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Laughter in the Cathedral of Erotic Misery: VIVA LA VIDA Part I
Nothing is more important than laughter
-Frida Kahlo
(Dedicated to my wife Lil most of all,
then Karen, Cindy, and Kelly)
by N e l s o n G a r y
As the Academy Awards Show draws near, the movie "Frida," which is
nominated for six Oscars, has generated even more interest in one of the
most complex personalities of the twentieth century. Aside from being a
cross-dressing, bisexual Mexican-Jewish-Indian Communist amputee, a champion
of the common people, women, so-called sexual deviants, animals, an
inspiration to people in chronic pain, a smoker, an alcoholic, the wife of
the womanizing master muralist and obese cannibal Diego Rivera, among too
many other things as equally colorful to list, Frida Kahlo was an opiate
addict who died at 47 on July 13, 1954, possibly of an overdose, eleven days
after taking part in a protest against United States intervention in
Guatemala. Oh yeah, she was one of the most powerful and influential
painters of the twentieth century, but her spirit has had a more far-ranging
and powerful influence on people everywhere.
Frida Kahlo, born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon, applied the
pigment of her paint as if it was the pigment of her own flesh.
Disembodied and exposed organs flourish in her corpus of work to a number
that at least equals, if not exceeds the number of apples that serve not
only to adorn, but also centralize the canvases of Paul Cezanne, the father
of modern art.
Few...»»
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