Guerlain, Shalimar En Voyage Perfumes, Frida Last week, I went to a see the new Frida Kahlo exhibition, Appearances Can Be Deceiving, at the Brooklyn Museum (I’m am supposed to be doing edits RIGHT NOW on a longer essay on it this, but there’s nothing so thrilling as cheating on an assignment with an extremely similar assignment; thank you all enabling me). I found aspects of it completely intoxicating: her name splashed across the broad marble edifice in fruit punch colors, her love letters with the photographer Nickolas Muray, who took that famous shot of her on the roof of a Manhattan building in the 1940s, as she smoked a cigarette in a scarlet Tehuana gown, staring out over the skyline with a sardonic side-eye. Kahlo, who loved New York City (the only place in the United States that she ever fell in love with; she called the rest of it “Gringolandia”), and who always wanted her art to be seen, would likely have been tickled neon magenta by the whole spectacle. Apparently, this show, which was a bombshell for the V&A Museum in London, where it first began, and is going to be an even bigger hit in NYC -- it is sold out for weeks and the lines stretch down the block every day. I can see why: Fridamania has swelled in the U.S. over the past few decades to the point of near-farce, her striking image slapped across novelty keychains as a shorthand for “woman who is an artist” and “woman who worked through pain” and “woman who was not afraid to look at the world and find it surreal, and in doing so, mirror the absurdity back to us.”
Perfume Diary: Tequila and Tuberose
Perfume Diary: Tequila and Tuberose
Perfume Diary: Tequila and Tuberose
Guerlain, Shalimar En Voyage Perfumes, Frida Last week, I went to a see the new Frida Kahlo exhibition, Appearances Can Be Deceiving, at the Brooklyn Museum (I’m am supposed to be doing edits RIGHT NOW on a longer essay on it this, but there’s nothing so thrilling as cheating on an assignment with an extremely similar assignment; thank you all enabling me). I found aspects of it completely intoxicating: her name splashed across the broad marble edifice in fruit punch colors, her love letters with the photographer Nickolas Muray, who took that famous shot of her on the roof of a Manhattan building in the 1940s, as she smoked a cigarette in a scarlet Tehuana gown, staring out over the skyline with a sardonic side-eye. Kahlo, who loved New York City (the only place in the United States that she ever fell in love with; she called the rest of it “Gringolandia”), and who always wanted her art to be seen, would likely have been tickled neon magenta by the whole spectacle. Apparently, this show, which was a bombshell for the V&A Museum in London, where it first began, and is going to be an even bigger hit in NYC -- it is sold out for weeks and the lines stretch down the block every day. I can see why: Fridamania has swelled in the U.S. over the past few decades to the point of near-farce, her striking image slapped across novelty keychains as a shorthand for “woman who is an artist” and “woman who worked through pain” and “woman who was not afraid to look at the world and find it surreal, and in doing so, mirror the absurdity back to us.”