This post reminds me how people can totally take an artistic name, rip it from its actual work, and make it into something that has nothing to do with what it represented. Hey Frida, Che welcomes you to the club.

wow.
frida kahlo is one of my favorite artists.
FUCK THIS SHIT.

UGH.

Oh, for the love of...

What's next? O'Keefe Kitchenware? "Inspired by Georgia's love of nature, you can own a cake pan in the shape of a flower."

Actually, a flower/vagina cake would be kind of cool in a way but not with O'Keefe's name on it.

Just as totally uncool as skin products with Kahlo's name on it.

horrible horrible horrible. i hope frida's ghost haunts them nightly. daily too.

Please don't let them add a skin lightener to that cosmetics line. And Staten Island? What are they thinking?

I think this makes me feel extremely ambivalent (if that's not a contradiction, er which it is). On the one hand artists and their families often do not see the real wealth their work can generate, it very soon is taken out of their hands and becomes investment chits for the wealthy to pretend they have taste, so yeah good on the family for making some money (I do vaguely recall regarding the Hayek Frida movie and permissions etc that there is/was a split in the family over her legacy so maybe some approve of this but not all). On the other hand what facile nonsense besmirching a truly brilliant and revolutionary artist. Then on a third hand ...erm foot(I said extremely ambivalent) given the hapless fools whose names are put to various cosmetic products (Hilton, Beckham, Spears etc) at least this might cause someone who previously knew nothing of Frida Kahlo to check her out and that would be a wonderful enriching experience. On the fourth hand/foot...is culture so consumerised and education so underfunded that is the only way people may learn of such greatness, and that is sad and awful. It's also part of the process where a person is neutered of their revolutionary principles and just become an iconic brand used to sell stuff. But maybe if in each packet of this stuff they include a bio (including her politics) & some art then...I would feel less ambivalent but still ...fairly ambivalent. And with Casablanca Fashion Group (which is vehemently anti-Chavez) I don't suppose they insist on a living wage, good unions and profit sharing.
Ok I'm veering towards appalled-ish.

i understand your points, rickb. i just wish kahlo's name could be used to spread her story and bring her familia cash in a way that was truly connected to her message(s). not attaching her to beauty products. the idea of physical beauty is not what best communicates the most amazing things about her.

Of course it's from Staten Island. My experience (limited as it is) is that Kahlo is the foreigners' favorite idea of a Mexican artist, and not the Mexicans... I have yet to see a Kahlo reproduction (or original) hanging in a Mexican home -- Mexican-American homes, or homes of Mexicans who regularly entertain foreigners, but not your average well-educated Mexico.

Some Mexican feminists have taken up Kahlo, but more opt for Sor Juana as the ideal Mexican feminista.

At any rate, her art is seen as self-referential and Europeanist, outside the main current of 20th century Mexican art -- those "bibles for the illiterate" as Jose Vasconcellos called them, based very much in Mexican indigenous tradition.

All that aside, everyone is right... this is appalling. Oscar Wilde said a cynic knows the value of nothing, and the price of everything... I'd add, so does a capitalist.

sor juana was amazing. i dont get the critique of "self referential" one bit. she was the vessel through which she told her story. she lived it. and as she said, "i was alone most of the time and i knew myself best" or something to that effect. people are so good at deconstructing. get out a fucking canvas, i say. that's how art should be. like youtube. video responses only. :) as far as being "europeanist," well hell. she was mexican and european. half and half. like that nezua cat. our lineage is very similar. so dont pick on frida aqui! i kid.

sort of.

thanks for bringing your experience and thoughts, ricardo.

This is a PR nightmare waiting to happen. Perhaps, Frida Kahlo will have the last laugh at the expense of millions of vanity prone American women, when in a Moctezuma sort of way....the skin care line causes them to develop a Kahlo styled unibrow.

Until Hayden Herrera's biography of Frida was published, she was often refered to as Diego Rivera's wife. Afterwards, the value of her life and her work would go on to match, and in many peoples opinion, overshadow his own. I don't personally take that opinion, but rather see the two of them in their own rights. For anyone really interested, read Herrera's book, go to pbs.org and purchase the documentary they have on Frida and Diego, watch it, and THEN watch Salma Hayek's movie. Also, Mario Vargas Llosa has a collection of essays, over about ten years, originally published in El Pais. titled 'The Language of Passion', which has an article on Frida, among a number of other very readable takes on a widw variety of topics.

This is FUCKED UP!

Oh crap, it's like a Bruce Lee Official Black Belt Correspondence Course or a Johnny Cash ATM - there's some things which are just broked on a deep seated level.

And why is it such a great marketing gimmic to put a WOC Imppresionist Painter's name on your insecurity creams anyway? There seems to be an additional level of incoherence here.

i'm thinking of promoting a line of antonin artaud jeans. designed to remove aesthetic distance, bringing shoppers into direct contact with the dangers of life. By turning fashion into a place where the spectator is exposed rather than protected, artaud jeans commit an act of cruelty upon those who wear them.

You mention that you don't blame her family for getting paid. I do. The legacy of one's relatives shouldn't allow us to profit from it, IMHO. Besides, the distant niece who runs the Frida Kahlo Corporation must already be doing fairly well with the endless number of Frida products out there: stationary, dolls, tote bags, etc. Do they have to put her name on cosmetics? There is also a new brand of tequila. Come on.

tony herrera, hilarious line! and r@d@r for a very close 2nd. altho i have to admit, the Johnny Cash ATM is hard to relegate to 3rd.

okay, they all had me laughing. maybe there are no colored ribbons here after all. thanks for the great comments.

Hi,

I am really interested in your views about the Frida Kahlo skin care line. I am currently working on an article...would you be interested in voicing your opinion about the line in a newspaper interview? Let me know.

Thanks,
DC

I've emailed you, DC.

I hope the skin cream includes nails!
;)