The Incantation Of Frida K. (Hardcover, 1st ed)

Born in Mexico City in 1910, Frida Kahlo was just 15 when a road accident left her crippled, thereby devastating her dream of a career as a doctor. Condemned to suffer pain for the rest of her days, Kahlo taught herself to paint, eventually sending her work to the artist Diego Rivera. Rivera, whose depictions of working class life were responsible for the modern revival of Mexican art, was to become her husband. By 1939 their volatile relationship had ended in divorce and Kahlo had been 'discovered' by the French poet and principal theorist of Surrealism, Andre Breton. Somewhat peversely, Breton insisted on incorporating her into the Surrealist movement despite Kahlo's objection that she in fact saw herself as a realist painter who simply depicted her own life. In recent times it has been recognized that Kahlo took the traditions of Mexican popular art and Mayan history and invested them with an imagery symbolic of her personal agony. Frequently shocking, Kahlo's paintings suggest a complex and tortured psychology. Taking this interior life as her starting point, Braverman embarks upon an imaginary voyage into Frida Kahlo's mind. Frida is 46 when we meet her and on her deathbed. Braverman's fictional flashback manages to resist the trap of whimsy while capturing the essence of an extraordinary woman whose work Breton once likened to 'a ribbon around a bomb', and who was once at the centre of controversial artistic and political circles that included the likes of Leon Trotsky and Pablo Picasso. Braverman has her own history of rebellion. In the '60s she was an activist at Berkeley, today she is widely appreciated for her poetry and short stories. In her seductive and often brutal interpretation of this enigmatic yet profoundly disturbing painter Braverman has produced a literary retrospective of one of the most powerful artists of our times. (Kirkus UK)

"I was born in rain and I will die in rain," begins Kate Braverman's The Incantation of Frida K., an imagined life journey of Frida Kahlo. The book opens and closes inside the mind of Frida K., at 46, on her deathbed, taking us through a kaleidoscope of memories and hallucinations where we shiver for two hundred pages on the threshold of life and death, dream and reality, truth and myth. Defiant and uncompromising, Frida bears the wounds of her body and spirit with a stark pride, transcending all limitations, wrapping her senses around the places, events, and conversations in her past. Frida K. interacts from her hospital bed with her mother, sister, Diego, and her nurse. She calls herself a "water woman," navigating into unexplored dimensions of her world, leading us through the alleys of San Francisco's Chinatown, of Paris in 1939 (where she rubbed shoulders with Andre Breton), and of her neighborhood in Mexico City, Coyoacan. Her voyage is an inward one, an incantation before dying. In The Incantation of Frida K., Braverman's language dances and spins. She carves out a bold interpretation of the life of an artist to whom she is vitally connected.

General

Imprint:	Seven Stories Press,U.S.
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	May 2002
First published:	March 2002
Authors:	Kate Braverman
Dimensions:	216 x 145 x 23mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	224
Edition:	1st ed
ISBN-13:	978-1-58322-469-4
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
LSN:	1-58322-469-6
Barcode:	9781583224694

Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate? Let us know about it.

Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image.

Is this product missing categories? Add more categories.

Review This Product

No reviews yet - be the first to create one!