Fridamania En kritisk granskning av den kulturella konstruktionen av Frida Kahlo

Abstract

This thesis examines how Frida Kahlo has been established as a central figure within the contemporary Western art canon and analyzes the cultural, visual, and institutional processes that enable and sustain this position. Through the concept of Fridamania, the study explores the way Kahlo is produced as a circulatory and recognizable cultural icon through the interaction of museum practices, discursive art historical practices, biographical narratives, and popular cultural reproduction. The study is situated within feminist and postcolonial art historiography and draws theoretically on W. J. T. Mitchell’s theories of the icon and his concept imagetext, Griselda Pollock’s critique of the gendered structures of the canon, Edward W. Said’s analysis of representation, and Dipesh Chakrabarty’s discussions of selective postcolonial incorporation. Methodologically, the thesis is informed by James Elkins’ critique of art history’s narrative reproduction and Michael Baxandall’s concept of the period eye. Through analyses of André Breton’s surrealist reception of Kahlo, Hayden Herrera’s biographical consolidation of the artist, and later feminist and postcolonial interpretations, the thesis argues that Kahlo’s canonical status cannot be understood solely as the result of artistic quality or political recovery. Rather, Kahlo emerges as an institutionally stabilized postcolonial and feminist figure through whom cultural difference is rendered aesthetically and emotionally legible within Western interpretative frameworks. The study demonstrates how Fridamania functions as an ongoing process of iconization in which artistic practice, biography, and visual identity are merged into a reproducible cultural image.