I know her as the photographer Barbara Levine. I thought her photographs were beautiful and considered her part of the erotically literate, wry, creative lesbian scene that came out of the SF Art Institute in the 80s.
Twenty five years after our OOB connection, she called me from her new home in Mexico and told me she'd authored a new book on a cache of hitherto-unknown work by Frida Kahlo. Boxes of journals and drawings and letters… a whole treasure trove.
I was amazed… it's the discovery people dream about. You go up in the attic and find a Rembrandt.
She told me all about the amazing circumstances and how the work came to be verified and embraced by the Kahlo experts and relatives. She said that she'd love to have me review the book, help market it, spread the word around, blurb, etc.
Barbara didn't know this, but I had a deep interest in Kahlo's life since the 70's, because of her political work and and association with her next-door neighbor, Leon Trotsky. I visited both their homes when I was very young and shared a real passion with my father for her life and work.
The collection Barbara discovered reveals a great deal of sexual candor-- more so than Kahlo is already known for. You could see how some apple-polishers would flinch. To me, it would be a pleasure to discuss her sexuality and art with so much more to draw from.
What Barbara did not tell me… was that this collection, and her book, was plagued with doubt about its authenticity. She didn't tell me that the estate of Frida Kahlo considered it a fraud. She led me to believe the opposite. Since I thought it was Princeton University Press, I assumed it was peer-reviewed. It isn't… it's a NYC press called Princeton Architectural, which has nothing to do with the university.
I got to read about all this over the weekend in The New York Times. The work is being called out as a fraud and the principals are being sued by the Kahlo estate. They're livid. The estate could be wrong of course— they have a lot to protect— but they have legitimate questions. They clearly weren't drawn into a consensus pre-publication.
To the Times, Barbara acknowledged that the works authorship remains somewhat of a mystery, but that the collection is remarkable no matter who created it. She said:
"[It] hovers between fact and fiction. As a landscape it’s incredibly beautiful. I kept coming back to the same thought: If this is completely inauthentic, if Kahlo or somebody close to her had no hand in this, then who would make such a compelling fictitious archive?"
Yes, WHO indeed?
It's "Meta-Kahlo!"
More dithering here. So very different from our phone calls months ago.
The LA Times art critic has seen the materials first-hand and has some interesting thoughts, including his critique of the "Frida Kahlo Industry." Excellent questions, and again, something I should have been drawn into before asked to lend my name.
I wish she— and her publisher— had been as frank with me as they've been with reporters. I would have shared my enthusiasm for such mysteries and we might have talked about how she intended to handle the repercussions, and so on. I would not have promoted her book as the Real McCoy.
Here's the last thing I received from her publisher before the scandal broke:
Every once in a long while the unlikely happens—210 Weegee photographs and letters are found in a trunk at a Kentucky yard sale; a rare book dealer discovers Diane Arbus’s photographs in an archive amassed by a collector whose interest was the midcentury Times Square attraction Hubert’s Dime Museum and Flea Circus
—and now, a collector of photograph albums and scrapbooks happens upon the diaries, letters, and other personal belongings of Frida Kahlo, collecting dust in an antique store in a small colonial-era town in central Mexico.
It seemed inconceivable to author and former director of exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Barbara Levine, after decades of exhibitions, auctions, books, and movies, unknown Frida Kahlo material could still be found anywhere, much less a shop in a converted textile factory. “Well, if you don’t believe me just come along,” replied her traveling companion...
Yes, inconceivable! Was that the Easter Egg?
For the record, I'd like to remove my name from this book's promotional efforts, since I was recruited under false pretenses. I am a minor victim of the bullshittery. I don't like my name getting attached to grifting get-rich-quick schemes… no one does, right? I didn't make my name as PT Barnum.
As some of you know, this is not the first time I've been led to trust a friend—from a common underground, counter-culture past—who had something original to bring to the world. I was one of the first editors hoodwinked and crank-called by the notorious JTLeroy, aka Emily Albert. I wrote about that debacle here, and my feelings today about this hot mess are exactly the same.
Why is being yourself so unfashionable? It rarely gets to the Times-level of exposure, but I deal at least once a month with plagiarism that never becomes "successful" at its own exploitation.
As soon as money is involved, the self-invention and quackery goes through the roof. With the Kahlo book, the difference between whether it's Frida or Fake Frida is… whaddya think?… millions and millions of dollars.
That's where the Meta Meets the Road.
Right now I have a stack of manuscripts on my desk, from dozens of authors, who would like me to blurb their book, help them find a publisher, consult on marketing their baby, write a review.
Should I write all these authors back and ask for their birth certificate and trial transcripts to prove that they indeed have written the story they put their name to? Should I send a postcard to everyone: "I assume you've plagiarized this work until proven otherwise?" How are you supposed to function as an editor if your working premise is that everyone is "on the con"?
When Barbara asked me how she could compensate me for my work on her book, I asked her if I could have a couple prints of the self-portrait photographs we published in On Our Backs in 1985. I've never lost my attraction to them. She said she was touched, surprised that I wanted something of hers.
Yeah, that's what I want. Favor de no estar chingando. I want Horton, not Mayzie: "I meant what I said, and I said what I meant." I am a faithful editor and I hope that hasn't become as absurd as a wooly mammoth sitting on an egg.
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