in the States. The painting is a surreal, double self-portrait, featuring twin images of the artist sitting side-by-side in chairs holding hands. A flattened sky of storm clouds swirls behind the two women, and a shallow foreground creates a cramped and uncomfortable composition.

The painting -- one of the largest in the show -- is a puzzle of iconography. A winding artery links two exposed, muscle-y hearts, one bleeding through a pair of surgical pincers onto a white wedding gown. Standing in front of it, I had this odd religious feeling, as if I were reading a story in a stained-glass window. After Carpenter 's lengthy explanation of the meaning behind the symbolism (too lengthy for these pages), my mind reeled at the number of ideas funneled into this single work.

And that is Carpenter's point. While a familiarity with Kahlo's life is helpful in decoding some of the symbolism, the paintings are not documentary. The viewer's astonishment doesn't come from the facts of her life, but from the way these facts and their attached emotions are rendered so mystically through paint.

"You can do this with every painting in the show," said Carpenter.

The photos

If Kahlo's paintings convey emotion, they certainly don't do it through her expression. The artist always appears stoic and unsmiling in her self-portraits, whether bleeding onto a hospital bed or having a monkey cling to her back.

Which is why the photography portion of the exhibit is so fascinating -- it's one of the few places you can see Frida with a subdued grin or eyes cast bashfully to the floor. Most of the photographs, which once belonged to Kahlo and Rivera, have never been exhibited before, and many have never even been reprinted in books. Some are hand-inscribed with dedications or smudged with lipstick traces. Some feature the famed artist couple with cultural and political luminaries such as André Breton and Leon Trotsky.

Deliciously candid, Us Weekly-style photos of Kahlo's personal life for the hardcore fans, right? Not quite. Again, forcing a celebrity role onto Kahlo is tricky business. Carpenter explained that Kahlo was always circumspect in putting her own image out in public and carefully controlled how she would appear to those looking on.


Vicente Wolf Photography Collection Frida on a boat, Xochimilco, Mexico City. "There are masks here, too," Carpenter said.

While the photos aren't exactly staged, they aren't really candid, either. In one, Kahlo plays the loving, demure wife to a triumphant-looking Rivera. Standing beside her husband, Frida's eyes fail to meet the camera. Instead, they drift diffidently to her shoes, and she affects a perfectly timid smile.

"You look at that and tell me she didn't know she was being photographed," Carpenter challenged.

At first I suspected the curator might be protecting Kahlo's lionized reputation as a feminist. But there is just a tinge of muted confidence residing in that smile, a tiny bit of performance. In both the photos and self-portraits, Kahlo remains the manufacturer of her own image. She controls how the public views her. She is the celebrity.

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