frida, as a tehuana

self-portrait as a tehuana

there's a lovely moment when you walk into the turbine hall of the tate modern and go "oh..." in awe at the vastness of the space. today, kids in school uniforms were sprawled out across the sloped floor doing an art-class assignment on frida kahlo.

the strange thing about seeing frida kahlo is that you feel you know her and her work. everything is familiar, from the monobrow and slight mustache and the elaborate, traditional costumes to her life story and her celebratory and sometimes painfully insightful portraits. and it's her we want to see as much as her work: she had such a flair for drama, in life and work, and such a wise and frightening sense of the cycle of death and life. i like two self-portraits in particular: this, and a small, bright oil on metal covered with painted glass that she did for andre breton's surrealist exhibition.