Frida Kahlo: The story of a global phenomenon from Mexico City

[00:00:01][music] >> The flowers, the monobrow, the unflinching gaze. You instantly [music] recognize Frida Kahlo. But what is it about the artist which still moves millions?

[00:00:14]>> I think it's her feminist passion. I think it's how she looked. She didn't care. She wanted to portray herself exactly how she was.

[00:00:27]>> At the Tate Modern, Frida Kahlo: The Making [music] of an Icon explores how the artist from Mexico City became a global phenomenon. 70 years after her death, she sold more pre-sale tickets than any other artist in Tate's [music] history.

[00:00:44]>> She's an icon of resilience and kind of a counterculture, a counter hegemony, a counter like authority figure. And and I think that she's really inspiring similar to how, you know, Che Guevara or Malcolm X is a symbol of many ideas and ideals for people.

[00:01:02]>> Long before the world became fluent in identity politics, Frida Kahlo painted gender fluidity.

[00:01:09]>> She was known from very young to sort of when wear men's suits. She cut her hair short, you know, like not being the perfect made-up woman with little mustache there. You know, kind of defying sort of gender expectations and perfection that women at this time were expected to perform.

[00:01:30]>> Frida Kahlo began painting seriously at 18 while recovering from a devastating bus crash, later using a wheelchair. The artist was determined never to gloss over the pain she felt.

[00:01:43]>> No woman artist before her had painted her own birth, talked about painted her experience of miscarriage, um you know, kind of showed the female body kind of bleeding, you know, with suffering um in the way that she did.

[00:01:58]And it not in a in a sense of, um, mourning or uh I mean, there's a sadness to it, but there's also this strength with with how she portrays it.

[00:02:08]>> Rather than a retrospective, the exhibition explores [music] Frida Kahlo's influence, from Mary McCartney's photo of Tracey Emin to a shrine by artist Carmen [music] Lomas Garza.

[00:02:19]>> I was very impressed with her artwork because her portraits were so clear to the front.

[00:02:26]And also because I recognized her eyebrows. They were very much like mine were when I was young.

[00:02:33]>> Frida.

[00:02:34]>> I waited for a show in my own country my whole life. I'm not going to miss it.

[00:02:39]>> Immortalized not only on canvas, but film, in the form of Salma Hayek in this Hollywood biopic.

[00:02:45]Fridamania may have turned her into a global icon, but what would the loud and proud communist make of all the Frida merch?

[00:02:53]>> I don't think she'd be pleased to see herself on tote bags and t-shirts and on various different, um, posters. Um, however, I do think that her message, her political message, that comes through, that I think that she'd be happy.

[00:03:13]>> Because behind the flower crowns and familiar self-portraits is a Frida Kahlo constantly reclaimed and reinterpreted.

[00:03:22]Proof that her legacy belongs to far more than art history.