Layla Bermeo, Kristin and Roger Servison Associate Curator of Paintings, discusses “Frida Kahlo and Arte Popular” at the ϲʿֱֳ.
Of the eight paintings in “Frida Kahlo and Arte Popular,” only Dos Mujeres belongs to the ϲʿֱֳ. Can you walk us through the process of putting together an exhibit with mostly loaned objects?
There are only about twelve paintings by Frida Kahlo in public collections in the United States, and so we are tremendously fortunate to have one here at the ϲʿֱֳ. In addition to our remarkable early painting, we also have another object with a Kahlo connection—the red Tehuana dress, on view for the first time, which was also owned by the collector of Dos Mujeres. Kahlo did not wear or own this dress, but she likely helped the collector acquire it around the time that she sold Dos Mujeres to him.
The idea for the exhibition came from considering these two objects together. What happens if we think about them as made objects, as works of art in their own right? Could the richly embroidered flowers on these styles of dresses perhaps have inspired the thick, foliage background in Dos Mujeres? As I became interested in exploring the influence of Mexican folk art, or arte popular, on Kahlo’s paintings and in creating conversations between objects, I began to seek out other works by Kahlo that were similarly in dialogue with the types of dresses, ceramics, carvings, and toys that she collected and surrounded herself with.
My wonderful colleague Frederick Ilchman has a saying that I love: “Conservators are like doctors; curators are like lawyers for the art.” I very much like thinking of myself as a lawyer, or a defender, of art, and find this quip particularly useful for thinking about loans.
When we approach another institution for a loan, especially for a rare work of art like a Frida Kahlo painting, we must make a good case for why the object should temporarily leave its community and be included in our exhibition. This typically takes the form of a loan request letter from our director to the director of the lending institution, but there are almost always informal visits and conversations as well, requiring weeks or months of follow-up for each lender. I was incredibly honored to see how many fellow curators and institutional leaders believed in “Frida Kahlo and Arte Popular” as a worthy project and agreed to support it.
What kind of feedback did you receive from visitors regarding the English and Spanish labels? Is this something the ϲʿֱֳ will continue in the future?
The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. We’ve received enthusiastic responses from a range of visitors, including those who are learning Spanish and even those who do not speak Spanish at all. Three recent exhibitions have included labels in English and Spanish—those focusing on Kahlo, Graciela Iturbide, and Cecilia Vicuña—and past exhibitions, including “Permission to be Global/Prácticas Globales,” have also had bilingual texts.
This is not a new process for us, but part of ongoing conversations about multilingual interpretations. Should our labels reflect the languages of the artists that we present, or the languages of our communities here in Boston? More people in Boston speak Portuguese than speak Spanish, and so perhaps future labels will be in Portuguese or Haitian Creole, as well as in Spanish.
How did you work to differentiate the exhibit from other Frida Kahlo exhibitions?
“Frida Kahlo and Arte Popular” was not intended to be a retrospective, but to instead move away from the majority of the projects on Kahlo that overwhelmingly focus on her biography and interpret her paintings as direct illustrations of events in her life.
Although Kahlo is perhaps more visible in popular culture than ever, I think that many of us would still struggle to name two or three of her paintings, to describe the evolution of her artistic career, or to articulate how she fits into the longer history of modern painting. And so I think it becomes radical to ask basic questions of her work, the same that would be asked of any white male artist with even half of her fame: Which works of art inspired her? What did she look at as she painted? What were her breakthrough paintings and professional milestones?
As an attempt to draw out her contributions as a painter, rather than as a persona, this show follows a tight thesis, focusing only on the relationship between her paintings and arte popular, which was undeniably one of her greatest influences. Because Kahlo is so often stereotyped as someone working outside of the history of art, it also emphasizes the ways in which she participated in larger artistic movements and communities. I made a point, for example, of including works by other Mexican women painters—María Izquierdo and Rosa Rolanda—who are unfamiliar to many of us in this country. This exhibition tries to give visibility and voice not only to Kahlo, but also to the folk artists who actively influenced the aesthetics of the period and have remained nameless.
What is your favorite piece in the Museum outside of your own department?
I never tire of admiring Gustave Caillebotte’s Man on His Bath in our Art of Europe department. It follows a modernist tradition of focusing on an anonymous, everyday person, but does so without heroics, showing a male nude in an intimate setting, instead of at work. It is radical in its simplicity.