Awritingreader’s Weblog

I recently planned a trip to go to Philadelphia with my roommate and visit the Museum of Art. She politely offered her car as the means of transportation because she knew that I badly wanted to go, but had no economical and time efficient way to make it happen. I was excited to go because it is one of the only Frida Kahlo exhibitions to show in the United States in 15 years. My parents saw this same show while traveling in Puerto Rico two summers ago, and insisted that I find my way to Philly, because after all, she is one of my favorites.

So we soared along the Pennsylvania roads for a very short two hours and after a pretty extensive parking search, found a spot and walked to the museum. We payed entirely too much money (by college standards) and was admitted into the exhibition. In the exhaustive and yet too brief next two

hours, we strolled through over 40 of the artist’s paintings. We eventually got separated from one another (as always seems to happen at museums) and by the time we re-joined each other at the exit gift shop, we were both ready to offer our opinions. My roommate has never been a particularly big fan of Kahlo’s works, but offered up a critique that sounded something like this: “The subject matter is so depressing, but I love her vivid color palates and bold strokes that create interesting lines and contrast.”

As I listened to her offer this critique I couldn’t help but notice how her reaction to Kahlo’s works so typified Bourdieu’s notion that a scholar is better equipped to interpret a work because “the capacity to see (voir) is a function of the knowledge (savoir)” (1810). I agreed entirely with her judgment of the paintings, yet I couldn’t help admit that I would never have formed this sentence in response to her works. My roommate saw these things because she is trained in the craft of graphic and textile design. She sees almost everything through texture, lines, and colors.

What I saw when viewing Kahlo’s works was the influence of a multi-ethnic heritage on one’s own self-understanding. I saw the influence of Hispanic culture pervading themes and assumptions within the paintings, and I saw irrationality and fragmented logic in the representation of items. Of course, my parents are a bi-racial couple, I grew up with Hispanic culture, and I study (or perhaps more accurately) critique works as an English major, always looking for a way to judge and argue, specifically in faults of logical conclusions. It became utterly clear to me, that both my roommate and I were “seeing” only through the lens of which we “know”. Therefore, you might say that we were each scholars on different aspects of the works. Our personal economy has granted each of us specific tools for decoding, and they are both equally effective, while perhaps decoding different messages.