Issue Number 88
January 9, 2003


Frida at Last

Hollywood and the Artist Bio-pic

After years of infighting among Latina actresses, and Madonna, perhaps hoping to reprieve her triumph in Evita, Salma Hayek triumphed in the prized effort to bring Hayden Herrera’s biography of Frida Kahlo to the screen. Was it worth the wait? Well, yes and no. There were moments that reduced me to tears. That is not unusual as I often get weepy in the dark. But also a sense of disappointment. There was a lot of information about the many tragedies of her life but relatively few insights about her great works.

Diego Rivera, as skillfully portrayed by Alfred Molina, is more lovable and sympathetic, although a womanizing self-centered monster, than one would have imagined. The real Diego was big gutted and bug eyed although a successful and prolific skirt chaser. Here, though great of girth, he has
moments of boyish charm.

So the film, not surprisingly, unreels as a love story. Or, as Frida reveals to Diego in a poignant moment, "I have had two great tragedies in my life, the bus accident (when her foot was mangled and a metal rod pierced her pelvis and vagina) and you Diego. Of the two you have been the greater disaster."

Other Hollywood moments in this bio-pic are an extramarital affair with Marxist in exile, Leon Trotsky (later whacked by a KGB agent) and her bisexual flings. There is the minor theme of  Diego’s rise and fall in America from a solo show at MoMA to the disaster of the Rockefeller Center Mural commission in which he insisted on including images of Marx and Lenin. Not a smart move for the symbolic epicenter of American capitalism. And, of course, Frida’s famous photogenic single stroke eyebrow. Photographers worshipped her as a nativist, Mexican icon in her ersatz peasant garb. Particularly when abroad. Rubbing shoulders or slumming with the people was more problematic when on home turf, which is hinted at during a cameo in workers’ bar.

Then there is the theme of the ironic reversal of fortune which is not well told in the inevitably Oscar bound film. A best actress nomination seems a lock for Hayek whether or not the voters give a fig about Frida Kahlo the artist. During their lifetime, Rivera was an international superstar while she was known primarily as his artist wife. Today, her star shines far brighter than his. The works of Rivera are respected by scholars but generally viewed as dated. His work is less admired and enduring than Jose Orozco who is revered for his murals in the Baker Library of Dartmouth College.

But the tragic and poignant, surreal self-portraits of Kahlo have prompted a feeding frenzy not only among collectors (including Madonna) but also among feminist art historians.

The larger issue here is not a review of Hayek’s successful, however limited film, but the problems of the Hollywood artist bio-pic in general. In order to find its way to the silver screen the artist in question must be a household name, and have led a colorful, preferably tragic, bohemian private life. The question is does Hollywood celebrate the art and artist or the wild and crazy guy, or woman? Did Hayek deliver the extraordinary artist or the crippled, abused, promiscuous, bisexual woman?

Years ago, we were treated to Charlton Heston striking heroic poses as Michelangelo in the Agony and the Ecstasy. Who can forget Rex Harrison as Julius 11 looking up at the scaffolding and asking, "How Long," of Michelangelo at work on the Sistine Chapel Ceiling? In that generation Heston, later a spokesperson for the National Rifle Association, got all the really big parts: Ben Hur, Moses, and Michelangelo. Somewhat more successful, for its time, was Kirk Douglas with an amazing physical resemblance to Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life with Anthony Quinn suitably dark and brooding as Paul Gauguin. As attendance records demonstrate the public adores the work of the mad Dutch artist who cut off his ear or the wild and crazy Parisian who went native in Tahiti. Also from that era we had a dramatically shortened Jose Ferrer as Henri de Toulouse Lautrec in Moulin Rouge.

In recent years, Julian Schnabel surprised us by directing an interesting film portrait of Jean Michel Basquiat, an African American, junkie genius who died young. And Schnabel got to paint all of Basquiat’s paintings for the film, which may have been an added incentive. It had its moments including the vignettes of Andy Warhol. Actually, we seemed to see less of Andy in the tough and gritty I Shot Andy Warhol which was really about his pathetic would be assassin, Valerie Solanas, and her one woman movement, SCUM, Society to Cut Up Men.

In the dubious genre of Hollywood bio-pics, by far, the best was Ed Harris in Pollock with an academy award winning performance by Marcia Gay Harden as his wife Lee Krasner. Harris got robbed of a much deserved Best Actor by the Academy. His portrayal of the drunken Abstract Expressionist paint slinger was superb and accurate in every detail. Based on the important Hans
Namuth documetary film of Pollock at work, a cathartic moment in the life of Pollock and the drama of the film, Harris seemed to inhabit Pollock. Apparently, Harris spent years researching and developing the superb Pollock film. It remains in my mind the best of its kind.

On the other end of the spectrum is Surviving Picasso with the usually wonderful Anthony Hopkins. The film was a vehicle for the bias of his vengeful former mistress Francois Gilot. It portrayed Picasso as the abusive mate (abundantly true on the basis of documented evidence) but never touched on how that played into the genius of the work. The great Hollywood moment in that film centers on an amused Picasso painting Guernica while Dora Maar and Marie Therese Walter roll around the studio floor in a hissy fit, cat fight. It is not a stunning moment in the distinguished career of a great actor.

The bottom line is that the majority of these films present the artist as a kind of colorful, bohemian freak. It is the fantasy of what artists are about. This allows the public to indulge in the voyeurism of creativity. It plays to the idea of mad genius. Perhaps music critics make similar comments on highly successful films like Amadeus. Was that really Mozart?

The interesting question is why Hollywood does not give us a film about Cezanne, Mondrian or Vermeer. These artists created great works but did not seem to lead particularly colorful or tragic lives. Rather, perhaps one day we might see Rothko in a pool of blood in his bathtub. Gorky swinging from the rafters. Or Eva Hesse the brilliant, beautiful woman artist who died young of cancer. Perhaps, Ana Mendieta, the Cuban performance artist, who "fell" from a window after a night of epic drinking and arguing with her husband, sculptor, Carl Andre. We are likely to get another campy, colorful Warhol project but there is no way in hell that a producer will pony up for a film on Jasper Johns. More likely is Leonardo Di Caprio as the British impressionist, Walter Richard Sickert, who was recently outed as Jack the Ripper. Coming soon to a megaplex near you.

Charles Giuliano is a Boston based artist, curator and critic. He is an editor of Art New England, contributor to Nyartsmagazine, and the director of exhibitions for The New England School of Art and Design at Suffolk University. He is represented by Flatfiles Gallery in Chicago.

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