![]() ![]() He read it in his kitchen, frowned, then said, ‘It’s a bit of a word soup.’ That first arrow hit me right in the neck. I remember-proudly-showing dad my published review. ‘Kahlo’s paintings operate as a surreal and often perverse kind of Dear Diary entry’, I wrote. I lived in Auckland, so didn’t even see it, but I didn’t let that stop me. One of the first exhibitions I ever reviewed was Viva la Vida: Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism at City Gallery Wellington in 2000. Take Kahlo’s bowl of watermelon and put your own shopping list under it. ![]() ![]() And you can move fridge magnets around easily. My point is this: only the greats become fridge magnets. My PowerPoint about art writing includes a shoddy image of the Mix and Match magnet set. The way the juice runs into the crevices of my hand while I’m seated at my computer, writing an art review. When the dead return, they like to feast on their favourite fruit. Watermelon is a popular symbol in Day of the Dead celebrations. It included a cut-out of Kahlo, of course, but also Rivera’s head, an easel, a palette, and the Pope’s hat. It also included a cut-out of Kahlo’s own heart from one of her paintings-presumably she got the details anatomically correct-and a bowl of watermelon that I now recognise is from the last canvas she ever painted, Viva la Vida-meaning long live life. In the late 1990s, I bought my dad Frida Kahlo’s Mix and Match, a magnetic dress-up set made by The Unemployed Philosopher’s Guild. Kahlo has become the unlikely mascot for my art-writing career. ![]() A detail I’ve never gotten over.) One thing is certain, the deer is based on her pet Granizo. (Her husband Diego Rivera famously had an affair with her younger sister. Some say the painting expresses her disappointment others that it represents her difficult love life. Kahlo painted The Wounded Deer after an operation failed to improve her back pain. She became an artist famous for portraying her wounds. Several passengers were killed and Kahlo was pierced by an iron handrail. On 17 September 1925, Kahlo was in that accident, the bus she was on hit a streetcar. Frida Kahlo’s head painted on the body of a young stag running through the forest, as nimbly as it can on those tiny, delicate hooves its torso punctured with not one but nine arrows. In the background, forked yellow lightning splinters the sky-crack. It’s a definition that leaves room for the world’s tremendous culinary diversity.This year I’ve presented several workshops on art writing and I always start with The Wounded Deer (1946). “Just some stuff cooked in water,” she wrote, “with the flavored water becoming a crucial part of the dish.” While Clarkson dove into centuries of etymology to trace the history of soup, potage and broth, she settled on a generously broad take. Today, soup leans brothy while stews are more substantial, but the world’s spoonable foods have never fit neatly into the two English-language categories. “I think in every country in the world, historically, some soups were seen as restorative.” “Separating food and medicine - that’s not how ancient people thought of it,” she said. “It’s got very ancient roots.” Early people simmered it in everything from turtle shells to lengths of bamboo, she writes in the book, turning out metal soup pots starting in the Bronze Age.īoiling food made it possible to subsist on stable grains, with herbs and other ingredients added for nourishment or medicinal purposes.Įach time you deliver a pot of soup to a friend with the sniffles, Clarkson said you’re in fact carrying on an age-old tradition. “Every culture has some kind of soup,” she said. Soup is one of the world’s oldest and most universal foods, said Janet Clarkson, author of the book “Soup: A Global History.” If a steaming bowl of soup strikes you as the ultimate in old-fashioned comfort, you’ve got plenty of company. ![]()
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