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While during her lifetime she was not highly regarded, today Frida Kahlo is much more than one of the most well-known female artists in the world - she’s an icon. In Arianna Davis’ unique new book, What Would Frida Do? A Guide to Living Boldly, the author plays on the artist’s modern rebirth while also taking the icon off her pedestal and showing us what we can learn from her. It’s perhaps the perfect timing for a Frida revival. With movements like #MeToo, as well as a contemporary call to start acknowledging forgotten female heroines of the past, Frida seems like the perfect embodiment of female empowerment. In many ways, the artist is known more for her notorious life than for her art. As Davis notes, Frida was a woman who did everything boldly. Like her work, the artist was unapologetic and daring - sometimes to the point of creating self-destructive chaos.
The book opens with Davis speaking on the “Fridamainia”, as she refers to it, that has broken out in the 2000’s - possibly beginning with the Julia Taymor movie Frida (2002) starring Salma Hayek. The book then weaves beautifully between biography and self-help lessons. Each chapter is separated by an aspect of Frida’s life that she performed audaciously such as love, sex, and identity meaning the story is not a linear one. However, Davis does a great job of filling us in on a full picture of the artist’s life along the way.
Each chapter tells Frida’s story, weaving in modern comparisons, like relating Frida and her work to that of Beyoncé and her album, Lemonade. Chapters then end with a wrap-up of what the modern reader can learn from each noted aspect of the artist’s life. For example, a chapter on confidence explores the artist’s belief in the power of her work despite facing criticism for it in her day, to the confidence in her image, regardless, or perhaps, due to her disability following accidents and illnesses throughout her lifetime. The chapter ends with a guide for the modern reader, on how to overcome imposter syndrome, like Frida did, and how to feel good about your authentic image in today’s photo-brushed and filtered social media generation. This additional aspect makes the book a tool that readers can pull out and refer to whenever they’re in need of a little guidance from the artist.
Davis’ creative take on biography makes it digestible and useful for readers today, allowing the artist’s triumphs and failures to feel universal and relatable. While connecting Frida’s life to issues young people face today is what makes this book shine, at times it can feel like a stretch. Davis throws herself into the narrative throughout. Sometimes these asides are sweet. For example, in a chapter on creativity, Davis imagines what advice Frida would give her on days she had writer's block (“look no further than the cracks of your heart”). Other times, the author’s imaginings in which a vision of Frida appears and speaks to her as she writes and researches the book, feel not only a bit corny but also incredibly distracting to the narrative. Davis often mentions how close to Frida she felt when writing, to the point where she may even be...becoming Frida? Davis notes that she began thinking, talking, and even dressing like Frida. One Halloween, she dresses up as the artist stating, “My friends stared at me in disbelief; apparently my likeness to the artist was almost too eerie for them to handle”. These details tend to feel a bit self-aggrandizing and the book could have done without them.
However, the book is clearly well-researched and well-organized. The book features direct quotes from the artist, as well as those that were close to her, along with excerpts from her riveting letters to lovers and friends. While the book clearly focuses on Frida’s zest for life, Davis does a nice job of weaving in Frida’s masterpieces, giving readers an understanding of how her life and work were one (As the artist herself said “I don’t paint my nightmares or dreams, I paint my own reality”). Davis touches on how the artist used her canvas to paint the most pivotal events in her life, from the most joyous, to the most heartbreaking. Some pages are used only to decoratively display one large Frida Kahlo quote mentioned within the text. With all the references of her works, using these pages to display images of the paintings themselves could have provided a more useful visual for the reader. But I suppose today’s reader can just take out their smartphone and search for the images of Frida’s work on Google.
The most noteworthy parts of the book are areas in which Davis humanizes Frida by showing her at both her best and very worse. Her romance with famed muralist Diego Rivera, for example, was passionate yet rife with infidelity and betrayal. The artist was known to be the life of the party, dancing frivolously and challenging men to drinking contests while also admitting in letters that she had a somewhat troubling addiction to tequila. While the artist was strong and unwavering, it may have been because she lived a life full of pain, growing up with polio, having her vagina impaled by a pole during a bus accident, and suffering multiple miscarriages.
Overall, the book carries a powerful message, like that of the popular female self-help she-shepherds of today such as Glennon Doyle. The book carries the same message as Doyle’s Untamed, that “we can do hard things”, but without the preachiness. Unlike Doyle’s text, Davis is able to paint Frida’s life as aspirational without hitting us over the head with it. Davis allows Frida to feel incredibly modern, making her a tangible role model, opposed to merely an icon. The book's final message is to live your truest and fullest life, no matter the obstacles that get in your way or the people that tell you no. Or as Frida would say, Viva la Vida.
Link to purchase the book: https://www.sealpress.com/titles/arianna-davis/what-would-frida-do/9781541646322/
Author's Site: https://www.ariannadavis.com/
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