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Few American cultural institutions stared as deep into the yawning, austerity-driven abyss of large-scale deaccessioning as The Detroit Institute of Arts. When the City of Detroit declared bankruptcy in 2013, vulturous creditors circled the DIA’s collection, estimated worth (depending on the estimator) of $400 million to over $800 million. Some experts see signs of a Detroit comeback, however, but one very visible sign is the new DIA exhibition Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit, a showcase of the city’s ties to Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera as well as a tribute to Kahlo’s and Rivera’s own artistic comebacks. Few exhibitions truly capture the spirit of a city at a critical moment in its history, but Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit is a show of comebacks that will have you coming back for more. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Comebacks: Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and the City of Detroit."

Since the publication in 1983 of Hayden Herrera’s groundbreaking biography of Frida Kahlo, “Fridamania” in all its forms has flowered around the world. Her art and her appearance have become so intertwined thanks to her powerfully evocative self-portraiture that separating the two seems impossible. And, yet, Kahlo’s signature wardrobe itself eluded scholars for years, thanks to husband and fellow artist Diego Rivera’s request that Frida’s clothing and personal effects be sealed away for 50 years after her death in 1954. Since 2004, curators at The Frida Kahlo Museum, which stands at the site of the famous “Blue House” Kahlo and Rivera shared during their tempestuous marriage, have worked to conserve Kahlo’s clothing. Smoke and Mirrors: Frida Kahlo’s Dresses (a rough translation of the original Spanish title) allows the public not only to see her iconic tehuana dresses again, but also to see the prosthetics and supports Kahlo wore under those dresses to help her cope with her various physical disabilities. As amazing as it is to see Kahlo’s clothing resurface in all its color, I find it slightly disturbing to also see the braces and other devices she never wanted us to see. Smoke and Mirrors possesses a disturbing duality along the lines of Kahlo’s own painting The Two Fridas (shown above). Is opening Frida Kahlo’s wardrobe a triumph of feminist fashion iconography or crass “cripple chic”? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of :"Rediscovering Frida Kahlo’s Wardrobe: FeministFashion Icon or Cripple Chic?"

[Image: Frida Kahlo. The Two Fridas, 1939 (detail). Image source.]

A new tour at the Museum of Modern Art in New York has many seeing red over “seeing” Reds in the collection. As reported in Art News, Artist Yevgeniy Fiks’ “performative tour” titled simply enough “Communist Tour of MoMA” begins with the current exhibition Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art before spilling messily into the political leanings of other artists throughout the collection. Although the Soviet Union disappeared from maps and globes and Communism is presumed dead, Fiks’ digging up of old political skeletons (some buried more shallowly than others) raises the question of whether any value can come from such politicized art history. Is art history better unsaid than Red? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Is Art History Better Unsaid Than Red?"

[Image: Diego Rivera. Indian Warrior. 1931. Fresco on reinforced cement in a metal framework, 41 x 52 ½” (104.14 x 133.35 cm). Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts. Purchased with the Winthrop Hillyer Fund SC 1934:8-1. © 2011 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, México, D.F./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.]

[Many thanks to the Museum of Modern Art, New York for providing me with the image above from the exhibition Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art, which runs through May 14, 2012.]

Although I risk impinging on the territory of fellow Big Think blogger Marina Adshade of Dollars and Sex, I can’t help but comment on a recent report in The Guardian titled “When art breeds success in the bedroom: Does success as an artist bring you more sexual conquests? Well, yes and no, say researchers.” Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research and chief organizer of the humorous and thought-provoking Ig Nobel prize, stumbled across an article in the Frontiers of Psychology titled “Status and Mating Success Amongst Visual Artists” written by UK researchers Helen Clegg, Daniel Nettle, and Dorothy Miell in which the trio argue that successful male artists have a lot of sex, whereas less successful male artists have less. When you talk about female artists, however, success means pretty much nothing at all when it came to their sex life. At the risk of going against their findings (and of sounding like Carrie from Sex and the City), is really true that great male artists have greater sex? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Do Great Artists Have More Sex?"