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0Frida Kahlo Is More Popular Than Ever
Frida Kahlo mania is back.
Months after her painting“The Dream (The Bed)”sold for $54.7 million—crowning her the world’s most expensive female artist at auction—the Mexican painter is poised to be the subject of several museum blockbusters this year.
“Every decade has its ups and downs with Frida, but she’s the girl who refuses to go away,”said Mari Carmen Ramírez, a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.
Today, she is a pop-culture icon whose indigenous fashion, famous unibrow and braided updos are as commercialized as her artistic output. Curators say they’re looking at her oeuvre more closely now because her influence on younger artists keeps expanding, lately to those with disabilities who admire her raw, vulnerable portrayal of her own pain.
She created roughly 200 paintings, but many of them are legally barred from leaving Mexico. So it’s no small feat that Ramírez in Houston amassed 35 of Kahlo’s works for“Frida Kahlo: The Making of an Icon.”
The show includes some early gems, including her 1926 self-portrait and“Henry Ford Hospital”from 1932, which offers an unsparing look at the artist following a miscarriage, in which blood vessels fan out like ribbons and objects like snails hint at the slowness of her recovery.
The motif of blood-vessels-as-ropes also appears in the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibit,“Frida and Diego: The Last Dream,”which opens March 21 and runs through Sept. 12. Curator Beverly Adams said ropes, scaffolding and draping blue fabric will be used to create theatrical set pieces around the show’s seven Kahlo works and dozen-odd Riveras.
“All of Kahlo’s works speak to her different trajectories and her self-constructions,”Adams said.“One doesn’t encapsulate her.”
生词好句
mania 英 [ˈmeɪniə] 美 [ˈmeɪniə] n. 狂热；（对某人或某物）近乎疯狂、失去理智的迷恋（irrational mass obsession）
crown 英 [kraʊn] 美 [kraʊn] （本文）v. 为……加冕；n. 王冠
poised 英 [pɔɪzd] 美 [pɔɪzd] adj.（本文）蓄势待发、准备好做某事的；泰然自若、保持平衡的
She looks calm and poised.她看起来冷静而从容。
The company is poised to launch its revolutionary new product next month.这家公司正蓄势待发，准备在下个月推出其革命性的新产品。
blockbuster 英 [ˈblɒkbʌstə] 美 [ˈblɑːkbʌstər] n.（本文）大型展览；电影大片
major exhibition 大型重要展览
mega exhibition 超大型展览
mega 作为前缀常指超级的，巨型的
megacity n. 超大型城市
retrospective exhibition 回顾展
oeuvre 英 [ˈɜːvrə] 美 [ˈuːvrə] n.（艺术家、作家或作曲家的）全部作品
unsparing 英 [ʌnˈspeərɪŋ] 美 [ʌnˈsperɪŋ] adj. 不留情面的；毫不掩饰的
spare v. 宽恕、怜悯
motif 英 [məʊˈtiːf] 美 [moʊˈtiːf] n.（本文）文学或艺术作品中反复出现的主题或中心思想；图形，意念
