Over at Pandagon, Amanda Marcotte fisks–we need a word for when it’s just too ridiculous to require fisking–the argument that Frida Kahlo’s evil communism means that we should assign a historical and artistic value of nada to her life and its artifacts:
Perpetrator of Communism Memorial [John J. Miller]
Less than a month after the dedication of the Victims of Communism Memorial in Washington, D.C., the National Museum of Women in the Arts is opening a new exhibit on Frida Kahlo. She was, of course, an unrepentant Stalinist whose paintings carried titles such as “Marxism Will Heal the Sick.” By the way, the NMWA isn’t in Pyongyang or Havana. Here’s the bizarre part: The museum thinks it will attract visitors because the exhibit includes “a new collection of images … of Kahlo’s private bathroom at the Casa Azul and its contents.” This isn’t an art exhibit—it’s a shrine, to a woman in the thrall of a murderous ideology.
Just what the fuck is a ‘perpetrator of communism?’ I can’t be sure, but it sounds like yet another conflation of saying something and doing something. Maybe if you do it on canvas with brushes, it doesn’t fall into the ‘speech’ category. Are there any lawyers in the house who can help me out with this?
Not just that, but even if we take at face value the claim that Frida and her art supported totalitarianism…haven’t most artists throughout history produced art glorifying oppressive regimes and their authors, as well as the philosophies that legitimized them? The autocrats were the ones with the money, after all.
And over at The Gimp Parade, Blue offers up some insightful, good-faith (on second thought, maybe that’s giving Mr. Muller too much credit) analysis of Kahlo’s life and biography, as well as many links:
For true disability studies analyses of the 2002 film Frida, starring Salma Hayek, read Marta Russell’s CounterPunch review and a wonderful discussion between Harilyn Rousso and Simi Linton at DisabilityWorld. Both movie reviews note the obliteration of any depiction of Kahlo’s childhood polio and it’s early effects, with the tram accident framed instead as the life-altering tragedy to her physical health. Also, her recovery from that accident is made complete in the film so that a tango between Kahlo and another woman is not complicated by what would have been an interesting limp. The Rousso-Linton discussion ranges beyond the movie itself to look at use of the word “cripple,” sexuality, and class and disability.
(There’s also the way that, IIRC, her decision to become a painter is recast as a response to the convalescence resulting from her accident. No one can dispute that her disabilities were an important theme in her art, particularly since she was a self-portraitist. Still, this sort of simplification strikes me as a barrier to any real analysis of her work–and the compensatory moral of the artist’s origin myth seems to have some troubling implications for her life as a woman with disabilities. It reads as though cripple is not the wrong word, that she was someone who had to find some special work-around for fulfillment and self-expression after the tragic accident that took away any simple happiness.)
Anyhow, point, laugh, and then go read.
If a museum display of a “pro-communist” painter upsets this guy so much, I hope he never sees “Sicko.” The Cuba scenes would probably make him die of apoplexy.
I don’t think it’s just the sympathy for communism that is so upsetting, seeing as how that’s common as weeds among artists. It’s the cheerleading for Stalin that’s somewhat grating.
Or to put it in other terms, Leni Riefenstahl was an artist also, but doesn’t seem to get much slack for her ugly politics.
Madonna owns a Kahlo painting. The one portraying Frida’s own birth. I believe that makes Madonna a communist too, right?
Considering that no one outside of Russia knew what Stalin was really up to until two years after Kahlo’s death, it’s a little unfair to hold her lack of information against her, isn’t it?
It’s the continuing to support a dictator after his crimes are revealed that makes you look like an ass. You know, like this guy. Or this one.
Riefenstahl worked for Hitler. The Triumph of the Will was literally Nazi propaganda — it was commissioned by the Third Reich, who underwrote the costs of its production.
Riefenstahl accompanied Nazi soldiers into Poland, played dress-up with the Waffen SS, witnessed war crimes … and continued to make propaganda films after doing so. Kahlo adulated Stalin from seven thousand miles away, and painted some goony pictures of him.
I think it’s possible to distinguish between the two.
No one was aware until 1956 that the USSR was a brutal totalitarian state?
calling it “not art” goes too far (and i read that as just hyperbole), but bringing up kahlo’s totalitarian leanings is fair game. we often consider an artist’s art in light of their misogyny, racism, or political leanings. martin heidegger’s rep took a huge hit after his Nazism was revealed because we then questioned his judgement.
How so many artists and intellectuals were seduced by a murderous (in both theory and practice) ideology is one of the great questions of our time. how we should view their art in light of this is an interesting question.
i believe plato went as far as declaring such art non-art b/c true art represents the good. i wouldn’t go so far as i said, but if art is to be relevant it cannot be divorced from morality. too bad only miller is taking this seriously.
No one was aware until 1956 that the USSR was a brutal totalitarian state?
Oh, I guess Khrushchev’s Secret Speech wasn’t a bombshell to people who lived there either.
The secret speech demonstrated that Stalin’s harshest critics were right about him, and that if anything they’d understated the case. I wouldn’t say that “no one outside of Russia knew what Stalin was really up to” until 1956, though — it’s more that after 1956, no one could deny it.
There was plenty of evidence for a long time that Stalin was seriously bad news. The secret speech just ended the debate about how compelling that evidence was.
And yet Richard Wagner’s works are still performed continuously around the world, despite his virulent anti-Semitism in his private life and the way that his works were used by the Nazis. Ezra Pound’s poetry is still studied.
Hmm. I’m starting to get a smell of, “But Kahlo is a chick, so she’s not a real artist” here.
No one was aware until 1956 that the USSR was a brutal totalitarian state?
You think that an artist living in Mexico was completely up-to-date on forced collectivization and the gulags? Since the US government didn’t think that the Ukranian Famine should stop the U.S. from allying ourselves with the Soviet Union in WWII, why did Kahlo have a responsibility to decry it?
In retrospect, one of the stupidest foreign policy decisions we made was the Cold War decision that countries had to choose between either us or the Soviet Union, and if they picked the Soviet Union, they were always and forevermore enemies. It poisoned our relationship with India for years and put us in bed with some really, really bad people just because their enemies were allied with Russia.
Unless you’re under the impression that the U.S.’s support of Pol Pot in Cambodia worked out well for everyone involved, it’s pretty hypocritical to say, “But she should have known Stalin was bad!”
The secret speech demonstrated that Stalin’s harshest critics were right about him, and that if anything they’d understated the case.
Of course, but this was also a time in which the scare of communism utilized many demonizing techniques to spread anti-communist rhetoric, and one shouldn’t fault someone for believing that the criticisms were valid without extraordinary evidence. Khrushchev gave that to the world, since hearing it from the lips of a former ally of Stalin made it more credible. Before that, the people who criticized Stalin had little credibility with pro-communists and Marxists, as they had shown themselves to be not worth the trust put in them.
This is highly indicative of the problems with reactionary policies, namely that creating boogeymen tend to make people less safe and less educated than taking things rationally.
As they should. As are Kahlo’s. The US Postal service even gave her a stamp. But to what degree their lack of humanity should inform us on how to interpret their art is an legitimate question, and one that Plato took seriously in the Republic. So I am glad Miller brought it up.
Completely up to date? No. They probably didn’t even know about the Ukrainian genocide. But they knew enough. The iron curtain had already descended, as Churchill warned. What do you think is going on in a country that does not even allow its citizens to leave? Kahlo probably knew even more, since she knew Trotsky, who she denounced. So even by communist standards, she was particularly inhumane.
You’re conflating realpolitick with moral support. This reminds me of those who criticize the ant-war movement for being pro-saddam or pro-iran and are somehow culpable for their human rights violations because they support trade with these countries.
Kahlo did not “support” the USSR in order to defeat the Nazis. She did it b/c she herself was a marxist…which distinguishes her from churchil, rummy, and the ant-war movement whose “support” of dictators you are trying to equate with Kahlo’s.
Her art should be displaced and we should debate its meaning in light of her murderous ideology.
I’m torn about this, honestly. Probably because my own research intersects with the history of the CPUSA most closely in the thirties, which means I’ve spent a lot of time with the stories of the true believers who were jolted awake by the Nazi-Sovet pact. (And because another major point of intersection is the late forties, when another crop of optimists were brought down to earth by the Czech coup.)
But yes, the history of the pre-1956 CP is a history of people coming to the party out of idealism and becoming disillusioned, and I shouldn’t privilege the first wave as smarter or more moral than the waves that followed. I have a lot of sympathy for all of those folks — and a lot of respect for the good work that many of them did while within the Party’s orbit.
And this…
…is a pretty good point too.
Mmm. Krushchev’s cult of personality speech made it, as others have said, impossible to deny that Stalin was a bad guy. But many, many people knew well before that what was going on. The whole point of the show trials was to be public, and only very gullible or very dishonest people believed they were real. Look at Orwell’s reporting from the Spanish Civil War in the thirties. Darkness at Noon was published in 1940. And I do think that someone who enthuses over Stalin and Soviet communism should be informed about these things, yes.
That being said, I agree with piny’s basic point, that most people’s interest in Kahlo is focused on her art, not her political judgment. I still like the poetry of Ezra Pound, who had no excuse for his embrace of Mussolini or his rabid anti-Semitism. There are plenty of other artists and writers who had retrograde or callous opinions about politics, but we don’t just dismiss their work (Mnemosyne may be right about Kahlo’s womanhood being important here). The case of Heidegger is a little different, since some people argue that his Nazism was intimately related to his critique or rejection of Western rationalism.
If a can a bit tangental.
One of the biggest Stalinist propagandists about the Spanish Civil War was Claud Cockburn, father of counterpunch’s Alex Cockburn. Cockburn Sr. wrote under the pseudonym Frank Pitcairn for the English communist party paper, the Daily worker. Orwell who fought with the trotskyist POUM, tried to expose the various Stalinist lies spread by guys like Cockburn Sr., about the Spanish War in his writings like Homage to Catalonia.
And on another tangental note about the world’s most published poet, Pablo Neruda:
Pablo Neruda who was Chile’s ambassador to Spain during the civil war actively prevented various anarchists, anti-Stalinist socialists and other anti-fascists from escaping Spain many of whom were ultimately killed. Neruda also hid Mexican Muralist (and stalinist) Siquerios at his home after he had been invovled with the assassination of Trotsky.
Yes, because Churchill and Rummy’s “support” of dictators was limited to tangential fluff like giving them money and arms to pursue violent aims. Frida painted pictures, which is of far greated consequence. All’s fair in realpolitik, which thankfully can never achieve a high enough body count to become “murderous ideology.”
Churchill and Rummy’s “support” of dictators was limited to tangential fluff like giving them money and arms to pursue violent aims.
Yeah, but they didn’t support communist dictators, so that’s different, donchaknow?
actually they did: the alignment with the USSR in order to defeat the Nazis. This, as Mnemosyne argues in #10, presumably justifies Kahlo’s support for totalitarianism.
Tu quoque much?
This, as Mnemosyne argues in #10, presumably justifies Kahlo’s support for totalitarianism.
Supporting Stalin, or even merely painting pictures of him, when ignorant of who Stalin really was isn’t being in support of totalitarianism, and neither is being a communist. I consider myself a socialist, but of course, Stalin was a murderous dictator whom I would never support.
My argument against you was not based on the fact that Churchill and Rumsfield have supported murderous dictators, thus it isn’t a tu quoque.
Picasso was a Stalinist. No one ever denies Picasso status as, if not the greatest artist of the 20th century, certainly in the first rank.
No one ever claims that Picasso wasn’t an artist, or labels his Stalinist works as non-art or anything, because you’d get laughed at.
tru dat. Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole.
Someone pointed out on the Pandagon thread, that given that she supported Trotsky, it is difficult to figure out whether she “converted” to Stalinism and was truthfully denoucing Trotsky post-mortem, or was just terrified that she would be eliminated if she continued on the same path. So it’s an ambiguous area, I think.
tru dat. Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole.
he was only five foot three. girls could not resist his stare.