On view
“Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics, and Painting”
Through Sunday. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursday (half-price after 4 p.m.), 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday. Museum open for 31 consecutive hours from 10 a.m. Saturday to 5 p.m. Sunday (see below). $19.50; $16.50 students and seniors; $12, ages 6-17; free 5 and younger. High Museum of Art, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-4444, www.high.org.
"Adios Frida & Diego: Overnight Fiesta": The High will remain open for 31 hours, from 10 a.m. Saturday to 5 p.m. Sunday. The closing celebration includes a Frida-inspired fashion show, sounds from DJ Speakerfoxxx, salsa music with Sabor, face painting, family activities, exhibit tours, body-painted Fridas on view, lucha libre wrestling, a photo booth, Mexican food and more. Tickets reduced to $10 between 2 a.m. and noon Sunday, plus late-night parking discounts.
147,000
Number of people who have attended the High Museum of Art (as of May 5) since “Frida & Diego” opened on Valentine’s Day. The exhibit, which closes Sunday, is tracking toward being one of the top 10 exhibits in the museum’s history.
French writer Andre Breton once described Frida Kahlo’s art as “a ribbon around a bomb.” Kahlo died in 1954, but for successive generations of artists, particularly ones of a female persuasion, this Mexican cultural revolutionary’s politically charged and personally potent art continues to resonate.
With the High Museum of Art exhibition “Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics, and Painting” ending its successful run on Sunday, we asked three Georgia artists to discuss their connection to Kahlo.
KATHY YANCEY
Atlanta painter Kathy Yancey was “riveted” by the first Kahlo painting she ever saw, in a book in 1970.
“My Birth” (1932) graphically depicts the artist’s adult head emerging from her mother’s womb. Yet even while showing the start of life, the work conveys the agonizing pain of loss — Kahlo’s mother had recently died, and the artist herself had recently miscarried.
Yancey, a Georgia State University art student struggling to find positive female art-making models, had found an enduring muse.
Kahlo’s inspiration grew over the early years of her career, and after the Atlanta artist almost died when a misdiagnosed adrenal ulcer hemorrhaged in 1995, she created a tribute exhibit featuring multiple depictions of Kahlo, whose lifetime of medical maladies so informed her art. “Frida Kahlo, Goddess of Art,” including mixed media paintings and sculpture depicting Kahlo, opened in 1996.
Though Yancey, now 62, does not portray Kahlo these days in her autobiographical narratives, the Mexican master remains an important influence.
On how Kahlo empowered her as a young artist: "Especially early on, I was discouraged to even make work about women. In art school, the art professors would ask, 'Why are you doing that?' I was like, 'You paint what you know. Why would I not?' And it needs to be represented, it needs to be talked about, what it is to be a woman. …
“My life is different from hers and what she saw, but I endeavor to be honest about it. She gave me the courage to keep doing that.”
On what she sees in Kahlo's art: "It's just so powerful. It speaks to what I want to understand intrinsically and I wish the rest of the world looked at and valued intrinsically. And that is how important it is what women do …
“Here is a creature with a mind who deals with the basic dirt of life and the beauty of life as well. She brings understanding to me about what human life is basically about: survival, surviving violence, finding joy and beauty and expressing it.”
Where to see her work: On her website, www.kathyyancey.com, and in the Decatur Arts Festival Fine Art exhibition at Agnes Scott College's Dalton Gallery opening May 21, and in the all-woman group show "Grace & Ritual" opening Friday at the Iam8bit Gallery in Los Angeles.
JERUSHIA GRAHAM
An artist and art educator who works out of a studio at the Goat Farm Arts Center and mainly expresses herself through printmaking, 35-year-old Jerushia Graham was first exposed to Kahlo’s work in a Jonesboro High School art class.
Graham said that Kahlo’s “The Two Fridas” (1939) made an instant and profound impact. In it, the artist painted different side-by-side portraits of herself, but each with her beating heart bared. The piece records the roiling emotions of Kahlo’s separation from husband Diego Rivera.
Graham’s work is more Afro-centric, but the Kahlo connection is strong beneath the surface.
On Kahlo as an early influence: "She was one of the first female artists of color I was introduced to. Being a black female, looking at ways to express both culture and identity as a woman, and also making really strong art that resonates … you see a Frida Kahlo painting, you're not going to easily forget having seen it."
On one important early observation: "The thing I took from Frida's work is her extensive narrative. Because a lot of her stuff was self-portraits, dealing with her injury, dealing with her love life. Just (that) you could tell stories with a single image, that it didn't have to be spelled out for the viewer. There could be elements that were mysterious."
On Kahlo as an enduring influence: "I still find her an inspiration — to look for the unusual beauty, to trust what I see in the world as beautiful, and not be apologetic for it, not feel like I have to explain it.
“She just put her images out there. If you look at her self-portraits, she’s staring at the viewer, almost daring them to look back at her. I get inspiration in terms of just having confidence and trusting my voice as a female artist.”
Where to see her work: On her website, www.artbyjerushia.com, and in the group exhibit "R.O.T.R. II: Back to the Afro-Future" opening May 17 at the Harriet Tubman Museum in Macon.
BAILEY JACK
Cartersville folk artist Bailey Jack only became aware of the dramatic details of Kahlo’s life after viewing the 2002 movie “Frida” starring Salma Hayek in the Oscar-nominated title role.
“Once I saw her enormous life, how she lived beyond the edge, I was smitten,” said Jack, 67, who has sold her interpretive portraits of Kahlo in galleries and at festivals around the Southeast.
On depicting Kahlo: "In researching her self-portraits, I found one with her hair down with flowers in her hair. I was so happy. I had never thought to paint flowers on the head of women. I began placing animals into her arms and flowers because I just think of her as seeing more deeply than most — even in a squirmy pig — and began adding butterflies to show the life around her."
“My interpretations of her are clearly nonrepresentational, but her strength shines.”
On her feelings about the challenging life that fueled Kahlo's art: "I hated her woman-chasing husband because somewhere down deep I felt that she finally opened up entirely to him and was hurt by his indifference."
Where to see her work: On her website, www.baileyjackstudio.blogspot.com, and at Wild Oats and Billy Goats, 112 E. Ponce de Leon Ave., Decatur. 404-378-4088, www.wildoatsandbillygoats.com.
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