OPEN SPACE

……………………………………………………………"That bottle keeps its blink on its side red from horizon." Clark Coolidge………………………………..

Photo: Kris Davidson

Photo: Kris Davidson

Photo: Kris Davidson

It was spectacular. More photos here.  And even MORE photos here.

The Frida Kahlo exhibition closes tonight. I got a text message late last night saying 400,000 people have come through the museum since the show opened; which means in the last three months alone. Three hundred and forty thousand of those people have purchased the special tickets to Frida Kahlo.

The final day of the exhibition will see artist & curator René Yañez’s Pasión por Frida tableaux vivants (living paintings), happening most of the day in the Schwab room, with Frida lookalikes enacting many of Kahlo’s most famous pictures. I’ve also heard there will be Frida-alikes taking tea in the cafe, wandering the galleries, and washing up in the ladies’. The months of the exhibition have seen a lot of people of every age and gender passing through dressed up to look like Frida, and sometimes the gesture has been camp, but mostly it reflects a deep devotion to this artist whose work speaks so profoundly to so many.

The dress Frida affected (she started wearing the traditional clothes in her early 20s) was a highly constructed performance (and in part the long skirts helped hide her physical ailments). It was also a statement, a political one, of pride in indigenous Mexican culture, and as many readers will know, the regional costume Frida adopted was of the matriarchal community of Tehuana in southern Mexico. It’s worth noting too that many of our visitors arriving in the colorful dress we so closely identify with Frida Kahlo were not “in costume” at all.

Christo Oropeza, one of the Information Desk assistants who has been working so hard all summer with so many people streaming in for the exhibition, interviewed this woman about her dress:

Photo: Christo Oropeza

“I’m from Juchitan, Oaxaca and it’s an honor for me to see people from other countries appreciating the works of a Mexican painter: Frida Kahlo. The way I dress is the way my townfellows, my mother and sisters and I dress every day and we appreciate that Frida showed to the world our beautiful and colorful typical dresses.” – Elsa de Gyves (July 20, 2008)

Dear Reader,

This is Tammy. Hey look! Summer’s gone up in smoke and it’s back-to-school time. And although my academic pursuits were stopped short many years ago by an ergonomic accident, September still brings with it a pain in my gut. Summer vacation drifts into a landslide of work and anxiety. Will my coworkers laugh at my back-to-school Toughskins and non-name-brand sneakers AGAIN this year? I ignore their petty, school-kid crap and plunge head first into my work. Thankfully, Stein and my boss, curator of media arts Rudolf Frieling, are keeping me busy with a lot of assignments. Stein even proposed I make my little postings here a regular column. (Name options: True Random Thoughts, Non Sequitur, Obvious Observations.) I’ve also been gearing up for the Art of Participation show, opening in November, editing interviews with Alexander Hahn and Yves Netzhammer, and some more mundane projects, like hiding the filing I didn’t do this year and reorganizing the office to confuse Rudolf now that he’s back from vacation. I am seriously busy, but I do have priorities. So, with that in mind, I’ve been checking out the summer shows, and I noticed something peculiar….

Lee Miller is cruisey. Or maybe it’s just the third-floor photography gallery in general. But I’ve been in the exhibition three times now, and each time I happen upon some kind of girl-on-girl sexual tension. Let it be known that my gaydar is technically flawed, but still, if I can identify this ancient ritual, it must be painfully obvious to everyone else. I have some questions about this: Is Lee Miller a gay icon? Or do girls just think she’s hot? Does an artist have to be beautiful or interesting biographically in order to be successful? If so, does this apply more so for women? What would Frida say? Would the cross-dressing, bisexual Frida notice these things too? Would Frida cruise Lee? Would Lee cruise Frida? Could they see past their obvious attraction for each other and just be friends?

Music, dance, performance, crafts projects, art exhibitions, poetry readings, last Saturday’s Kahlo-themed MAPP free-for-all evening started with René Yañez’s: Pasión por Frida Frida Kahlo lookalike contest at Galería De la Raza, which meant the rest of the night you were running into Fridas all over the place. I admit I liked the boy-drag-Frida(s) best:

But of course there were many beautiful others:

“

Megan Brian described the audition: “At 5:30pm the doors of the Galeria opened and Fridas came streaming in. The diversity of Fridas was clear: all ages, races and genders seem to identify with her. Applicants ranged from a child welfare worker to artists. One applicant who came in drag said the motivation to dress up as Frida is that she is “fierce and ruling!” Others noted her as role model: a strong woman who embodied a passion for life mixed with pain, love and a sense of urgency. One applicant wrote that she was here “because we are all Frida”; another simply signed her application form with a kiss. René Yañez said he was not looking for person who looks just like Frida, but rather a Frida that emanates a feeling and captures peoples’ hearts.

After about an hour of portrait-taking and auditionee interviews, Nidhi Singh took the stage. Singh (with self-described inner “techno-global-India Frida that needs to be expressed,” performed first as traditional Frida, in iconic garb, delivering witticisms to the crowd. Then she removed her flowing skirt and added a blazer, proceeding to cut off her long black hair by the fistful, all the while staring straight at the audience with a challenging look in her eyes.” (Flickr sequence of the whole performance here.)

And, wow. Violeta Luna’s Embedded Frida? Aimee Friberg (who took all the photos you see here) adjectivized her best: a tantalizing, suffering/pleasuring Frida, embedded and processional through the streets of the Mission. Four performance stops, each more fantastic than the last:

The crowds? Everywhere along the way, it was like this:

And then there was the whole Tony-Labat-in-the-back-of-the-Rolls situation:

(he was handing out ‘want ads’ for his upcoming SFMOMA I WANT YOU project)

Congratulations, and thanks, to the MAPP, Violeta, Rene, Tony, Frank, the Red Poppy Art House, and all the many Fridas and artists and onlookers along the way.

(all photos: Aimee Nicole Friberg. Her superb MAPP Flickr set here.)

The Frida Kahlo was here/SFMOMA MAPP HAPPENING happened Saturday night in the Mission and was AWESOME, Frank Smigiel Public Programs Curator Person taking it to the streets we adore you. I’ll have a mini report-back and some pics up tomorrow; meanwhile some great pictures of Rene Yanez’s Kahlo lookalike audition, Violeta Luna’s performance, & other MAPP pics are cropping up on FLICKR.

In other morning news, it’s FREE TUESDAY today at the museum, notable not just because, er, Free, but because it’s a FREE TUESDAY in AUGUST during the run of the FRIDA KAHLO exhibition. Which means it’s going to be worth a run down to the museum just to see the crowds. (You still have to pay to see Frida. But it’s only $5. Instead of, um, uh…17.50.) Last Free Tuesday we broke attendance records with EIGHT THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE visitors. Today we’re expecting—let me say this as accurately & professionally as possible—WAY more than that. I’ll see if we can get some pictures or videos of the crowds.

On the subject of crowds: I’m agoraphobic in pretty much every other situation, but when it comes to museum galleries stuffed with people, weirdly, I’m exhilarated. I admit this isn’t always about the viewing of individual objects, which, it is true, can feel somewhat compromised when you have to elbow past or through. But ALL THOSE PEOPLE, looking at art. Together. In big air-conditioned rooms. It makes me feel giddy, and happy; freakishly, I love it. You can too. See you there.

This Saturday night, August 2nd, SFMOMA is joining The Mission Arts & Performance Project (MAPP) in a street-level, neighborhood arts extravaganza celebrating the work and life of Frida Kahlo.

During the early years of the SFMOMA, and the reign of founding director Grace McCann Morley, museum forays into the city were the rule rather than the exception; I have to say I’m very excited this is happening again now. If you’re not already familiar with the MAPP, it’s a lively bimonthly neighborhood arts and cultural event that transforms garages, backyards, studios, gardens, and local businesses into make-shift arts and performance spaces, “where daily life meets artistic innovation and expression.” An international collaboration of over 60 artists, MAPP events take place the first Saturday of every month in the Mission, beginning with family art activities (painting, circus, storytelling, music) during the day, followed by a full evening of exhibitions and performances.

This weekend’s MAPP has a special Frida Kahlo focus & an SFMOMA collaborative aspect: the museum is presenting two artist projects as part of the night’s events:

Violeta Luna, Embedded Frida: Procession and performance through the MAPP circuit; musical accompaniment by David Molina with John Ingle. Building on a long-standing performance piece, Violeta Luna’s Embedded Frida moves the now-archetypal Kahlo figure through the streets of the Mission. At various stations, Frida will leave her sickbed/palenque to enact the conflicting histories-of gender, nationality, modernity, and Mexicanidad-that she has come to represent. The procession will start at the Brava Theater at 9 p.m., with performance stops at New Door Ventures and the Red Poppy Art House along the way.

ALSO!!
René Yañez’s Pasión por Frida: Frida Kahlo Lookalike Model Search
Galería de la Raza, 2851 24th Street, 5:30 p.m.

Rene Yanez and his Frida Look-alikes c. 1992

In the spirit of the tableaux he created for the Mexican Museum’s 1992 exhibition Pasión por Frida Yañez will enlist four to five models over the age of 18 to enact Frida Kahlo paintings or moments in the artist’s life. These living scenes will be presented at SFMOMA on Sunday, September 28, the closing day of the museum’s Frida Kahlo exhibition. Auditions at Galería de la Raza will be conducted in the order of arrival, starting at 5:30p.m. Please come dressed as Frida Kahlo, already costumed and with makeup.

For more information about all the events scheduled on August 2, visit the MAPP site, or stop by the Red Poppy Art House (2698 Folsom Street at 23rd) on the day of the event to pick up a map of event locations.

Free! and open to the public
Family Mapp: 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
MAPP special project “Frida Was Here”: 7 p.m. to midnight

Photo: Jessica Whiteside

Jessica’s Flickr report on the second Kahlo opening.