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heh. my granny knew frida kahlo because they all drank in the same bars in mexico city during the war. my granny reckoned that frida was, and i quote verbatim, "a worm". i have no idea why. i always thought it had something to do with my granny studying/apprenticing with diego rivera, but i found out that was a misapprehension, she was apprenticed to another well-known mexican artist (whose name i have completely forgotten).
all the intellectuals/intelligentsia and the european ex-pats hung out in the same places. that's how my granny knew at the time, half a century before the revelations came out, that edward windsor and wallace simpson were nazi sympathisers (which is one of the reasons they were exiled in mexico, i think), and is also how come the local police in mexico city accused my grandfather of attempting to assassinate trotsky.
this is all true. i'm not making it up. i wish i knew more about that era because i find it fascinating...
also, back to the surrealism programme, it was amusing though irritating that the sunday times journo who presented it kept claiming that it was not a show you could take your granny to, considering that his granny as well as mine was probably from the same era as the surrealists, even if she wasn't hanging out with some of them like mine was. it's not the elderly that are shocked by that thing -- like they've never seen life before -- it's people my age. i remember that from the aubrey beardsley exhibition at the V&A a coupla years back: the old ladies weren't goggling and giggling, it was the 20somethings...
and that hans bellmer was creepoid. |
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