Magnifying Fakes

We arrived at 5:30 am at the corner of Calle Londres & Allende, a few blocks away from our friend’s house. He had asked us to wait before we woke him up. No one was on the streets in Coyoacán, not even the vendors heading to the market. The morning light reflected off of The Blue House. The lines had not started to form yet. The trees, so still. I stared at the front door. I knew that she would never come out. We went inside on our last day in Mexico. I tried to blank out all the tourists. I tried not to let them push me through so fast. There was hardly an empty corner or space on the wall. It was just as she had left it.

Diego Rivera had requested after Frida Kahlo’s death in 1954 that their personal belongings be sealed behind bathroom walls and locked closets for 50 years and he stated in his will that nothing could leave the house, even for restoration or to be placed on loan.

Dr. Mariella Remund and Hans-Jürgen Gehrke paid for the rights to copy Frida Kahlo’s work from the Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. In 2009 they launched a privately owned museum in Baden-Baden Germany, the city of her father’s birth, with a permanent exhibition of replicas entitled Frida Kahlo: A Ribbon Around a Bomb.

Packaging passion thrown in with their history of branding, neuro-marketing and strategic management skills, Remund & Gehrke collaborated with Global Entertainment Properties, a partner company of SEE Touring Attractions Inc., Los Angeles, for The Complete Frida Kahlo: Her paintings, Her life, Her Story that is presently on view in Barracks 3 at the Naval Training Center at Liberty Station in Point Loma, California.

“To have a show entirely of copies and to promote it as all Frida Kahlo’s paintings together for the first time is completely dishonest.” The opinion of San Diego’s Museum of Contemporary Art’s director, David C. Copley, is one shared by many.

The exhibition organizers felt, that since visitors had to exit through the gift shop, employees would be readily available there to answer any questions and explain that these were not originals.

“It bothers me that I did not see the word replica there,” pointed out Roxana Velazquez, executive director of the San Diego Museum of Art. There were no placards crediting the artist behind each work. Even Frida Kahlo’s signature was fabricated. It seems public pressure has pushed the organizers to rethink their strategy and add the word “replicas” to their banners, brochures, ads, catalogues and exhibition entrance. Nothing more about the painters has been revealed.

“We are so proud of our artists and what they have done. We wanted to present them on our website with their biography but they didn’t want to because they didn’t want to be known worldwide as the artists who replicated Frida Kahlo. They want to be known for their own work,” Remund told the press.

The couple had chosen four Chinese artists to paint 123 exact reproductions “because of the disciplined culture of faithfully replicating masters.” All we know from the exhibition’s website is that the age range is 38-42 and they’re from the artist community one hour east of Beijing, Song Zhuang. What they were paid for their services has not been disclosed.

Remund and Gerhrke made frequent studio visits to check on the progress of the commissioned work, giving the artists technical information and emotional tips for each piece. Remund thought, by adding her personal translations of “how Frida felt at that specific time, why she painted it, how she wanted to express herself and what was around in her life,” that the audience would feel these essential missing ingredients.

“Most museum exhibits are very left-brain. We want our exhibit to touch your right brain, your emotions, your heart,” Gehrke wanted the viewers to know. “You see the tears, but you don’t feel the mourning,” gallerist Andy Velasquez commented on Kahlo’s 1944 The Broken Column. An art professor changed his mind about buying a ticket, “I regard it as a bait and switch.”

“We could have retired in the south of France with a villa and two Ferraris, but we decided we would rather do this,” Remund said. Maybe they should have.