“I am my own muse, I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better.” ~ Frida Kahlo
I was aware of the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts ~ a surprisingly moving affair, especially the photographs of her various medical accessories. Apparently they were taken in the intimate space of her bathroom after she had died~ a stark, sad, poignant reminder of where life had once been. The physical shell of an artist’s soul is rarely what we would like it to be ~ maybe that’s why some people make such great artists. Perhaps pain is a necessary albatross of artistic talent. That doesn’t make it any less sad.
There was also an Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit, celebrating the vibrant posters of the Moulin Rouge and Parisian nightlife. This too came tinged with a sorrowful undercurrent. Like Kahlo, he had been broken by his physical body. In a sense, both artists were trapped in their own cages, longing for nothing more than to break free from their respective chains.
“I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can…” ~ Frida Kahlo
“Everywhere and always ugliness has its beautiful aspects; it is thrilling to discover them where nobody else has noticed them.” ~ Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec
“I wish I could do whatever I liked behind the curtain of ‘madness’. Then I’d arrange flowers, all day long, I’d paint; pain, love, and tenderness. I would laugh as much as I feel like at the stupidity of others, and they would all say: ‘Poor thing, she’s crazy!’ (Above all I would laugh at my own stupidity.) I would build my world which while I lived, would be in agreement with all the worlds. The day, or the hour, or the minute that I lived would be mine and everyone else’s ~ my madness would not be an escape from ‘reality’.” ~ Frida Kahlo
On our way out we stopped in the gift store. There was one silk jacket that remained, and it looked just as I remembered it: a pale, powdery blue, with gray cranes embroidered onto the bottom third, accented by the exaggerated vibrant vermillion of their crests, like drops of blood… like drops of beauty. It wasn’t my size, but I did not mourn leaving such beauty behind.
The sky was still gray, but the water was holding off. We hopped in an Uber to the Boston Public Garden…
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