November 06, 2009, Reading/Presentation, Let us now praise famous women: Finding Frida Kahlo and Mistress of the Sun, By Sara Fasy

Reading/Presentation
San Miguel Literary Sala presents
Barbara Levine & Sandra Gulland
Thurs, Nov 12, 5-7pm
Posada San Francisco
(opp Jardín)
70 pesos (or what you can pay)

Let us now praise famous women: Finding Frida Kahlo and Mistress of the Sun
By Sara Fasy

Maybe you saw the front-page article in the New York Times, dateline San Miguel de Allende. Barbara Levine’s latest book, Finding Frida Kahlo, has attracted international attention. The book beautifully presents ephemera attributed to a uniquely Mexican artist.

Frida’s image here is as ubiquitous as that of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Like Mexico’s revered patron saint, Frida Kahlo is an icon for merchandise that runs the gamut from delicate sculptures (as a wounded deer, or as a Katrina) to plastic mesh shopping bags. In 2001 she became the first Hispanic artist honored with a US postage stamp. Fragments of her life are remembered by most of us, in part through two well-received films. We know of her stormy marriage to Diego Rivera, her horrendous physical infirmities, the friendships with Trotsky and the surrealist poet Andre Breton. Perhaps we have visited the blue house in Coyoacan which houses the collection of painted tin retablos and her journals, laid open for perusal under glass. Back in the 80’s Madonn
a began to collect her work. Her undeserved status as only a “minor artist” suddenly underwent a sea change. Those dark meet-in-the-middle eyebrows gaze out boldly at her newly appreciative audience. But the question remains: who was Frida Kahlo?

Luckily for those who admire Frida’s work, Barbara Levine was invited in 2008 to meet with two local antiques dealers, Carlos and Leticia Noyola. In their store, La Buhardilla, sat a suitcase, a footlocker, a small wooden box and two wooden chests. They were filled with trinkets, sketches, paintings, letters and clothing attributed to Frida Kahlo. As a photographer, artist and curator, Barbara Levine was intrigued. Levine was uniquely prepared to immerse herself in this collection of objects. Her previous books, Around the World, The Grand Tour in Photo Albums and Snapshot Chronicles, Inventing the American Photo Album, led her to intense visual explorations of time and place. Their sumptuous pages chronicle fragmentary images of past lives. Every evocative photo, placed on black pages and scribbled with white ink commentary by family members, gives a sense of personal history that reaches into our own lives. As Levine puts it, regarding the 20th century interest in photo albums, people began to realize that “quotidian material was valued for making tangible a life lived.” Levine had expected to take on as her next project her own personal archives, left behind in storage in San Francisco when she moved to San Miguel. But fate intervened with that initial encounter with the Noyolas. Levine and her collaborator Stephen Jaycox suddenly realized this was the archival material she was meant to explore.

Barbara came to this project with a wealth of experience. From 2001-2005 she was the Deputy Director of the Contemporary Jewish Museum. For twelve years before that she collaborated with international artists, collectors, galleries and museums as Director of Exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. As a photographer and collagist herself, she brings her cultivated visual talent to the assemblage of photos featured in this book. I asked her what it was like to be immersed in this particular collection. She replied, “I considered the material as an archeological site. I looked at the 1200 primarily personal ephemeral and long stowed away objects as an idiosyncratic archive that has migrated to a different time and place than its attributed origin and now hovers between fact and fiction because of Frida’s fame and importance. I am not a Kahlo expert or an authentication specialist. I considered my experience as an unexpected encounter with Frida Kahlo (and all of the questions that go along with anything relating to an iconic artist) as well as with the universally human tendencies the archive represents.” Though Levine was surprised by the controversy surrounding the book, she sees the questions raised as a wonderful educational opportunity for students of art authentication, Frida Kahlo, and Mexican art history.

Mistress of the Sun, Sandra Gulland

A woman whose brief fame has been nearly obscured over the centuries is brought back to roaring life by the talented author of Mistress of the Sun, Sandra Gulland. The mistress was Louise de la Valliére, the paramour of Louis XIV, King of France from 1661 to 1715. Gulland, whose three books on Josephine Bonaparte have been international best sellers, never set out to be a writer of historical fiction. After 20 years as a book editor and dreams of getting to her own writing, she was determined to avoid “reading on my tombstone, she never got around to it.” She found herself intrigued with the character of Josephine and wanted to find out more about her. When she had finished the first part of Josephine Bonaparte’s story, she decided to take a break by writing a rough draft of Louise de la Valliére’s story. There were many challenges in taking on this particular protaganist and Gullard reveled in reconciling the character’s many contradictions. For a woman in the 17th century to be a ferocious horsewoman and hunter, yet described variously as timid, a philosopher and an intellectual, a devout Catholic and a fallen woman- Gulland couldn’t resist exploring these contradictions. She opens the book with the 6-year old Louise watching a gypsy horsewoman in an exhibition for the public. The young Louise, blond curls spilling, watches mesmerized and declares “I am going to stand on a galloping horse.” Gulland creates the world of the Sun King in rich and immediate detail, the result of eight years of wide-ranging research. Asked about why she is so drawn to the world of the French nobility, she replies, “There’s something very fanciful about French history, something very theatrical, very passionate philosophically. Other histories are more somber. I always think of this painting showing foreign ambassadors paying homage to the Sun King, and they’re all in black, wearing capes and bowing, and there’s the Sun King covered in pink lace and ribbons and bow.”

The richly alive narrative of this almost forgotten corner of history will be the subject of Gulland’s reading for the Literary Sala. Along with Barbara Levine’s gorgeously curated ephemera attributed to Frida Kahlo (skillfully translated by Rosemary Schwartz and others), these two literary tributes to the lives of spirited women living centuries apart promise to create a memorable evening. At the conclusion of the readings, we will launch our community-wide book read of Barbara Kingsolver’s new book on Mexico, The Lacuna, in preparation for her February keynote address.