While the Rockerfeller lecture was interesting in itself, the rest of the lectures tended to a dry recounting of art history. Occassionally a lecturer would throw a tidbit of personal biography at the audience to relieve the tedium of facts. But this did not make up for the overwhelming avalanche of information.
And I was continually annoyed by the oft repeated comment that: "Frieda was known to have affairs with women" that academics threw at us without elaborating on. I wanted to know more about these relationships and how they had contributed to Frieda's work but the conservative-looking academics seemed unwilling or uninterested in elaborating on the more interesting, even 'R-rated' parts that, lets face it, all of us would love to know about. Of course if the artist had been straight then every mistress would have been recounted in thorough detail but queer artists don�t seem to get the same treatment.
A central question that the academics did not answer, and perhaps the most interesting was: what kept this queer couple together? The overweight (300 pounds), unattractive, violent and womanising Diego and the beautiful, sensitive, gentle and much younger Frieda. What motivated them to continue a relationship with all its extreme ups and downs that would have seen your average straight couple in the divorce courts within a year of marriage.
By the last lecture, 'Maternal Themes in Rivera's work', I found that I was losing concentration. And I wasn't the only person exhausted by the dry academic analysis. I joined the slow but determined number of escapees from boredom, darting out of the sleep-inducing lecture and back into the exhibition to gain one last look at the brilliant works of Frieda and Diego.
Gazing at Frieda and Diego's painting of monkey's, lillies and celebrities reminded me of the impossibility of studying these works without having a knowledge of the artists. Acadmics with a postmodernist leaning often like to cut out the author's importance - Barthes idiotic dictum that the: "Death of the author is the birth of the reader," is just one example. Yet, in the case of Frieda and Diego, studying their lives is essential in understanding the context of the paintings. Frieda and Diego were exceptional in the sense that they were a 'queer' couple who's lives where intimately connected with their works. Whether it was Frieda's self portraits or Diego's spectacular murals, art, politics and the personal are richly interwoven into their art. This exhibition reminds us that the artist's lives were as richly colourful vital and passionate as the works they left behind.
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