Regional Reviews

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Nickolas Muray, Frida with Granzino, black-and-white photograph, 1938.

Images of an Icon challenges us to reconcile photographs of a young and beautiful Frida Kahlo with the more familiar self-portraits of the tortured—and often disfigured—woman we know from her paintings. Kahlo seems to have worked as carefully at constructing her persona in these candid shots by friends as she did in her own meticulous canvases.

The photographs of Kahlo are arranged both thematically and chronologically, from early family portraits, to a final image taken at her funeral. The details of Kahlo’s life are explained in English and Spanish wall text. A particularly nice touch is the way each label includes information about the photographers and their relationship with Kahlo.

Photographs taken in the 1930s by Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Nickolas Muray, and others show a seated, high-cheekboned young woman, dressed in traditional Mexican folk costume and jewelry, with manicured hands and elaborately coiffed hair. We recognize her dark eyes and heavy black brow from her paintings. She sometimes glares at the camera and sometimes looks, detached, into the distance. The physical frailties featured so graphically in her canvases are never depicted; instead, she radiates glamour, serenity, and dignity.

The images of Frida with her husband, the painter Diego Rivera, are less contrived and more riveting than those of Frida alone. He is so large and clumsy-looking that she appears like a costumed doll beside him. There is a subtle alertness to Frida when she is around Diego. Frida and Diego Caught Kissing by Lucienne Bloch (1933) is the most joyfully spontaneous image in the show. Another striking image, taken days before her death, shows Frida in her garden, her beautiful face ravaged by illness, her long neck scraggly and her shoulders shrunken. She sits in a familiar pose and costume but tilted slightly forward, her hands now clutching the long folds of her skirt. This is a subtle but poignant indication of the loss of control over her image. The final image in the exhibition is that of Diego Rivera shouldering her casket.

—Dustan Knight

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