Frida, a complete panorama

Gregorio Luke examines the fascinating Frida Kahlo

Ford Director of Communications Linda Chiavaroli recently spoke with Gregorio Luke by phone from his home in Long Beach. Luke, who premieres “Frida – A New Look” at the Ford Amphitheatre June 11 and 12, is difficult to categorize as a performer except to say he is a compelling presence who melds advanced digital technology with theatrical flair. He is an art historian and former director of the Museum of Latin American Art, but what he presents goes far beyond your usual college or museum art lecture. He has great knowledge of the visual arts but is equally interested in dance, music and theatre and the connections between disciplines. He’s a showman, but years of research and thought feed the passion you see on stage.

“What matters to us historians is to present a complete panorama,” says Gregorio Luke. He finds this especially important when it comes to the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907-1954). “What I find with such a complex character as Frida is that often people focus only on certain components — Frida as a feminist or her erotic life or her suffering and all the surgeries she endured. Some feel that you should study only the paintings. I want to talk about Frida as broadly and honestly as I can.”

The year 2007 – the centennial of Frida’s birth – yielded a wealth of new material on Frida: photographs, films and new scholarship, such as Salomon Grimberg’s book, Frida Kahlo: Song of Herself detailing, among other things, that she had put herself through a series of psychological tests.

Luke describes his presentation as “an attempt to integrate all this material into a single coherent discourse. Not all these things are necessarily new but they’ve not been compiled before.” He will include Frida’s own words and descriptions from diaries, letters and other sources. Master artists Rina Lazo and Arturo García Bustos, who studied with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, will introduce both nights and share anecdotes. Ms. Lazo will present a small exhibit of Frida’s clothing and jewelry. Four members of Mexico’s leading contemporary ballet company, Taller Coreográfico de la UNAM, with students from Los Angeles’ High School for the Visual and Performing Arts (LAUSD No. 9) will illuminate aspects of Frida’s character through dance and music.

Luke will also examine close-ups of the detail in some of Frida’s paintings. He recently gave a talk in Houston and used a slide of Kahlo’s Moses painting (inspired by a reading of Freud’s Moses and Monotheism). Afterward a woman came up to him and said that the colors in the slide were off. Luke asked how she knew and she said, “Because I own the painting.” Recalls Luke, “She was very generous and allowed me to have the painting a couple of inches from my eyes. You can get in deep, deep and see things not seen in art books.”

He notes that “Frida did not become painter in the conventional sense, going to art school, getting a gallery. Her painting is something that she does in a very personal way. She sends a painting to someone she loves. She used painting as a way to rebuild her body, to understand her miscarriage. She used it as biography, diary, self-exploration. These paintings are done for herself and have a level of intimacy you don’t see in other artworks.”

Having lived with Frida’s art for more than 20 years, what does Luke find most fascinating about Kahlo? “Her ability to transcend pain, refuse to be a victim, refuse to surrender, but instead to create art, have lovers, tell jokes and be happy.”

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Gregorio Luke's show is one of five events in the Ford’s México 100 series honoring Mexican culture.

Click here to read more featured stories in our MEET THE ARTMAKERS series.

PHOTO SPOTLIGHT