| PEOPLE 1st April 2001 |
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Self-portrait with Monkey 1940 Frida Kahlo (1907-1954)
Frida on her wedding day August 21 1929.
More about Frida and the first Latina to appear on a nationwide postal stamp issue in America More about design and the making of Café Iguana More about tequila and the Jalisco province of Mexico More about cuisine and the chef in the kitchen at Café Iguana More about Dan Durkin chef de cuisine at Café Iguana More about Devin Kimble and the making of Café Iguana More about Luis Barragán and his colors More about Eduardo Ramos-Gomez embassador of Mexico to Singapore More about former President Zedillo and free trade links between Mexico and Singapore More about President Fox and the end of PRI political rule More about Guy Currie and his iguana tattoo More about Julio Bermejo local tequila god and a "walking fuckin' party" More about Ed Poole and a decade of bar and restaurant design in Singapore More about Scott Robertson Physicist - turned - Brewmaster at Brewerkz and Café Iguana More about Willy Baet and "the missing Kahlo" |
Mexican Art Masterpieces Text by : Marcus B. Burke, 1998 Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, Inc. Café Iguana, Singapore's first contemporary Mexican Restaurant & Bar is now open at Riverside Point As a self-portraitist, Frida Kahlo has almost no peers among her contemporaries; any comparison must go back to Dürer, Rembrandt, and Van Gogh. For Kahlo, self-portraiture became a career in itself, and most of her important works are in some way self-images. If we add portraits of the artist made by others, especially photographers, we see an incredible variety of moods and values: a love of life, naive innocence, dégagé sophistication, political activism, defiant existentialism, surreal fantasy, and above all, an awareness of the pain inherent in human life - sometimes accepted stoically, sometimes met with bitter tears. Monkeys have a long history in European art. In fact, art is often called "the ape of Nature" because of its ability to imitate reality.Eighteenth-century masters liked to dress monkeys up as people in various professions to satirize the human condition, and singeries (from the French word for "monkey") were a common aspect of Rococo decoration. More importantly, the combination of monkeys and humans in exotic settings was found in the paintings of the Douanier Henri Rousseau, the French naive master and proto-Surrealist, whose art certainly influenced Kahlo. In fact, Kahlo kept a number of monkeys as pets, including the exotically named Fulang-Chang, whom Frida included in a self-portrait of 1937, and Caimito de Guayabal ("piece of fallen fruit from the Guava patch"), whom Diego Rivera had bought as a present from a trip to the south of Mexico. The monkeys were serrogate children, alter egos, and fantasy companions not unlike the imaginary playmate she created as a child. In Self-Portrait with Monkey, painted near the end of the period in which Kahlo and Rivera were divorced, the monkey (apparently Caimito) is clearly something else, a stand-in for Diego. The veins connecting the Two Fridas, the blood-red ribbons falling from Frida's hair wrap around her neck, then around the monkey's, binding the two together. Similarly, the monkey's paw seems to emerge from her hair as it wraps around her shoulder and neck. The paw is particularly ominous - black, curving, clawed, threatening strangulation - and the red ribbon overtly suicidal. It is as though Kahlo were saying that Rivera's absence was killing her as surely as though he had choked her or slit her throat. Nevertheless, the mood that emerges is one of stoic victory, quiet acceptance, and calm. Indeed, by the end of the year, Frida and Diego were back together. In Self-Portrait with Monkey is any indication, however, it was a much stronger Frida Kahlo who remarried in December.
Café Iguana is located at 30 Merchant Road, #01-03 Riverside Point, Singapore 058282 Hours Telephone : (65) 236 1275 and fax : (65) 438 2377. Café Iguana is open from Mon - Thurs. 4:pm to 12:am, Fri - Public Holiday Eves : noon to 1:am, Sat : 11:am to 1:am, Sun/PH : 11:am to 12:am margarita@cafeiguana.com
"Art is like ham, it nourishes people" Diego Rivera
An exhausting amount of information about Frida exists on the internet. Here are a few sites of interest:
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