Frida Kahlo: Art • Garden • Life
On view through November 1, 2015
The entrance alone is worth the trip to the New
York Botanical Garden. They’ve done a wonderful job of making it welcoming and
grand. Right off the bat, the taco truck is just past the entrance alongside
the rolling lawns, the grand vistas, and the giant poster for the Frida Kahlo
show on the Mertz building.
 |
| The Mertz Building with the poster for the Frida Kahlo show. |
The Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life, in the
LuEsther T. Mertz Library, and curated by Adriana Zavala, is remarkable. It’s
select but inclusive with her fabulous Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and
Hummingbird, 1940. Her pet monkey and cat watch over her and look around at the
same time – clearly they are not just pets -- they are familiars. Then there is
the jungle surround. Used on the poster for the show, it makes it clear that
this show is at the Botanical Garden and we better get used to it.
The paintings and drawings are heavy on still
life subjects and each has it’s own magic. At once formal and luscious they
lead into the more scientific part of the show: Case after case of botanical
specimens, illustrations, references, and notes, all concerning the flora used
by Kahlo. These speak to the most casual visitors, all manner of gardeners,
professional botanists, and the hard-core Kahlo enthusiasts. Following botany are maps and photographs documenting her reverence for Mexico City. We
even see her with Rivera in the ancient floating gardens of Xochimilco.
 |
| Reconstruction of Kahlo and Rivera's Casa Azul |
A stroll or tram ride away is the second part of
the show, Frida Kahlo: Garden. There, in the Haupt Conservatory, we encounter a
re-imaging of Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s Case Azul. Originally constructed in the
garden of Kahlo’s family home, it is an Aztec-inspired construction built to
hold Rivera’s pre-Hispanic collection. Here it’s used for Mexican cacti and succulents
in traditional terra cotta pots. Nearby are re-created versions of their “frog
fountain” and Kahlo’s desk. All told there are masses of the native species that
the couple favored; in addition to the cacti and succulents, there are cock’s
comb, dahlias, zinnias, and, giving many visitors an entirely new appreciation
of an old standby, marigolds. These are the two-foot tall Mexican natives known
as the African Marigolds; the name in Aztec means “twenty flowers.” They are also
associated with death and used to decorate graves for All Souls’ Day. Outside
at the lily pond a greenhouse wall hosts a pipe organ cactus fence recalling the
one at Rivera’s studio in San Angel.
 |
| Recreation of Diego Rivera's Pipe Organ Cactus Fence |
In Kahlo’s endlessly complex and fraught world
somehow botanical science is layered with marriages, with Mexican art, social
history, and urban life, as well as with racial and medical issues.
