frida and salma

July 6th was the birthday of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (July 6, 1907 - July 13. 1954), whose unique talent and celebrated yet troubled life became the subject of the 2002 biopic Frida.  Directed by Julie Taymor and starring Salma Hayek as Kahlo, Frida won two Academy Awards and was generally praised by critics -- particularly for Hayek's interpretation of Kahlo's complex character.  This month's American Airlines' Spanish language magazine Nexos has a spotlight piece on Salma Hayek, in which she reflects upon Frida Kahlo and how though the artist wasn't a conventional beauty, she was nonetheless charismatically and singularly beautiful.  That despite her being an invalid and having what might be perceived as less than perfect features ("tenía una ceja" or a unibrow, and "un poco de bigote" or a bit of a moustache), she was confident and brave and always her own person.  She also embraced her cultural heritage proudly in her personal style and in her vivid paintings. "Como ella no hay dos," Salma concludes. "Y para mí siempre fue hermosa."

I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought 

there are so many people in the world, there must be someone
just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do.  
-- Frida Kahlo

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Pictured:  Frida Kahlo; Salma Hayek in Frida; and The Two Fridas -- Frida Kahlo, 1939

blue splendor

Ferris Bueller aside, sometimes you really do just have to step off of the treadmill of life and contemplate something amazing.  This 1977 six-panel stained glass series -- the "America Windows" -- was presented to Chicago's Art Institute by Marc Chagall to commemorate the American Bicentennial and in memory of Mayor Richard J. Daley.  (And yes, they were featured in Mr. Bueller's big day off movie.)  They were removed for a few years during the construction of the Art Institute's Modern Wing; they have been back since 2010 and are beautiful, bright and liberating -- and this is only a camera phone photo so imagine their true glory.

If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.  -- Marc Chagall (quote courtesy of www.brainyquote.com).

northside algren

Chicago author Nelson Algren would have marked a 103rd birthday today, if he hadn't left our sphere in 1981 after suffering a heart attack. Though Algren was born in Detroit, his family moved to Chicago when he was a child and he would be emotionally and artistically linked with the city for the rest of his life. He did abandon Chicago for the East Coast in his later years, feeling that he wasn’t appreciated by his hometown despite the fame he had achieved through publication of such novels as The Man with the Golden Arm and Never Come Morning.  Apparently at the time he left you could barely find his books in the Chicago Public Library, though they are certainly there now.

Algren was streetwise yet poetic, turning blighted urban views into hauntingly beautiful scenes. He could also peer into the soul of a desperate man or woman and find a whole range of experiences and emotions -- and what had led them to turn to the needle or the bottle, or to a life of crime. He wasn’t much of a schmoozer and called things as he saw them, which often led to his disenfranchisement from the literati of his day. He had a long-time affair with French writer Simone de Beauvoir, but that ended with a bittersweet (generally more bitter than sweet) resentment, much like his departure from Chicago.

Reading Algren’s works is a great way to learn about the man and the Chicago neighborhood in which he found his writing “zone,” the then-predominantly Polish area called The Triangle. Algren probably wouldn’t recognize much of his gentrified, hipped-up Triangle now, but a fine way to go back in time beyond reading Algren’s fiction is to check out Call Northside 777, a film based on the real case of a Chicago man imprisoned for a murder he didn’t commit. It has an unusually low-key tone for a 1948 movie, with Jimmy Stewart playing a reporter unraveling errors of justice. Stewart's quest leads him to the Polish corners of the South side, but Call Northside 777 also hits the titled North side as well, offering a cinematic window into some of the bars, streets, and people of the Triangle area and truly bringing Algren’s words to life.

rivera at the rock

I just finished writing a Suite101 article about Diego Rivera's Rockefeller Center mural in the old RCA now GE Building a/k/a 30 Rock, and how he somehow thought that he could showcase a major tribute to Lenin in 1930s Bolshevik-hating Depression-era midtown Manhattan. Nelson A. Rockefeller on behalf of the Rockefeller Dynasty said no way, and though Rivera was able to keep his commission, the work was ordered demolished.

Rivera wanted to take photos of the mural for future reference but was barred from going near the site again, although one of his assistants--the intriguingly talented Lucienne Bloch--snuck in and managed to snap some pictures herself. Rivera later replicated the project at Mexico City's Palacio de las Bellas Artes and José Maria Sert took over in New York to produce a non-controversial backdrop for the Rockefellers and their Center.

This incident was part of the storylines of Tim Robbins' The Cradle Will Rock, with Ruben Blades as Rivera, and in Salma Hayek's Frida, which cast Alfred Molina as the Mexican mural master. Rivera has been played by a variety of actors, but my favorite painted portrait of him was done by Modigliani when Rivera was younger and looks sort of roundly kind-hearted and mischievous at the same time.

(Pictured: Portrait of Diego Rivera -- Amedeo Modigliani, 1914)

a minute of georges

The 1952 film Moulin Rouge isn't as glittering or fast-paced or romantic as the 2001 version, and it is heavily weighted with moments of melodrama and the mental and physical anguish of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. It also has poor José Ferrer doing a wonderful job suffering for his art and playing Lautrec on his knees without even winning the Oscar he was nominated for, which seems like a travesty. Still, according to Wikipedia, John Huston wanted the movie to look as if Toulouse-Lautrec had envisioned it himself, and it truly does with beautiful or striking scenes and intense color combinations. And it features a young Christopher Lee, one of the great lords of horror films, in the role of pipe-smoking Pointillist Georges Seurat. Lee as Seurat has only about a minute of screentime, but he looks very fine and painterly and not particularly menacing at all.