{"id":50016,"date":"2015-05-28T14:30:59","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T18:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nybg.org\/plant-talk\/?p=50016"},"modified":"2015-05-28T12:28:33","modified_gmt":"2015-05-28T16:28:33","slug":"frida-kahlos-natural-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/2015\/05\/exhibit-news\/frida-kahlos-natural-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Frida Kahlo\u2019s Natural World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joyce H. Newman<\/a>\u00a0is an environmental journalist and holds a Certificate in Horticulture from The New York Botanical Garden<\/a>.\u00a0She is the former editor of Consumer Reports GreenerChoices.org<\/a> and a blogger for several home and garden publications.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\"An<\/a>
An evocation of Kahlo’s studio in the Haupt Conservatory.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Many of us got our first glimpse of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo\u2019s life with the award-winning 2002 biopic starring Salma Hayek and directed by Julie Taymor, of Lion King<\/em> fame. But the Frida<\/em> now on view at The New York Botanical Garden\u2019s exhibition,\u00a0FRIDA KAHLO: Art, Garden, Life<\/em><\/a>, is a totally different person from the film version.<\/p>\n

The new exhibition is the first to \u201cre-imagine\u201d Kahlo\u2019s garden and to explore her appreciation of nature\u2014including the many plants, insects, and fascinating animal imagery in her paintings.<\/p>\n

Frida Kahlo adored the garden at her home, the Casa Azul (Blue House), in Coyoac\u00e1n, Mexico. Her painting studio directly overlooked the garden with its cobalt blue walls and fabulous collection of native Mexican plants. The garden was both an inspiration and a private haven during Kahlo\u2019s personal battles with chronic illnesses and disabilities.
\n
\nTufts University art historian Dr. Adriana Zavala, who curated the exhibition, says: \u201cMost exhibitions on Kahlo focus primarily on her biography and the dramatic events in her life, but in doing so they undermine her extraordinary intellect, her imagination, and her exuberance and love of life. This exhibition shows the scientific basis of her understanding of the natural world, as well as her interest in the dualism of life\u2019s forces.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Adriana<\/a>
Adriana Zavala, Ph.D.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kahlo studied and was well aware of the symbolic and historical meanings of Mexico\u2019s native plants, as well as their chemical and therapeutic properties. Certain plants in her still life paintings are clearly identifiable\u2014plants like dragon fruit, prickly pear, cherimoya, sapodilla, and mamey sapote.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese fruits have emblematic meaning in some works,” Dr. Zavala explains, “or they are suggestive of witty puns. In other paintings they appear simply to offer the eye a feast of color and texture.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Dr. Zavala, Kahlo\u2019s earlier works are more surrealistic and feature red angel\u2019s trumpet, prickly pear, fuchsia, poinsettia, philodendron, and marigold. Angel\u2019s trumpet has narcotic properties; prickly pear is part of the Mexican national emblem, originating in the Aztec glyph for their capital city Tenochtitlan. Marigolds are associated with D\u00eda de los Muertos<\/em>, or Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday celebrated on November 1.<\/p>\n

Fourteen of Kahlo\u2019s paintings and works on paper\u2014many borrowed from private collections\u2014are now on view for the length of the exhibition, showing the range of her work.<\/p>\n

\"Frida<\/a>
Frida Kahlo in the Mertz Library’s Art Gallery.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of her more surprising sketches and paintings is the early Portrait of Luther Burbank <\/em>(1931)\u00a0that depicts the American horticulturist Luther Burbank, known for his experiments in grafting and hybridization, often with native Mexican plants.<\/p>\n

Burbank\u2019s work seems to have impressed Kahlo who presents him as a man\/tree with wonderful spreading roots, his arms holding a vine and his body flanked by fruit trees. Burbank\u2019s ideas must have struck a chord with Kahlo who, until her death in 1954, proudly maintained her native Mexican garden, which became a famous gathering place for artists, Mexican and international intellectuals, and her own students.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As FRIDA KAHLO: Art, Garden, Life transforms NYBG with the imagery of the artist, curator Adriana Zavala discusses some of the elements of Kahlo’s works\u2014some of which are on display in the Garden’s Art Gallery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":156,"featured_media":50119,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[4550,26,4551,4489,2056],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/FK-art-gallery.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ph0lU-d0I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50016"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/156"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50016"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50122,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50016\/revisions\/50122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}