Frida with Regained Potency

When I told friends a few weeks ago that I had no intention of going to see the Frida Kahlo show at SFMOMA, they either were shocked or told me I was missing a once in a lifetime opportunity. Living a decade in the Mission -- where we even had a Frida's Pizza for Chrissakes -- I had been so oversaturated by her images that they'd lost the potency they first held for me in the 1980s when I became fascinated by her. Sure, you could buy Frida refrigerator magnets, Post its, umbrellas, mugs or t-shirts at the kiosk. And the cliched trademarks -- the mustache, the unibrow, the chihuahua, the monkeys, the parrots -- are all there. But Frida was never a cuddly Latin American folk artist that her over exposure has turned her into. The show reminded me of this twisted, angry and defiant Hungarian Jew who happened to live in the Republic of Mexico much of her life. It is remarkable in scope and size, and this is the final in its three city tour.

The most remarkable image, and new to me, was a relatively small painting called "Moses" inspired by her reading of Freud that packs in almost the entire history of humanity since the day of that famed floating baby in a basket. Though I bought no refrigerator magnets or other trinkets, I came home with a revived sense of defiance but also plucked a few pesky strands in between my eyebrows.