ABSTRACT
Bloomsbury, 1989 ——, Frida Kahlo: The Paintings, New York: HarperCollins, and London: Bloomsbury, 1991 Lowe, Sarah M., Frida Kahlo, New York: Universe, 1991 One of the fascinating tidbits of Kahlo lore that one learns in reading the books like those in the list above is that Kahlo’s painting, “My Birth”—a graphic portrait of Kahlo’s adult head emerging from between the legs of a female figure whose head is covered-hangs in the entryway of Madonna’s California home. This location for one of Kahlo’s most unsettling works makes materially manifest themes that are consistent and unanswered in Kahlo feminist scholarship. What are the effects of making the body’s pain the centerpiece of women’s experience? Does Kahlo’s self-representation (like Madonna’s) parody conventional images of women or reinforce them? To what extent has Kahlo’s fame been a function of her appropriation by mainstream popular culture?
