For Prof.MacQueen

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Fiction and Reality:

Final Paper

Qianwen Deng

05/01/2019

Topic: To analyze through the two most recent large exhibitions of Frida Kahlo and

Andy Warhol, how do the art organizations to present the valuable artists through

curatorial perspectives?

Introduction

The exhibitions for Frida Kahlo and Andy Warhol in New York City are two of the

most famous art shows in 2019 (up to now). It’s not hard to imagine how attractive are

these two masters’ art exhibitions to society. The waiting time for the public viewers to

enter these exhibitions takes about 1-3 hours, and the length for these exhibitions are

all last at least three month for the public reviews. Andy Warhol’s exhibition is from Nov

12th, 2018 to Mar 31st, 2019; The displayed length for Frida Kahlo’s exhibition is from

Feb 8th to May 29th, 2019. Even the display length for these exhibitions last longer

than usual; people still line up in front of the museum every day to see for themselves

the actual prestige from those great artists.

Frida Kahlo, a female artist/painter who has two tragedies while she is young,

the tragedies also caused her physical disabilities. Besides this, she is also known for

her ethnicity, politics, and talented painting skills, even including the external bisexual

affairs between her and her lovers. This is Frida’s largest soho exhibition in the past 10

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years in the United States. This exhibition is also the first display to the public of this

iconic artist’s personal clothing and possessions.

Andy Warhol, people always define him as a contemporary commercial pop-

artist. Other than this, he is also a revolutionist. He invented his own way of making art

prints against the traditional art-making process which against the fundamental

principle of art creations as well. He who has developed a new art market with fast and

mass production on art prints, this innovation also makes art becomes more affordable

to the majority of people in society. This Andy Warhol’s exhibition at the Whitney

Museum is the “first Warhol retrospective organized by a U.S. institution since 1989.” 1

This exhibition also introduces the new complexities that we always know about

Warhol, and proposes a more sophisticated Warhol to the 21st century, to the new

generation. 2

Those two large exhibitions that all present the most infusive artists in the 20th

century that can be considered as the icons of contemporary art period through the

generation transmitting from the 20th century to the 21st century. For instance, for our

generations ( who was born in the 20th century); regardless of the career occupations

or national boundaries, cultural backgrounds. Through everyone’s artistic cultivation,

educational practices, even from the social media that in our everyday’s life; I believe

most of the people know these two artists in varying levels. The significant fame/

reputations of those two great artists in the art world that also extend to the

“Andy Warhol- From A to B and Back Again,” accessed Nov 12, 2018, 1 https://whitney.org/Exhibitions/AndyWarhol#exhibition-about. Ibid.2

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contemporary society can be seen as the dominant element that affects our

generation’s aesthetic taste and our understanding to the contemporary art.

Brooklyn Museum: Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving

Mary Anne Staniszeweski in her AestheticizedInstallations for Modernism,

Ethnographic Art and Objects of Everyday Life essay confesses modern art exhibition

design’s emphasis on self-determination over individual works of art by de-3

contextualizing them from the surrounding settings, boundaries that defines them even

from the artists who create them. Such design is particularly effective in promoting self-

expressionism of the artistic object as an independent entity, but it lacks the ability to

form a contextualized narrative of an exhibition, unable to depicts the overall picture of

the subject outside the independent entity. This analysis of Brooklyn Museum’s

practice of re-appraising an artist’s oeuvre with collaboration with non-painting objects

in its ongoing Frida Kahlo exhibition. Claiming a comprehensive overview from

presenting a well-known artist are evoking further discussion of the subjects,

objectives and audiences behaviors within Brooklyn Museum’s underlying institutional

technology.

Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving at the Brooklyn Museum is

organized by Catherine Morris, Sackler Senior Curator for the Elizabeth A. Sackler

Center for Feminist Art, and Lisa Small, Senior Curator, European Art, Brooklyn

Mary Anne Staniszewski, “Aestheticized Installations for Modernism, Ethnographic 3 Art and Objects of Everyday Life,” The Power of Display: A history of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998). 71-73

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Museum, in collaboration with the Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo

Museums Trust, and The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th Century

Mexican Art and The Vergel Foundation. This monographic exhibit heavily references 4

two prior Kahlo exhibitions, “Appearances Can Be Deceiving: The dresses of Frida

Kahlo at Museo Frida Kahlo (2012) curated by Circe Henestrosa” , and “Frida Kahlo: 5

Making Her Self Up at Victoria at Albert Museum London (2018) curated by Clarie

Wilcox and Circe Henestrosa”. Through their lenses, we see an alternative and crisp 6

representation of the one of the most famous female artists in the world by putting her

personal, intimate possessions on view alongside a selection of her paintings.

As Carol Duncan in her essay “Public Spaces, Private Interests” asserts that

municipal art museums’ goal is to “disseminate a single high culture to one and all”,

and to “reinforce class boundaries” that negates their missions as public instructions. 7

However, elitism and “high culture” are not part of the signal that Brooklyn Museum

undertaking to convey through its exhibition. Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be

Deceiving offers the viewers connections a deeper observation of Frida Kahlo’s

sophisticated personality, identity, political views; and enthusiasms through a lavish

involvement of her clothing, pre-colonial jewelry, medicines, medical corset, personal

belongings such as mirrors, accessories, her favorite decorations from her residence

“Brooklyn Museum: Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving,” accessed March 4 31, 2019, https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/frida_kahlo. “Exhibitions- Frida Kahlo Musuem,” accessed March 31, 2019, https://5

www.museofridakahlo.org.mx/en/exhibitions/. “V & A Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up,” Victoria and Albert Museum, accessed 6

March 31, 2019, https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/frida-kahlo-making-her-self-up/ buttons. Carol Duncan, Civilizing Rituals inside Public Art Museums (London; New York: 7

Routledge, 1995). 54

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and photographs which has never been shown in the country. The exhibition embrace

Frida Kahlo as a human more than Frida Kahlo as an artist. Such approach does not

only against the traditional concept of display a well-known artist in a museum, and re-

construct the roles of things(objects) that are not commonly perceived as important as

masterpieces in an exhibition context, but also follows what museumgoers are tending

to participating in contemporary visual culture.

Brooklyn Museum is seeking for serving a varied and assorted population and

assimilating innovative strategies towards its mission to “shape visitor’s view of

history” is concentrated by elaborating its understanding of Frida Kahlo. Mainly 8

focusing on representing the female artist’s personal life with her intimate belongings

often raises questions of feminizing and romanticizing the emphasis of the exhibition,

especially for Frida Kahlo, whose marriage with another famous Mexican muralist

Diego Rivera and love affairs with several celebrities, have always been integrated with

with her artworks. It is an unique practice that museums would like to prospect.

According to Brian O’Doherty’s critic on modern conception of ideal gallery as overly

aestheticized , objects being displayed in such formal space are transcended their 9

materiality, physical appearance. Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving imposes

what composited by a “White Cube” type of space that

“Brooklyn Museum: About the Museum,” accessed April 2, 2019, https://8 www.brooklynmuseum.org/about. Brian O’Dohenty, “Notes on the Gallery Space” Inside the White Cube: The Ideology 9

of the Gallery Space (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

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subtract from the artwork all cues that interfere with the fact that it is “art.” The

work is isolated from every-thing that would detract from its own evaluation of

itself. 10

The viewers entered the exhibition by passing through a dark coral room and

addressed by bilingual introduction of the exhibition in English and Space. One of her

paintings, Self Portrait as a Tehuana is in combination with photographs of Kahlo taken

by her father and Nicholas Muray, a photographer who also have love affair with her.

Besides this, the first showroom also displays the jewelries that similar to what she

worn at the time, with the Mexican traditional dress Tehuana, also similar to what she

wears in the painting. The first showroom builds up the idea that for this exhibition, it

will only shows a small portion of Kahlo’s paintings and implies the proposal of the

exhibition is about who she is as a Mexican woman. As the audiences walking

throughout the rest of the showrooms, they are all sharing the same ethic of object

arrangement: her great paintings are handled equally with the non-painting objects.

From beginning to the end of the exhibition, fragments of her real identity start to form.

Quotes from her writings, together with her sketches and photographs, describes Frida

Kahlo as a women and happens to be a painter. The exhibition build an affectionate

chain between the viewers and Frida. Everything exhibited in the showrooms, her

collection of the Mexican Votive paintings, the books that she read, her collections of

the Mexican local crafts, a statue of her favorite dog alongside with a photograph of

her and her dogs, and a clip of herself and her husband Rivera smiling to the camera.

Ibid, 14.10

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All of these happy moments of her personal life are enlightened at the following

galleries, despite and overthrown her misfortune and negativity.

Whitney Museum: Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again

From the exhibition analysis ‘The Guy Was Mortal’: Whitney Curator Donna De

Salvo on How Her Personal Relationship With Andy Warhol Shaped Her New Show,

Hillarie Sheets clarifies the concept from the Andy Warhol’s exhibition at the Whitney

Museum, “De Salvo aims to offer a unique perspective on his work—a personal one.

She looks behind Warhol’s carefully constructed mask to explore how a gay man raised

by Czech immigrants in a Catholic family became one of the world’s most experimental

artists.” This also builds up a clue for the audiences and frame about the main idea 11

for this unprecedented exhibition of an epochal artist, Andy Warhol; as an artist’s

statement of him as a commercial illustrator, a Pop master, also a personal life recorder

of him as an immigrants, a gay man and as a human.

Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again at the Whitney Museum is organized

by Donna De Salvo, Deputy Director for International Initiatives and Senior Curator, with

Christie Mitchell, senior curatorial assistant, and Mark Loiacono, curatorial research

associate. This exhibition is also the largest iconographic to date at Whitney's new 12

premises, featuring more than 350 works of art, many displayed and combined

together for the first time. This exhibition positions Andy Warhol’s artistic focusing as a

Hilarie Sheets, “‘The Guy Was Mortal’: Whitney Curator Donna De Salvo on How Her 11 Personal Relationship With Andy Warhol Shaped Her New Show,” accessed November 5, 2018. https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/curator-whitneys-warhol-show-mission- show-artist-youve-never-seen-1386064

“Andy Warhol- From A to B and Back Again,” accessed Nov 12, 2018, 12 https://whitney.org/Exhibitions/AndyWarhol#exhibition-about.

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continuity, even after the surviving the assassination attempt that nearly took his life in

1968, He didn’t stop creating and exploring more for his own sake but enrolled into a

new intensive experimental era. “To get people to actually look at what he made is not

as easy as it might sound,” says De Salvo, one of the few female curators who has

worked extensively on Warhol. Based on De Salvo’s personal relationship with Andy 13

Warhol since decades ago, her main idea to curates this significant exhibition at the

Whitney Museum is also for presenting the earnest side about Andy Warhol; in

additions, dividing the myth from the man.

Andy Warhol, a figure that today’s society seems to have lost track of, and is

also the symbolic one that today’s young generations are able to determine and adore.

As Holland Cotter in his essay “Meet Warhol, Again, in This Brilliant Whitney Show”

addresses, “the Warhol for whom art, whatever else it was, was an expression of

personal hopes and fears.” The reference of this description is not to say that, as the 14

viewers arrive on the fifth floor at the Whitney Museum, they are not even able to

recognize it’s Warhol’s exhibition. De Salvo already planned out the process and

prevent that they will not have this kind of reaction. The exhibition literally starts with a

collection of Andy Warhol’s Pop classics: a sculpture of Brillo Box sculpture, series

paintings of Campbell Soup cans, the Coca-Cola bottles, a camouflage pattern, and a

whole space of a gallery that fulfilled by his signature silk-screen flowers and electric

Hilarie Sheets, “‘The Guy Was Mortal’: Whitney Curator Donna De Salvo on How Her 13 Personal Relationship With Andy Warhol Shaped Her New Show,” accessed November 5, 2018. https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/curator-whitneys-warhol-show-mission- show-artist-youve-never-seen-1386064

Holland Cotter, “Meet Warhol, Again, in This Brilliant Whitney Show.” accessed 14 November 8, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/arts/design/warhol-review- donna-de-salvo-whitney-museum-celebrity-portrait.html

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pink cows. Every artwork plans out at the beginning as if the curator wants the

audiences to start the visual feast based on a familiar environment as they move

forward.

As the viewers moving on, which also means, looking back. The objects start to

reflect the backward of Warhol’s artistic period. When the time, there was only Andrew

Warhola instead of 'Andy Warhol’ in the world. The exhibition extends to a showroom 15

that describes the artist’s initial life. Back to the artist’s childhood, who came to the

industrial town at Pennsylvania with his Czech immigrants parents. That this show

room displays many rough sketches from a pale and femme kid from a small town with

big ambitions. This fact of Andy Warhol’s background also represents him as a totally

outsider form the mainstream American culture. It also makes one interested to keep

exploring how he came, or, became dominant inside of this big frame American culture

as he grew up. At the same time, the aesthetic sense developed from his dual culture

background, also effected by his religious faith as a Catholic.

As the viewers walking to the middle of the exhibition, the pictures which well

displayed there, have only recently included into his official approval of his artist career.

They are important additions. They made his homosexuality a specific part of his story.

In order to understand them, they also open the way for us to think about how and to

what extend his art is different. To use a term in academic theory, from accepting

different versions of American culture: questioning their validity, revealing their

inconsistencies, and turning them upside down.

Ibid15

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In addition, to conclude this exhibition review, as Ben Davis addresses in his

article “The Whitney’s Warhol Show Strives to Spotlight His Human Side. But It’s His

Cynicism That Remains Most Surprising”, “Nothing would be more classically

Warholian than simply trotting out the most familiar Greatest Hits, again. His art is by

and large about the allure of the popular; he had a low estimation of public’s hunger for

the subtleties of art.” 16

Conclusion

After the analysis of Frida Kahlo and Andy Warhol’s recent exhibition reviews,

the curators proposes from those two iconic artists clearly represent not only the

artists’ famous and significant paintings, but also introduce them as ‘normal people’ to

the public. Also, as artistic statements to include both of their initial aspirations, Frida

Kahlo and Andy Warhol both very aware of today’s celebrity culture. They both know

how to build their feature ‘personal setting.’ How they dress up to present their style,

how they look like in front of the society. As comparison, the two museums both

represent the ‘everything’ around them, the personal belongings, their unofficial

sketches, prints and show the process of how they finally get adapted, rooted into this

commercial, rapid art world.

Ben Davis. “The Whitney’s Warhol Show Strives to Spotlight His Human Side. But It’s 16 His Cynicism That Remains Most Surprising.” Accessed November 26, 2018.

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