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Ask me about my day.

We haven't died!  Updates are coming soon!

The Generational:Younger Than Jesus

The Generational:

WWJD? 

WTF?

Re-Re+Arts Update

More to Come Tomorrow!

Re+Arts Update...

Song- Homage a Antar (from Ziad Antar's brilliant "Wa" seen at The New Museum's The Generational: Younger Then Jesus. Review to follow, but it wasn't pretty.

Marilyn Minter: glamour girl.

So.... I had Marilyn Minter for one semester at SVA back in 1992.
The reason I know it was only one semester was that I thought she was a horrible teacher, and I made sure to switch out when I had the chance. I thought she was way too self-absorbed and only interested in what fit into her seemingly narrow parameters of what could be considered art. My most vivid memory of her is a heated discussion she had with a classmate, where she flat-out tells him if he continues to make the paintings he did, he would never be shown in any real gallery.
Ouch.
I can't see her work without being reminded of that episode. And whether or not her work in this show was "real" enough for a "real" gallery, i have no clue. I still don't know what the hell that means. But whatever it means, it sure as hell is working for her. I don't know about the work, but she's incredibly successful. Her patented mix of high-gloss fashion with high-gloss irony heavily slathered in pervy sex POV close-up shots is the kind of shiny shit rich white people love to feel guilty about. I actually watch porn, which is why I don't tend to give much of her work a second glance.

But I'm also flat broke, so I'm sure it won't effect Marilyn one bit.

Marilyn Minter

Green Pink Caviar

Salon 94 Freemans

NYC

thru 6/13

How did I miss this one?!?

Apparently Cindy Sherman's ex-lover Paul Hasegawa-Overacker made a movie about her. "Guest of Cindy Sherman". This is news to me. It stopped playing last week, after debuting at the Tribeca Film Festival and having a short stint at a small theater on 12th street.

So I haven't seen the movie, but the review that it's gotten is pretty hysterical. This article http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=portrait_of_misogyny calls the movie "a creepy, cringe-inducing rehash of a relationship's failure, told through intimate home-movie footage and the annotations of friends." Sounds like something right up my alley.

I'm not going to lie, I'm a complete fan of bitter lovers making art about their horrible experiences with love and relationships (hell it's what I do!) The review also says "insofar as shoving a camera in an artist's face at a public gallery opening and not getting the finger can be called "access", Hasegawa-Overacker had it"

In all honesty, I wish I had the balls to shove a camera in some people's faces. Will I ever be in the same room with Chuck Close, Richard Tuttle, and Alex Katz ever again? I mean, you can't hate the guy for having guts.

So the articles and reviews that I have read all go on and on about how sexist the film is, and how terrible it is that Hasegawa-Overacker used this "personal" footage, but I guess in the end I'm thankful that someone would take the time to make a film like this.

It raises a lot of questions. Can what Michael and I are doing in galleries be considered journalism? Is it guerrilla journalism? Are we just two wanna-be-critics? Did Hasegawa-Overacker know what he was doing when he was taking all this footage? Had he planned all along to manipulate the footage later, to show of his "insider" information? To prove a point that Cindy Sherman is a minority in an art world full of alpha males?

In what ways are Michael and I comparable to Hasegawa-Overhacker? Are Michael and I outsiders on the inside? There I was plump and dumpy in my purple sweater and flip flops, waving my camera around like a tourist in Time Square, standing in a room full of wealthy white men, and darling mousy women in their cocktail dresses. I could spew the statistics of how discriminated against female artists are, but I don't know if that's even relevant to this discussion.

Who isn't discriminated against? Women getting mad at men for making movies about female artists doesn't make any sense. Shouldn't "we" be happy that finally someone is paying attention, even if it is just an ex-lover? A film about a female artist is a film about a female artist, at least she has that. How many films have been made about Warhol, and Basquiat, and Christo, and Andy Goldsworthy, and Donald Judd and ect.? For what.... "Frida"?

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I'll just go ahead and say I'm thankful that it's been made and people should stop bitching about how misogynist it is and do something to actually work towards change. We can all sit on our asses and blog about how unappreciated female artists are, but who's going out there and making the movie about it?

Get it? Got it? Good.

Furthur Information:

Official Website

http://www.guestofcindysherman.com/#/home

IMDB (Internet Movie Database for those of you who are living under a rock)http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443524/

New York Post (hahahahahahaha!)

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03272009/entertainment/movies/guest_of_cindy_sherman_161520.htm

utne magazine (which if you're not familiar with you should be)

http://www.utne.com/two-female-artists-misogyny-and-scandal.aspx?utm_medium=email&utm_source=iPostently

The American Prospect

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=portrait_of_misogyny

Performanctallation

Performanctallation: Chewed up and Spit out

Art School Eats Paper.

Students draw on it, professors grade on it, attendance is taken on it, bills are printed on it, contracts are signed on it, it's used, discarded, shredded, and recycled.

In my installation I use the byproduct of discarded documents from the office I'm employed at and arranged it in my installation sight to create an undulating organism.  The life of a document is temporary, just as the life of a sight specific installation; in the same way that I relocated resources from one area of my life (work) into another(art) to transform what once was trash into art,  in my performance I transform what once was art, back into trash.   

A very old animation for my friend Jimmy

I'll let this speak for its self. 

Hangin' with the homies @ Pace

So we thought it was a bust in Chelsea.. and then this happened... but it was still kinda a bust.

It ain't over!

So I went to Ohio, which is why I haven't posted anything.

Hey Michael, what's your excuse?

"Painting, What It Became"

Carolee Schneemann recently had a show of her work at P.P.O.W "Painting, What It Became."

My question is what DID it become? My Answer: It's unclear

Here's why:

P.P.O.W.s press release reads :

"P.P.O.W Gallery is pleased to present Painting, What It Became... this will be Schneemann's first exhibition that exclusively surveys her paintings"

Well, OK. Everything makes sense so far "Painting, What It Became", a show of paintings.

It continues: (In fancy language)

"Carolee Schneemann's paintings from the late 1950s and 1960s have been a largely overlooked aspect of her oeuvre, relegated to the margins, considered early or immature work, as opposed to ingenious corollaries to the Kinetic Theater, Judson Dance Theater, performances, films she was producing simultaneously, and/or as harbingers of what was to be produced in the decades to come... Its aim is to reconsider Schneemann as a painter, who never ceased conceptualizing all her work as always related to the painterly gesture, to prying open 'the frame', and to conceiving of the body as tactile material; that is, as paint, canvas or paintbrush."

To paraphrase for those of you who don't speak "Fancy language" We're suppose to accept her installations, performances, films and photographs as paintings. Okay... except for one little problem.

Installations, performances, films, and photographs... aren't Paintings.

That's like saying.. I want you to watch television and pretend it's radio. WTF? You can have television broadcasts on the radio, and you can have radio broadcasts on the television, but you can't watch the radio. (technically you can but nothing would happen.) You can take a photograph of a painting,you can make a sculptural painting, and you can make a film of a painting, but this entire "my body is a canvas, thus if I put stuff on myself then I am a painting" just doesn't convince me.

I can put a baby on my head, but that doesn't make it a hat.

Here we see a free-standing paintstallation, a TV, a drawing, and some photographs

I can accept the paintstallation as a painting, even the drawing. But I cannot accept the TV or the photographs.

Here were have a paintstallation (wall) and an installation (floor) I can accept the wall (hesitantly since in person it's completely a sculpture, it just so happens its a rectangle hung on a wall) But the TV with the mop on it? No. That is not a painting.

There's a painting! With two collages (acceptable as paintings) and a video, shown on a television... not a painting.

Voila! Two paintings... and a paintstallation (which is really a sculpture who's pedestal is the wall).

Is this what painting has become?

I'm so distracted by the question of "what is painting", "what is art" that as much as I enjoyed the show I'm left feeling completely puzzled as to why the title would be "Painting, What it Became." Maybe it's just me being narrow minded about things, or maybe I'm just being too open minded. I either want NOTHING to be a painting or for EVERYTHING to be a painting.

Claes Oldenburg wrote a list in 1961 entitled "I Am for an Art"

The following is an excerpt:

I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.

I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all, an art given the chance of having a starting point of zero.

I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap & still comes out on top.

I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary.

I am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself...

I am for the art of conversation between the sidewalk and a blind man's metal stick.

I am for the art that grows in a pot, that comes down out of the skies at night, like lightning, that hides in the clouds.

I am for art that is flipped on and off with a switch.

I am for art that unfolds like a map, that you can squeeze, like your sweety's arm, or kiss, like a pet dog. Which expands and squeaks, like an accordion, which you can spill your dinner on, like an old tablecloth."

I Am for an Art" originally appeared in Environments, Situations, Spaces, and was then reprinted in Store Days: Documents From The Store.

So I don't really know where I'm going with this aside from raising the question about whether it's necessary to draw arbitrary lines between all of the different art forms, or whether we need separate categories for our puny little minds to be able to properly comprehend what's going on. I would argue that drawing lines just gives people more reasons to argue. It's not like we're talking about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict here... I mean maybe Art is just Art.

All of that aside the show I'd call the show a success, despite of it's inconsistencies between content and concept. At least it got my wheels spinning.

And speaking of spinning....

The Art of Brotherhood

Not too long ago I bumped into the brothers John and Hank Green on youtube.  The brothers banded together for the year 2007, made a pact to only communicate via non-textual information and they vlogged their way through the entire year.  

Now, I know it must sound dull, but this is one of the most profound and meaningful uses for the Internet that I have seen thus far.  Here we have two men, who apparently didn't know each other that well at the beginning of the project, and as the year moves forward as viewers start becoming interested not only the incredible pace at which Hanks speaks, not in Johns quirks and crazy eyes as he travels through the year finishing the revisions on his book, "Paper Towns" but in the sheer knowledge and silliness shared between the two of them.  Here are two grown men who think it's OK to refer to their wife and sister-in-law as "The Yeti."  

And somewhere between the songs about anglerfish and Helen Hunt, and videos of John devouring blenderized happy meals and smearing peanut butter on his face as he discusses Rwanda, something happens.  They become just two guys going through their daily lives, but doing so in a way that is just a little bit more fun, a little bit more honest, and a lot more intelligent, and the viewer is invited to participate.

I won't pretend I was there for the beginning, but the development of the fan-base and continued recruitment of the self proclaimed "Nerd Fighters" is apparent in all of the immense offspring that the brothers Green have managed to sprout.  Fan sights, tribute videos, video responses... they're ALL OVER THE INTERNET.  Search for "Peeps" in youtube and just try to find a video that isn't showered with spock hands, kids chanting "Nerd Fighters" and doesn't give a shout out to John and Hank.  

To see siblings using new media to do something that's real, honest, and intimate... There's no fancy makeup for the camera, no magical editing.... it's not reality TV... it just IS reality.  I think this is what we need more of right now.  It's like saying "Wake up... everything around you is waiting!"

I'll only speak for myself, but I know what I seek the most out of life is meaning.  I want a brotherhood, a connection, and if I can't have it with my own peers I can at least use the Internet to find like-minded people to connect with.  I want an age of intelligence where silliness is celebrated, and people can disagree but still respect each others opinions.   

You don't need to watch all 462 of their videos to realize that's the idea.  

They've got all the strife, soul, and worldliness of Picasso's "Guernica" with all the glitz, love, and familiarity of Klimt's "The Kiss".

It's Art.

Sure I can't react to them on their composition, form, light, color, design, or even by their concept, but what I can react to is their ability to make me transcend my emotions.  This is not the movie magic manipulation achieved by the addition of those heart-string-pulling songs at just the right moment.  When I watch these videos I'm moved, over and over and over again and while I struggle to put my finger on why, I reject the idea that there's anything wrong with my reaction.  Why isn't youtube a legitimate creative outlet?  

I could go on, but I wont.  Investigate. Indulge. 

Introduce yourself to something new.  

http://www.youtube.com/user/vlogbrothers

http://www.youtube.com/user/maureenbooks

http://whoisamy.wordpress.com

http://www.DFTBA.com

http://www.ecogeek.org

E l e c t r i c i t y

ITS ELECTRIC

Pleasant thoughts about Amy Pleasant

I want to take a moment to recognize the work of Amy Pleasant.  She just had a show that is no longer up, featuring drawings, paintings, and a site-specific wall installation at Jeff Bailey Gallery.

© Amy Pleasant

Now, if you know me personally what I'm about to say may confuse you, but to be honest between Mickalene Thomas, Raquib Shaw , and the heavily ornamented, and flamboyant stuff that's been surfacing all over the place I'm tired of looking at glitter and sparkles and rainbows. 

Come'on people, aren't we in a recession?  

Pleasants work is self reflective, quiet, and lovely, for lack of better words.  It's painted freely, but not without care.  

© Amy Pleasant

I think the main success is in her touch being as intimate as her subject matter.  (a kiss. a drip. embrace. echo of the pass of a brush)  Her work is stripped down to the bare bones, but doesn't leave me wanting any more.  The level of affection in the subject of her work isn't overly saccharin, but is still filled with warmth.

Maybe I'm partial to shit about love and compassion because I pass an egg every month, but as a human being I'm also partial to things which reflect the human experience.  Most people know what it's like to be held, and most people know what it's like to be kissed, and most people enjoy both of those things.  At the most basic human level Pleasants paintings put me in the same place a really great song does; a great misty nostalgia of pleasant past times.

Poster Boys, or Poser Boys?

There's an interesting show up right now at the Marlborough Chelsea gallery (545 West 25th st.) of Michael Anderson's "street" poster collages that brought up a lot of questions and I'm going to attempt to get to the bottom of some of it.

I don't know how many of you are aware of what's going on right now in the subways, but there's this guy "Poster Boy." "Poster Boy" is a 20 something guy who cuts subway posters and collages them back together in different arrangements to be witty social commentary. They're pretty damn cool, and though I've never seen one in person I always keep my eyes peeled in the hopes that someday something will subtly catch my eye and make me realize, "Holy shit, that's really not suppose to be like that."

© Poster Boy

Really cool right?

Michael Anderson, on the other hand, began his career long before "Poster Boy", but I'm not convinced his work has the same power, or even the same potential for power that "Poster Boy's" work does. Here's why:

1."Poster Boy" takes pieces of the subway, and rearranges. He acknowledges with his work that advertisements really belong to the public. We are their purpose, so we always have the potential to alter it.
2. He honors the fact that the posters are meant for the dungeons, tunnels and piss scented rat caves and he leaves them there, all while re-defining and re-igniting an exploration of public art.
3. His work is performative. When people bare witness to an action it's much easier for them to imagine themselves doing it. (It is rumored that "Poster Boy" impersonators have been popping up all over)
4. Political commentary is meant for the masses, not for galleries. While Anderson's collages are undoubtedly beautiful, he's taking something meant for the masses and giving it to elitists.
5. Anderson showed up to the exhibition opening in a head to toe track suit, complete with cocked baseball cap. This may have been a nod to the "street" but lets face it, how many "Jenny from the blocks" really go to the Marlborough Gallery? It's that Post-modern irony seeping through again; track suits don't belong in galleries, just like subway posters don't.... but there they are.

© Michael Anderson

What I see in Anderson's work is beauty, composition, color, repetition, narrative, a homage to the great DADA artists, surrealist painters, and Picasso. As much as Anderson himself may see the work as being about "what it's like to be alive today," I think it's more of a statement about art its self. Anderson's work has very little to do with the actual ads. Sure, he rearranges them to make narratives, but they don't speak to subway/street culture. They are familiar, but I'm speaking to their familiarity as a lower middle class white female. I think perhaps Anderson's artist statement about the work being about life, suits "Poster Boy" more appropriately then it suits himself!

I've fallen in love with both of these artists. "Poster Boy" for bringing art to the subway, and Anderson for bringing the subway to art. The potential for great collaborations aside, I wonder what would happen if the two met. In some great world they'd get together for drinks at a bar and Anderson would talk all about how great it feels to be a sell out and "Poster Boy" would talk about the state of the states, and both would discuss how the people have the power, if only they knew how to get together to use it.

If you want to know more about Poster Boy here's a start:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/arts/design/04post.html?_r=1&8dpc
http://www.nypress.com/blog-3216-poster-boy-ready-for-his-close-up.html

If you want to know more about Michael Anderson:
http://www.chamuconegro.com/

My Neck Hurts

What is with this new trend of hanging stuff a foot from the ceiling?  Should I be wearing my stilts to Chelsea?  As far as I'm concerned "the art world" is about ART, not galleries, and if galleries are such attention whores now, as to hang the art in places where you can't even see it, in order to draw attention to the gallery itself, then I think we need to re-evaluate where artwork belongs.

Richard Tuttle : Tuttle-Scapes

We love Richard Tuttle.  We love Rit dye and grommets.  We just wish he would come in from the sun for a bit. Really, it's for his own good.

My Dearest Mickalene

Lost in the Honey Space

Hey there, Frida Fans!!! (Or: Betty Crocker sucked!)

OK, these are my last rebutals on my beloved Friduchi.

Dearest Natalie,

Julia Childs was without a doubt an innovator of the American culinary experience.
She pioneered the concept of a televised cooking show,
and with it introduced America to French cuisine, demystifying it for the masses, and in effect changing the cultural pallete forever, challenging and broadening the aesthetics of the average housewife in Idaho.
She achieved this though her passion for the art she loved: food.

But she was a mess in that kitchen.
I saw one show when she tried to cook a whole chicken in some recipe and she grabbed that bird and did things to it that looked illegal, immoral, and just plain ole wrong. Dan Akroid did a great skit as her in the first season of SNL, where (s)he gets a cut and bleeds all over the place and just keeps cooking.
She was clumbsy in that kitchen, to say the least, and that was the charm. It made her whole endeavor relatable. People saw themselves in that kitchen, thinking if she can do it...

She made the difference, not some array of skill or pastiche. She put her heart into the show and its message.
But her apples usually fell off her plate.

New York Artists Prapare for the New Depression

Saltz and Peppa

(Photo: Ellen Page Wilson. Image Copyright Rudolf Stingel and Courtesy of the Artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.)

Sometimes I don't know what the hell Jerry Saltz is thinking.

In a recent New York Magazine article (here), he discusses Rudolf Stingel's recently closed showing of three small canvases in the cavernous Paula Cooper Gallery, one per wall.

He says:

"I wouldn’t want any of these paintings individually, but together they charge the gallery with thoughts about what it takes to create shows in the wake of orgiastic abundance. Stingel’s installation is a requiem for the white cube and a fond farewell to the last fifteen years."

What the fuck did any of that have to do with anything relevant to Stingel's work?

I saw it, walked out rather fast, and needed to catch my breathe outside. Fond farewell my ass.

It was a blatant spit in the face of state of the artworld, or the artdream as the world slips away from it. I don't even know how brave it was.

I forgot to check if they sold individually or as a group, or if they sold at all. It could've been Paula Cooper cutting a lot of overhead.

There's gonna be a lot of pages to fill when to next big wave of gallery closures happens during the summer art-lull. Critics will find all manner of bullshit to fill up what should be show reviews.

They'll be scrambling to keep their jobs too.

Get to work, Jerry.

She did. We did.

Frida Kahlo, Tunas (Still Life with Prickly Pear Fruit). 1938. Oil on Masonite.

I'm going to have to go ahead and say that I still think you're wrong Michael.  Frida was a good artist, because she was a good painter.  Thomas Kincaid doesn't even touch his own paintings (that's a future blog).  I was making the point in the video that all of those artists are good, amazing painters, Georgia, DaVinci, Dali, Picasso...

I'm sorry, you can't seperate someone's ability to paint from the fact that they're an artist. You can't say "Well, Warhol was a good artist, but he was a horrible print maker."  Just like you cant say "Betty Crocker wrote some good recipes, but she was a terrible cook"  (betty crocker is fictional, but you can substitute her for your chef of choice)

"If she painted apples on a table, no one would've looked twice."

Apples painted by Frida's hand, informed by her experiences, are not apples painted by Cezanne.  I challenge you to think about the fact that someone who can look at an apple as an extension of herself, as her own bleeding heart on the table has the ability to make MORE interesting apples then say someone like Cezanne, who saw apples for shapes and forms and color and light, and appley-goodness.   I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that in my opinion, Frida is a better painter then Cezanne, and a lot of other painters-of-apples out there.

She did paint apples on tables.  We did look, and we still are looking.

Still got hope, Obama

Da Prez, as he shall hence forth be referred as, is about to create a White House position responsible for the nation's Art and Culture, as per this article in the NY Times.
Definitely a step in some direction.
Not sure which.
I'm actually a little desensitized toward how the gov't feels about art.
Giuliani, Mapplethorpe, Serrano and Saatchi already fucked up my chance of getting anything directly from the NEA.
They (the gov) still haven't fully replaced the NEA funding they cut almost 15 years ago.
I'm just not plugged into that system enough.
I still think Art and Culture should be lumped in with Education. This way everyone would learn to be more comfortable with asking questions, instead of scared of someone taking gov't money and making porn.

Right back atcha "Painter!"

I'm going right out on a limb here and separating the ability to be a good painter and a good artist.

Frida was a good artist. Not a good painter. Period.

Thomas Kincaid is a good painter.
Georgia was an amazing painter (new york cityscapes? What are ya lookin at?)
DaVinci? Come on.
Dali? DALI?! Did u take shrooms before that video? Go the National Gallery at the Smithsonian and stand in front of the Sacrament of the Last Supper, and then repeatedly smack yourself in the head for even thinking that about my boy Sal.
Picasso was a prick. And a womanizer. And an amazing painter as well as the exemplary artist everyone blindly touts him to be.
And he loved Frida.

Frida, at best was an adequate painter of extraordinary visions.

But I guarantee if she painted apples on a table, no one would've looked twice at her.

That's my definition of a good painter

Frida Kahlo: Not a Bad Painter... Actually She's Sorta Good.

Touche' Douche'.

Louise Nevelson @ Pace 25th St

Louise Nevelson, Untitled (1968)
Photo by: Bill Jacobson / Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York

Louise Nevelson

Like her. Love her obsessive tendencies. Love her impulse to unify the scraps of debris that surrounded her, and that she chose black as the color to create one from many, creating at the same time a jam-packed and clustered void.

Liked the showing of the work. Didn't like the sections of black walls behind some pieces (dramitic, overdramatic, mellodramatic?). Don't know how I feel about the placement of some pieces hung WAY high on the wall near the ceiling. Hurt my neck a little, and I don't know what it did to the space, other than stick out like a sore thumb.
And space, with its every subtle nuance, is Nevelson's medium of choice.

Frida can't paint.

Talking with Natalie last week, I said something really fast that I've been feeling for a while, and it felt good getting out. I said Frida Kahlo was a horrible painter.

It was at the most recent retrospective of her work at the Philadelphia Museum that I really started questioning things. I caught it on its last day and the show was packed, everyone with there audio tour headset clamoring for position near the next work the show's curators deemed important enough to talk about. And it was a bit of a pilgrimage for me. I've known Frida's work for so long and have yet to get tired of the blunt force trauma you can get from fully immersing yourself in her painful all-life-is-sorrow world. I've seen the majority of her paintings before in past exhibitions, back to the huge Latin American survey MOMA had in the early 90's, and the idea of seeing the "real" paintings was still important to me.

Until I saw them.

I was the overcome by the feeling that the actual paintings on the museum wall were not showing me any more than what I could see in the multitude of reproductions, artspeak for pictures of paintings, that have fed me for the majority of my life. In investing so much in the symbolic language that Frida called her own, and in the circumstances from where it came to be, I paradoxicly found myself distanced from the actual paintings themselves. And at that distance they began to seem crude and dry, as if the juice had been sqeezed and all that remained was the disgarded husk.

Now for my credentials: it's arguable that the work of Frida Kahlo was the prominent influence in myself becoming an artist, a.k.a. crazy and broke. Her work showed me the power of self-directed crazy at work; the exorcism of personal monsters that become inseparable from their host, exposing, owning, accepting, and ultimately using your monsters like a pimp whoring out his bitches.
Now, maturity has brought me the understanding that there was no redemption in her actions; as opposed to what that slop-filled melodramatic faux-biopic a few years back would lead you to believe. Those who knew her usually describe her as full of life, as a feisty spitfire, defiant in the face of all that befell her (and trust me, it was a lot).
But it all just adds up to the sad-clown syndrome for me. A brave face, elaborate costuming, a put-on bravada, all to conceal a lot of pain and fear that stayed with her all the way to her death; her last painting, a still-life where a watermelon half has the words "Viva la Vida" scrawled in its juicy pink flesh, has as much death as it does the life it so brazenly celebrates; the melon's pulp a clear reference to Frida's own vulnerable insides which was so often violated, both by accident and the frequent medical procedure. Being her last painting, its message has been taken as her epitaph, her motto that supported her through all her miseries. But I never felt comfortable with its inherent optimism. To Frida, life will go on a long time without her, and it will be filled with the same pain, and blood, and dead things that she knew intimately in her own. And it is this level of honesty that I have designated as the pinnacle of modern artistic achievement, for me anyway.

So, what the hell does all this have to do with Frida's painting ability? Well, nothing, and that's the point here. Frida Kahlo and the images she produced were so much more than the physicality of the work. It ultimately doesn't matter that the majority of her painting are flat and as visually predictable as a paint-by-numbers. Her greatest painting influences were Mexican retablo painters and her twice-married husband Diego Rivera, and her style combined the flat design-based visual architecture of Rivera's mural work with the awkward naiveté of the religious folk paintings. In both practices, paint is secondary. Frida used it to fill the spaces between what was going on in her psyche.

And that's ok with me.

In fact, it's possably the greatest testament to her work, to the world she created, where she cast herself as the tragic heroine whose sole purpose was to be subjected to all the sorrows that life can bring, and to endure. Nothing more.

It only took me almost 20 years to realize that the paintings themselve were only a supporting character in her play.