自拍之母弗里达卡罗 经久不息的诱惑者
She was a genius before she was a refrigerator magnet, an ace manipulator of society and media nearly a century before social media came into existence. Born in 1907, dead at 47, Frida Kahlo achieved celebrity even in her brief lifetime that extended far beyond Mexico’s borders, although nothing like the cult status that would eventually make her the mother of the selfie, her indelible image recognizable everywhere.
早在社交媒体出现之前，她就已经是操纵社会与媒体的高手，有她肖像的冰箱磁贴走进千家万户，但她首先是一位艺术天才。弗里达·卡罗(Frida Kahlo)生于1907年，去世时年仅47岁，在短短一生中，她的名气越过了墨西哥边境，虽然真实的她和那个受到小众崇拜、最后令她成为自拍之母的身份并无相似之处，但她那不可磨灭的肖像却无处不在。
In a welcome though unexpected convergence, an array of new books and exhibitions about Kahlo have suddenly appeared this spring, adding insight and depth to our understanding of a woman who would seem among the most overexposed artistic figures of all time.
今年春天，一大堆关于卡罗的新书和展览突然冒了出来，令人欣喜而又颇为意外，这些书籍和展览有助于我们更深入地了解这个女人，这个艺术史上遭到曝光最多的艺术人物之一。
While it seems clear that artists like Tracey Emin have fallen under the influence of her audacious self-disclosures; that designers — like Riccardo Tisci of Givenchy and Jean Paul Gaultier — have drawn inspiration from her style; and that entertainers like Lady Gaga and Beyoncé shrewdly adapted the lessons pioneered by a publicity-friendly solipsist who anticipated the Instagram era by many decades, Kahlo remains in some ways an enigma.
翠西·艾敏(Tracey Emin)这类艺术家都深受她的影响，尤其是大胆自我暴露的这一面；让·保罗·高缇耶(Jean Paul Gaultier)和纪梵希的里卡多·堤西(Riccardo Tisci)等设计师从她的风格中汲取灵感；Lady Gaga和碧昂斯(Beyoncé)之类的艺人聪明地沿着她在Instagram出现几十年前便已开创的道路，塑造出对公众友好的唯我主义者形象……然而，卡罗在某些方面仍然是一个谜。In “Mirror, Mirror,” a portrait-survey that opens this month at Throckmorton Fine Art in Manhattan, Kahlo is revealed to have been an image wizard as canny as her spiritual descendant, Madonna.
《镜子，镜子》(Mirror Mirror)肖像展将于本月在曼哈顿的斯洛克莫顿美术馆开幕，将卡罗呈现为一个塑造形象的魔法师，同她的精神后裔麦当娜(Madonna)一样狡黠多变。“Frida did not miss an opportunity to be photographed by anyone and everyone,” said Norberto Rivera, the photography director at the gallery. “She created this image to hide the pain,” he added, referring to the lifelong aftereffects of severe injuries Kahlo suffered in a streetcar accident when she was 18. Through self-portraits that unsparingly depict her physical travails and that make frank allusion to a tumultuous emotional life, Kahlo inadvertently vaulted herself into that strange constellation of bright-burning, ill-fated stars, alongside James Dean and Marilyn Monroe.
“弗里达不放过任何让人给她拍照的机会，”美术馆的摄影部主任诺波托·里维拉(Norberto Rivera)说，“她籍着塑造这样的形象来掩藏痛苦。”18岁那年，卡罗因街车事故导致重伤，此后终生受其后遗症影响。她在自画像中毫无保留地描绘身体上的痛苦，坦率地暗示充满动荡的情感生活，漫不经心地令自己上升到那个由炽烈燃烧、命运多舛的星辰组成的奇异星座，其中包括詹姆斯·迪恩(James Dean)和玛丽莲·梦露(Marilyn Monroe)等人。So extensive is Frida Kahlo’s fame it’s difficult now to credit the fact that, at an auction of Latin American art held by Sotheby’s in May 1985, a painting depicting the artist as a hunted deer pierced by arrows, which was offered as the star lot, failed to sell. A decade later, another Kahlo painting was featured on a cover of a Sotheby’s catalog. This portrait, of the artist with a parrot and a monkey, was hammered down quickly for more than $3 million, at the time a worldwide record for a Latin American artist. Five years later, a 1929 Kahlo self-portrait sold to an Argentine collector for $5.1 million.
弗里达·卡罗的名气太广，1985年5月，在苏富比的一场拉丁美洲艺术拍卖会上，她的一幅自画像被作为明星拍品，图中她把自己描绘为全身中箭的鹿，但这幅画最终没有拍出去，现在想来实在不可思议。十年后，另一幅卡罗的自画像出现在苏富比的拍卖目录封面上。画中她身边有鹦鹉和猴子，这幅画很快以300多万美元的价格拍出，在当时创下了拉丁美洲艺术家的世界纪录。五年后，卡罗1929年的一幅自画像被一位阿根廷收藏家以510万美元买下。In under two decades, aided by a well-regarded biography and a soapy biopic, Kahlo had undergone transformation from a compelling cult figure to a universally recognized symbol of artistic triumph and feminist struggle. Somehow along the way she also became a centerpiece of a kitsch marketing bonanza. The “Fridamania” that elevated Kahlo to near-mythic dimensions also transformed her — brooding gaze, elaborate Tehuana coiffures, signature mono-brow — into an image emblazoned on sneakers, T-shirts, tote bags, coasters, cosmetics, even tequila and beer.
20年来，由于一本备受好评的传记，以及一部肥皂剧式的传记电影，卡罗从一个迷人的小众形象变成了受到普遍认可的符号，象征着艺术的胜利与女性主义的斗争。在这个过程中，她也为刻奇的大众市场提供了丰盛的资源。这股“弗里达狂热”(Fridamania)将卡罗提升到一个接近神话的地步，她的形象——沉思般的目光、精心梳起的特旺纳发型、标志性的一字眉——出现在帆布鞋、T恤衫、手提包、杯垫、装饰品上，甚至是龙舌兰酒和啤酒商标上。“I remember buying as a gift Frida Kahlo Converse sneakers at 10 Corso Como,” said Robert Burke, a luxury consultant, referring to the high-end Milanese retailer. “Though that was fun and good, there’s only a certain amount of times an image can be used before it starts to fatigue and degrade.”
“我记得在10 Corso Como买过一双弗里达·卡罗的匡威帆布鞋送人，”奢侈品顾问罗伯特·伯克(Robert Burke)说，10 Corso Como是米兰一家高端精品店。“尽管它很有趣，很漂亮，但是使用任何一种形象都是有特定时限的，之后它就会渐渐疲软、掉价。”Yet counter to Mr. Burke’s assertion, Frida Kahlo suddenly seems anything but exhausted as a subject.
然而和伯克的看法正相反，弗里达·卡罗突然再度走红，根本没有出现令人产生审美疲劳的迹象。“Fridamania shows no signs of relenting,” said Graham W. J. Beal, the director of the Detroit Institute of Arts and curator of “Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit,” which shrewdly examines Rivera and Kahlo’s pivotal though largely forgotten sojourn in the Motor City, where Rivera had been commissioned to paint the labor mural “Detroit Industry.” At the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale in Florida, “Kahlo, Rivera and Mexican Modern Art” revisits the relationship between these protean artists, locating them equally and squarely at the center of Mexican modernism.
“弗里达狂热完全没有平息下去的迹象，”格雷厄姆·W·J·比尔(Graham W. J. Beal)说，他是底特律艺术学院的院长，策展了“迭戈·里维拉与弗里达·卡罗在底特律”(Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit)。当年里维拉曾接受任务，在这座汽车城创作关于劳工的壁画《底特律工业》(Detroit Industry)，他与卡罗在底特律居留的这段时间非常重要，但却往往被人们忽略，此次的展览极具眼光地回顾了那个时期。此外，在佛罗里达的劳德代尔堡NSU艺术馆，“卡罗、里维拉与墨西哥现代艺术”展览回顾了这些变化多端的艺术家们之间的关系，公正平等地将他们置于墨西哥现代主义的中心。Fine catalogs accompanying each exhibition add to an ever-expanding Kahlo library, and yet in certain ways it is the newly published “Frida Kahlo: The Gisèle Freund Photographs,” that offers the most intimate insights into her life and working process. Its 100 rare images document a friendship that the Magnum photographer conducted with the couple in the last years before Kahlo’s death; both Kahlo and Rivera shine forth from these domestic images.
两个展览都有精美的展品目录，为持续扩大的与卡罗相关书籍增添了新的成员。另外，新出版的《弗里达·卡罗：吉塞勒·弗洛因德摄影作品》(Frida Kahlo: The Gisèle Freund Photographs)是对她的生活与工作极为亲密的观察，内含100幅罕见的照片，记录了弗洛因德这位玛格南摄影师在卡罗去世前几年与这对夫妻结下的友情，卡罗与里维拉在这些家庭照上显得熠熠生辉。Complementing the revelations of the Freund book is “Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life,” opening May 16 at the New York Botanical Garden. For this surprising exhibition, the Tony Award-winning stage designer Scott Pask traveled to Mexico City to immerse himself in the world of Kahlo and Rivera, returning to recreate in the leafy Bronx the grounds of their home, La Casa Azul.
“弗里达·卡罗：艺术、花园、生活”展览为弗洛因德的书提供了极好的补充，它将于5月16日在纽约植物园开幕。 托尼奖得主，舞台设计师斯科特·帕斯克为布展特意去了墨西哥城，将自己浸淫在卡罗与里维拉的世界之中，回来便在林木茂密的纽约布朗克斯复现了他们的居所“蓝房子”(La Casa Azul)，令展览更加引人入胜。A singular dwelling built by Kahlo’s father in what were then the outskirts of Mexico City, Casa Azul became the anchor of Kahlo’s and Rivera’s married lives. They filled it with their astounding collections of ex votos, folk art and important Mesoamerican sculpture, and also with fellow Communist Party members, varied lovers, artist friends and a menagerie including parrots, monkeys and a pack of hairless dogs called xoloitzcuintli.
蓝房子是卡罗的父亲建造的一座独栋房屋，位于墨西哥城郊外，卡罗与里维拉婚后主要住在那里。房子里布满两人惊人的藏品，包括许愿物、民间艺术和重要的中美洲雕塑。他们的共产党同志、换来换去的情人、艺术家朋友们也常常住在那里，两人还养了一大堆动物，诸如鹦鹉、猴子以及一大群墨西哥无毛犬。“There are a lot of people that have Frida refrigerator magnets that have never seen a Frida painting,” Mr. Pask said. “When you see the house and the beautiful emotive space of the garden, you understand that the art, the love and the life are so intertwined.”
“很多人都有弗里达的冰箱贴，但他们从没看过弗里达的画，”帕斯克说。“当你看到那栋房子，以及它那充满美妙情感的花园，你会理解她的艺术、生活与爱交织在一起，密不可分。”His rendition of a volcanic stone pyramid Rivera constructed in the garden to display his collection of pre-Columbian artifacts is Mr. Pask’s most theatrical gesture. But his more subtle accomplishment may be the evocation of “this atmosphere Frida surrounded herself with, incorporating the botanical influence of the markets of Mexico, her gardens, the fruits and plants and animals she lived with into the prism of her work.”
里维拉在那座花园里用一块金字塔状的火山岩展示哥伦布发现美洲之前的美洲艺术品，帕斯克对之进行了复现，堪称最为戏剧化的手法。但帕斯克最为美妙的成就还要算是重新营造出了“弗里达在自己身边创造出的氛围，结合了墨西哥市场上的植物，她身边的花园、果实、植物与动物都被反映在她的作品之中”。The results are so singular it is little wonder Kahlo remains a figure of fascination.
她的作品如此奇异，没有人会怀疑，她仍然是个极度迷人的人物。“Clearly, she has become this major icon,” said Bonnie Clearwater, the director of the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale.
“显然，她后来成了大众偶像，” 劳德代尔堡NSU艺术馆馆长邦尼·克莱尔沃特(Bonnie Clearwater)说。Her point is underscored by the strangely compelling 2013 book by the Japanese photographer Miyako Ishiuchi documenting Kahlo’s wardrobe and belongings, images of which later found their way into the hip Berlin glossy O32c. (A fetishistic regard for objects that touched Kahlo’s body is not unique to Ms. Ishiuchi; on loan to the Throckmorton Fine Art show will be one of the orthopedic corsets illness required Kahlo to wear, “authenticated” in the manner of saintly relics and decorated with a hammer and sickle by her.)
2013年，日本摄影师石内都的影集进一步证明了她的说法，这部影集拍摄的都是卡罗的衣物和其他物品，其中的照片后来还曾在柏林时尚的铜版纸杂志《O32c》上刊出。不是只有石内都一人对卡罗的贴身物品怀有恋物癖式的喜爱，斯洛克莫顿美术馆的展览中也有一件卡罗因病才穿在身上的整形胸衣，像圣人遗物一样“被鉴定为真品”，她还用锤子和镰刀装饰它。Unlike Che Guevara, who when he became a T-shirt and a poster was scarcely identifiable as “the leader of the Cuban revolution,” wrote Gérard de Cortanze, Kahlo’s French biographer, in an email, “Frida Kahlo remains Frida Kahlo.” If his gnomic remark is not supportable in any real biographical sense, there is little doubt Kahlo continues to exist as a potent figure of myth.
卡罗的法语传记作者雷哈尔·德·科尔坦兹(Gérard de Cortanze)在接受电子邮件采访时写道，切·格瓦拉(Che Guevara)的头像刚一开始出现在T恤衫和海报上，马上就被人们等同为“古巴革命的领袖”，但是和他不同，“弗里达·卡罗就是弗里达·卡罗”。这句箴言般的评论或许无法在真实的传记中得到体现，但毫无疑问，卡罗仍然是一个极具说服力的神秘人物。“I’m constantly fascinated by the numbers of teenagers who buy my books about Frida,” Mr. de Cortanze wrote, referring to “The Lovers of Coyoacán,” a novel fictionalizing Kahlo’s brief though torrid affair with Leon Trotsky. “It’s not the creator of the Red Army that interests young readers. It’s what Frida thinks and lives, how she drinks, makes love, cooks for friends, swears like a trooper.”
“有很多十几岁的孩子会买我那些关于弗里达的书籍，这常常令我感到惊讶，”德·科尔坦兹写道，他指的是自己的小说《科约阿坎恋人》(The Lovers of Coyoacán)，这本书用小说的方式叙述了卡罗与列夫·托洛茨基(Leon Trotsky)短暂而激烈的恋情。“吸引年轻读者的不是苏联红军的创始人，而是弗里达的思考与生活、她怎样喝酒、做爱、给朋友们做饭，像士兵一样咒骂。”For those readers, he said, Kahlo is “a sister, a friend, a woman ceaselessly in search of her autonomy.”
他说，对于这些年轻读者们来说，卡罗就像“一个姊姊、一个朋友、以及一个不懈追求自由的女人”。In the telling of Ms. Clearwater, the artist Julian Schnabel not long ago traveled to Fort Lauderdale to dedicate a painting, a gift he made to the institution.
克莱尔沃特说，艺术家朱利安·施纳贝尔(Julian Schnabel)不久前曾经来到劳德代尔堡艺术馆捐献了一幅油画，这是他特意为该馆创作的礼物。“All Julian kept saying was he couldn’t wait to see the Kahlo,” Ms. Clearwater said. “Who in the world would have thought very macho Julian Schnabel had been influenced by her?”
“朱利安一直说，他简直等不及要看卡罗的展览，”克莱尔沃特说。“谁能想到那么大男子气的朱利安·施纳贝尔也受她的影响呢？”Yet, as it happens, the Brooklyn-born Mr. Schnabel also spent part of his youth in Brownsville, Tex.; from there in the ’60s he made a pilgrimage to Mexico City to visit the Museo Frida Kahlo, located inside her birthplace at La Casa Azul.
是的，出生在布鲁克林的施纳贝尔年轻时曾在得克萨斯州的布朗斯维尔住过；60年代的时候，他曾经从那里出发到墨西哥朝圣，参观设立在蓝房子里的弗里达·卡罗博物馆，卡罗就是在那栋房子里出生的。“He told me he was blown away by the emotional side” of Kahlo’s work, by her ability to transmit emotion through her work, Ms. Clearwater said.
克莱尔沃特说，“他告诉我，（卡罗的作品中）情感的一面”，乃至她通过作品表达情感的方式都令他感到震撼。“If Julian had not said this to me, I would never have thought of him in those terms,” she added. “And yet, when you look at paintings like ‘Untitled (Goodbye Mike Kelley),’ you understand them as prayers to those you love and those who died.”
“如果朱利安不说，我从来不会站在这些角度上去想他，”克莱尔沃特补充道。“不过，看到《无名<告别迈克·凯利>》(Untitled [Goodbye Mike Kelley])这样的作品，你就会明白，它们是为所爱之人乃至去世的人们献上的祈祷。”Like many of Kahlo’s spiritual descendants — who record the minutiae of their lives on social media in existential gestures that are, as much as anything, about the fact of their own occurrence — the artist was intent on leaving marks that testified to her existence.
卡罗的众多精神后裔们常常在社交媒体上以存在主义的姿态记载生活中的细枝末节，写下自己生活中的种种事件，卡罗本人也热衷于为自己的存在留下种种痕迹。“This continues to hit a nerve with people,” Ms. Clearwater explained. “The paintings are Kahlo’s way of saying: ‘This is how I thought. This is what I lived. Remember me.’ ”
“这些痕迹一直都能触动人们的心弦，”克莱尔沃特说。“那些油画就像是卡罗在说：‘这就是我的想法，这就是我的生活，记住我吧。’”
