Visit to Rivera Court
Posted by: Christine Golus
Created in 1932 and commissioned by Edsel Ford, the murals represent the races, the automobile industry, and other industries in Detroit. On the large center panel on the north wall there is one very tiny completed car. Our family always plays the “find the car game”. I’m surprised how often I forget where that car is located and I find myself searching all over the mural again.
At the same time Rivera was working on this commission his wife artist Frida Kahlo suffered a miscarriage and was in Henry Ford Hospital. This is the Detroit hospital where I was born. As Frida recovered she created Miscarriage in Detroit. The painting is nightmarish and difficult to look at. It was only very recently that I found out that Kahlo’s miscarriage coincided with Rivera’s work on the DIA murals. Now there is a new layer of humanity when I visit Rivera Court. I imagine Rivera working on this large public art fully aware that another event on a very personal scale was playing out down the road at the city hospital.
The Kahlo Rivera relationship was fraught with drama – marriage, divorce, marriage, affairs. Rivera stated in an interview a year before her death, “Frida Kahlo is the greatest Mexican painter. Her work is destined to be multiplied by reproductions and will speak, thanks to books, to the whole world. It is one of the most formidable artistic documents and most intense testimonies on human truth of our time.’’
And thanks to the web Fridamania is alive and shows no signs of diminishing! From an analysis of the relationship of Madonna and Kahlo to artist Trek Thunder Kelly’s depiction of Frida as a Calvin Klein underwear model.
This spring the Philadelphia Museum celebrated her 100th birthday with the first major exhibition of her work in the U.S. in 15 years and currently the San Jose Museum features 50 photographic portraits of the artist.
Copyright 2010 Q LTD. All Rights Reserved.