Art in The USA

I went to the Frida Kahlo exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art yesterday. She was an outstanding painter active in the first part of the 20thC, with much of her output, at least on display yesterday dedicated to self-portraits documenting the trials and tribulations as well as some happy times of her life. The works are all striking in their accurate brushwork, beautiful colours and the way in which she puts her emotional life right out there in her work. Neither she nor the viewer is spared as she documents both the breakup of her marriage to Diego Rivera and her lifelong suffering from various illnesses including polio, scoliosis and childlessness.

What's this got to do with drugs? Well as her illnesses, especially the pain from her back became more severe she could only keep going with stronger medication, notably opioids. And this is noticeable in her later works, both in the loss of technique but also in the seemingly heightened appreciation of colour. So the drugs do and don't work. They enabled her to keep going but robbed her of some of her physical ability. In my humble opinion anyway, and I'm no art expert.

She died aged 47.