Barbara Levine displays the few pieces of ephemera by one of the biggest names in Mexico’s Modern art history here.

The findings include: “16 small oil paintings, 23 watercolors and pastels, 59 notebook pages (diary entries, recipes, etc.), 73 anatomical studies (some dated prior to Kahlo’s disfiguring 1925 trolley accident), 128 pencil and crayon drawings, 129 illustrated prose-poems, and 230 letters to Carlos Pellicer, the Modernist poet and Frida’s close confidant, many adorned with sketches — skulls, insects, lizards, birds… a small box holding 11 taxidermy hummingbirds. There are pistols, such as an ornate 1870 Remington; a tricolor Mexican flag, its central white panel altered to celebrate Leon Trotsky (“Troski”) and the Communist Party, to which Kahlo and Rivera belonged; hotel bills; photographs; receipts for sales of Rivera paintings; an embroidered huipil, a traditional Mayan blouse; an intimate diary, with one entry expressing Frida’s intense (and unrequited) erotic attraction to lesbian ranchera singer Chavela Vargas; a French medical text on amputation, painted over with blood-red pigments; and more.”

I’m a bit bored by the conversation that was sparked after this about the value of art and how art made by women sells in auctions compared to how art by men does.  Saltz concludes that if we can’t rely on an institution and space like MoMA for refreshing art, it’s up to the little guys, the smaller galleries throughout New York to bring unknown artists into the scope of “good art.” As Saltz used Facebook as a venue for this discussion, we’ll use this blog to display the treasures of art created by women mined from the internet and local galleries.  Stay tuned.

According to the press release:

In Undone, the perceived completeness of form, space, or identity is defined by its own fragmented, unfinished, or unraveling condition. The works, commissioned for this exhibition, reference and subvert viewers expectations about medium and exhibition space. (PDF)

A “subversion of the viewers expectations about medium and exhibition space”?
Except that in this case, the exhibition space is funded by (and located inside of) the corporate offices of a tobacco giant and the artist Eileen Quinlan‘s medium is smoke (and photography).

Also from the press release:

Eileen Quinlan’s photographs of smoke reflected in broken mirrors offer an unusually literal disclosure of process that’s contradicted by their own aesthetic opacity.

An “unusually literal disclosure”? Indeed.

Unfortunately, it looks like this could be one of our last chances to write wildly speculative posts about our favorite museum-inside-of-a-corporate-headquarters.

The Smithsonian’s stated mission is “the increase and diffusion of knowledge.” Small and Burke, you learned us good.

Quoth the post:

Burke’s resignation came on the eve of an independent report that sources said would criticize her extensive outside activities, including highly compensated corporate board seats, academic appointments, a federal commission that oversees Medicare, and numerous nonprofit organizations.