P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY ■ 42 O C T O B E R 5 , 2 0 0 9
★ Finding Frida Kahlo
Barbara Levine with Stephen Jaycox.
Princeton Architectural, $50 (256p) ISBN 978-
1-56898-830-6
Independent curator Levine (Around
the World) encountered a mysterious, important
and long-hidden collection of
more than 1,200 of what are reputed to
be Frida Kahlo’s personal items in the
back room of an antiques store in San
Miguel de Allende, Mexico. (The Associated
Press has reported that the Diego
Rivera and Frida Kahlo Trust has
charged that the materials in this book
are forged. Mexican prosecutors are investigating.)
Levine and Jaycox meticulously
document the unpacking of the
archive from five trunks, suitcases and
boxes, and guide readers through the
contents with reproductions of letters
and diaries, and photos of Kahlo’s drawings
and personal effects. Levine finds it
all illuminating, not only regarding
Kahlo but also “the universally human
tendencies that the archive represents.”
Levine’s interview with the antiques store
owners recounts their fascinating
acquisition of the pieces while the “visual
exploration” focuses on Kahlo’s impassioned
love and hatred for her husband,
Diego Rivera, whom she calls an “evil fat
toad,” and her anxiety over her amputated
leg, which manifests itself in her obsession
with flight (“What do I want feet
for/ If I have wings to fly”). This beautiful
book poetically offers a fresh look at
one of art’s iconic women, and though
Kahlo is the protagonist of the project,
Levine’s journey includes us all. (Nov.)

------------------------------

"As a collector and archivist, Levine (former director of exhibitions, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) is particularly sensitive to the fragments of life one accumulates and how they can be interpreted by others. While sorting out her own life, she happened upon Frida Kahlo's personal archive, a treasure trove that had been lost for decades. This bilingual (English/Spanish) book is a record of her discovery, detailing both the objects themselves and the intimate relationships they evoked in viewers. Each object was photographed as it was unpacked and then returned to its original housing. In a very personal essay, the author charts revelations about this enigmatic artist yielded by the diary entries, recipes, sketches, and letters and a starkly annotated series of images of the techniques used for the amputation of her leg. VERDICT An illuminating find or an odd bit of miscellanea, depending upon the reader's interest in this artist's life, this book unravels for both author and reader the unique experience of a very human activity: storing away the little things by which we identify ourselves." -- Paula Frosch, Metropolitan Museum of Art,(August 19, 2009) --Library Journal - Paula Frosch, Metropolitan Museum of Art

---------------------------------
"Finding Frida Kahlo by Barbara Levine and Stephen Jaycox is not necessarily what one might expect. Neither a biography nor document about Kahlo's work, this book is an itemized account of the contents of Kahlo's alleged personal archives, found in an antiques store in Mexico's San Miguel de Allende. Inside an old suitcase, two wooden chests and a box, and a metal trunk are letters, diary pages, stuffed hummingbirds, small pieces of artwork, and a variety of other ephemeral fragments of Frida Kahlo's life. Translations of the notes serve as annotations to the photographs of the contents, whose authenticity is still in dispute. But in some ways this book is more about the very notion of personal archives and collections than the famous Mexican artist. How are we reflected in what we leave behind?" --Mocoloco

---------------------------------

"It is a story almost too good to be real: in an antique store in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, a curator finds a trove of personal effects from one of the twentieth century's most beloved artists. In an exquisite new book titled Finding Frida Kahlo, Barbara Levine, the former director of exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, explores a trove of artist Frida Kahlos personal effects; the sort of stuff we throw out. The odds and ends give us more of what we have longed for more images and insight into the life of an artist who built her career on looking at her life. The book itself is a precious and intimate experience. We get to share in Levines experience, carefully opening the chests, suitcase, box and trunk which contained some 1,200 personal items belonging to Kahlo. In turning the pages we feel we are standing beside Levine in La Buhardilla Antiquarios (The Attic Antiques) as she carefully sifts through the material, trying to document, preserve and understand it all." --Wilsonart Laminate - The Statement
---------------------------------

January 2010-Bookslut Review by Colleen Mondor

I have been fascinated by Frida Kahlo for ages, due equally to her startling art and passionate life. In Finding Frida Kahlo, Barbara Levine quite literally discovers the artist in a bigger way than modern scholars can imagine. Levine is, as she notes in the book's introduction, a collector. She has written about this in previous books, and was contemplating a title on her own personal archive when she stumbled upon an apparent cache of Kahlo's art, diaries, and other ephemera in an antique store in Mexico. The owners obtained the collection from an intriguing source, and had it surveyed and proven as her work and possessions by acknowledged experts. (Be aware that not everyone agrees on this point, however, and there is an ongoing battle about the collection's authenticity. This has brought some backlash to the book, although I think Levine makes her case effectively, and is clear about the ongoing issue of provenance in the text.)

Kahlo apparently had a penchant for leaving items with various people in an attempt to make sure her legacy would be preserved. Levine quickly realized that not only were the objects themselves powerful stuff, but the manner in which they had been grouped together was equally significant. With collaborator Stephen Jaycox she set out to photograph and study this new Frida Kahlo archive. Along with her commentary, an extensive interview with the antique shop's owners and an overview of Kahlo's life and loves, Finding Frida Kahlo is a treasure chest of artistic endeavors, a peek into one incredible woman's life, and a look at how we preserve our own history.

While I can clearly see Finding Frida Kahlo as irresistible for fans, its oversized full color format is the sort of lush reading experience that makes it appear like the ultimate biography for teens. Kahlo loved Diego Rivera and hated him; she was filled with sorrow and she was euphoric; her friendships were deeply personal, intensely loyal and determined. Can you think of a better teen friendly heroine? High school and college students who have not fallen under the artist's spell are going to sink into this review of her diaries, letters, artwork and clothing (plus so many other magical odds and ends) as if finding a complicated kindred soul. After her chatty introduction and interview in the antique store, Levine wisely stands back and lets Kahlo do all the talking. It is her words that narrate the archive's display, and her emotion that carries the book forward. This is how you meet Frida Kahlo and fall hard for her near manic determination to love and live, regardless of the turbulent times and traumas she suffered. Levine is always looking for evidence of how we live, and Kahlo was a woman determined to leave a passion-filled record behind. Their "meeting" is a magical combustible mix, and for teens looking for someone to understand and respect their compelling dramas, Finding Frida Kahlo could well be life-altering. For a few sexy admissions, it remains best for older readers, but they are ones who could best appreciate what Levine and Jaycox discovered in Mexico. There is such more to Frida Kahlo to discover, and while she was never -- not once -- mentioned in a single one of my high school classes, I salute teens who find her on their own, and embrace her as a woman worthy of their time and attention
---------------------------------------------------

REVIEW OF FINDING FRIDA KAHLO, October 20, 2009 

By Gloria F. Orenstein
Professor of Comparative Literature and Gender Studies
Univ. of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA.

When I was in Mexico City doing research for my article: "Frida Kahlo: Painting For Miracles" which was published in the Fall 1973 issue of THE FEMINIST ART JOURNAL, I could only obtain very limited information on Frida Kahlo's work. What I did see was on display at La Casa Azul in Coyoacan. That was all I was able to see at the time. The diary was on display, and house was completely furnished. However, at that time I was told that there were many things that could not be shown to the public until fifty years after Diego Rivera had died, and that many of them contained expressions of anger which should be kept from the public until that half century had passed. I was told this by curators of museums and galleries in Mexico City. Over the years I have been following the exhibitions and criticism on Frida Kahlo, and naturally this cache of materials that has been revealed in Barbara Levine's exquisite publication, FINDING FRIDA KAHLO, is of extreme interest to me. Obviously, I am in no position to speak to the authenticity of the various items in this treasure trove, but I did find it important to learn that those who denied their authenticity have not actually seen the materials, and that those who authenticated some of them have, in fact, subjected them to the tests required to make pronouncements regarding their authenticity.
I have been showing the book to my students, hoping to expose them to the complexity of issues surrounding these decisions. To me, this cache is much like a letter in a bottle put out to sea in the hopes that it will reach the right person on a distant shore at precisely the right moment. Clearly Barbara Levine, by the lucidity with which she has elaborated on the process of transmission that brought these materials into her possession, and by the clarity with which she has presented the peregrinations of the ongoing inquiries into the history of their ownership, is precisely the right person to have received the message contained in the metaphorical bottle. Only time will tell whether the complete contents of this collection will be authenticated, but for the moment, it is a fascinating conundrum, which will puzzle many art history sleuths who will apply their cutting edge techniques, theories, and disputes to its resolution for a long time to come
Because of what was told to me in the early seventies, I am not surprised that these materials (and those in another collection that I have also seen in San Miguel de Allende) have turned up just as the fifty years since Diego Rivera's death have passed, so that (whether they turn out to be authentic or not) they might be revealed to the public at precisely this time. When I think back to 1973, I recall a moment in which Art Historians and Surrealist Scholars in the states had barely any knowledge of Frida Kahlo (myself included....I am a feminist scholar of Surrealism (from Comparative Literature), but not an Art Historian), and I simply marvel at the way Frida Kahlo's work has attained world acclaim in just a few decades, and has finally been included in the history of western art. This is due in large part to the dedicated work of many feminist Art Historians as well as to that of all the others specialists who have been involved in these often extremely subtle, complex, and delicate matters.

---------------------------------

Open Book Toronto

Mexico and Surrealism and Books to Buy  by drogers on October 31, 2009.

Legend in my family is that my great-grandmother on my mother's side -- who crossed the country in a covered wagon and lived to see a man on the moon -- spent her final winters on her own in Mexico. She taught herself Spanish (I'm not sure she even graduated from high school) and travelled at 80 into remote areas to see sacred sites, riding in the back of cargo planes with no doors if necessary. She was thrice married, had a famous temper, and surrounded her Montana mobile home with prize-worthy roses. She saw value in beauty and thorns.
I've never been to Mexico, but I hope to go one day. As a home-schooled student of surrealism, I'm struck by the role the country played in the movement's development. Andre Breton spent time there in the late 1930s and he was disappointed to find that the country did not need him and his incendiary ideas. "Mexico is the most surrealist country in the world."
Two of my favourite art books at the moment feature work by two different but interrelated Mexican artists. I've had Manuel Alvarez Bravo: Photopoetry for about a year or so and just acquired Finding Frida Kahlo (Princeton Architectural Press) this week (the Kahlo sending me back to the Bravo).
When I got Photopoetry -- attracted by the title -- I wasn't familiar with Bravo's name, but looking through the heavy, gorgeous book, I recognized several images, especially a devastating one of a murdered striking sugar-mill worker. The Irish novelist John Banville (there was a great interview with him in the spring 2009 issue of Paris Review in which he comes across as bracingly arrogant and brilliant) contributes an excellent essay ("A Magician in Light") about Bravo's genius. Bravo's pictures are breathtakingly brave and shock the eye with their energy and balance. His scope ranged from documentary photography to lyrically-charged landscapes. It is in no way an overstatement to call these compositions poems.
Breton himself stood before Bravo's lens, along with friends Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Leon Trotsky. I used to be a big fan of Frida Kahlo's self portraits when I first discovered her work as a teenager, but they have been silkscreened onto so many tote bags, t-shirts, mugs, and refrigerator magnets that it is hard to see them with fresh eyes now. So I'm excited that Barbara Levine's Finding Frida Kahlo has made it possible to connect again with what touched me about the artist in the first place. A lovingly photographed archive of recently discovered personal effects -- unsent letters,hand-painted boxes, love potions, recipes, sketches, and mash notes alongside gruesome diagrams on amputation and a pile of dessicated hummingbirds -- the book reveals the woman behind the myth. Levine writes insightfully about how a private archive acts as a splintered, mysterious, and elliptical kind of self portrait. It makes me think of my grandmother's notebooks and how she transplanted a cutting from one of her mother's resilient Montana rosebushes to her own garden in the suburbs of Detroit. I wish I had pressed and saved one of its buds. click here to read rest of review.