26/08/26
Frida: The Making of an Icon
Tate Modern, London
25 June 2026 – 3 January 2027
With its pre-sale-record-breaking blockbuster, Frida: The Making of an Icon, Tate once again aptly demonstrates a case of more most certainly not being more. Don’t get me wrong, Kahlo fans will find this outing easier to digest than the V&A’s from 2018, Frida Kahlo: Making Herself Up, which felt exploitative in its focus on her ill health and medications, but it ought simply to have stopped at half the number of rooms and to have cut the dross. The number of Kahlo works on loan is impressive (more than 30), and they are all awe-inspiring and wonderful, but they are these things all by themselves; they do not need watering down – or bulking out – by the “Fridamania”, be that commercial, folk or “artistic”, filling the final rooms. Janet McKenzie wrote in her review of Tate’s 2005 exhibition, Frida Kahlo: “A stated intent of the curators of this exhibition is that Kahlo’s paintings should be viewed independently, so as not to be consumed or overshadowed by the cult that has been created from her life.” Sadly, that seems not to have been their aim this time around. The subtitle of this exhibition, The Making of an Icon, admittedly does describe what the curators purport to be their intent: “Telling the tale of how Frida was posthumously transformed into a global icon and brand.” The only problem is that, in doing so, they have reduced her to just that, losing sight of the sheer brilliance of her art.
Read the full review here