The Herald of Scotland describes the feud raging over the archive of materials believed to belong to Frida Kahlo and present in our book Finding Frida Kahlo like something out of a spaghetti western, a shoot-out between rival gangs, the Kahlo “mafia” on one side and a small-town antiques dealer on the other. One of the detractors of the collection, New York dealer Mary-Anne Martin, is quoted in the article as saying that the word “bisexual” was not used in the 1940s, other than to mean hermaphrodite. Once again, Martin has not done her homework: although not in common use until the 1950s, the term was used as early as 1914 to mean attracted to both sexes. More a propos, the article states that Martin has sold single pages from a Kahlo diary for as much as $200,000 each, so the sudden appearance of more than 1200 new items including numerous diaries and sketchbooks surely deflates the value of those earlier pieces, plus whatever Martin is holding in the back room. As in politics, following the money would surely illuminate the foundations of this “stand-off.”
The Kahlo book continues to generate lots of talk The Kahlo controversy doesn't stop