Frida Kahlo & Tina Modotti - ACE119.4

THE BODY. The Tiger’s Coat Tina Modotti Plays A Mexican Woman (Hollywood, 1920). Extract from the film. Frida And Diego Home Movies Taken At The Blue House (Nickolas Muray). Colour film c.1935. INJURY beauty. Caption: "Injury. Frida Kahlo lived in pain and in crisis with her own body. By painting her self-portrait she transcribed her injuries into emblems and allegory. Text accompanied by painting A Few Small Nips (aka A Few Little Pricks, 1935). My Birth (1932), Tree of Hope, Keep Firm (1946), Henry Ford Hospital (aka The Flying Bed, 1932) in which her body on the bed is surrounded by emblematic objects, lithograph of Frida and the Abortion (aka Frida and the Miscarriage, 1932), Frida and the Caesarian Operation (c.1932), Self-Portrait with Dr Juan Farill (1951), The Broken Column (1944), The Little Deer (1946), Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair (1940). Still life paintings – Still Life with Parrot (1951), Fruit of Life (1953). Self Portrait On The Bed Or Me And My Doll (1937). The same sequence of paintings shown in reverse order. Caption: "Beauty. Tina Modotti was famous as a beauty, but she rebelled against the gaze of others to make her own images of the working women of Mexico." Some of Modotti’s photographs of women from Tehuantepec, legendary for their strength, beauty and independence. Commentary suggests that many of them emphasise motherhood as work. The same sequence of photographs shown in reverse order. Diego Rivera’s mural. Commentary repeats that the lives of these two women defy neat categorisation as Kahlo’s "personal" work was deeply political, while Modotti’s photography is marked by her personal experience as a woman. Credits