Why Frida Kahlo painted with such scalding intensity

DALLAS — Why did Frida Kahlo paint?

It almost feels impertinent to ask. The more polite approach, I suppose, would be to limit ourselves to parsing the significance of what she did paint. But in Kahlo’s case, the “why,” for all its presumption, feels important.

Attempting to answer it may not yield any certainties. But Kahlo painted herself, and episodes from her life, so often and with such scalding intensity that it seems certain she wanted people to wonder what motivated her.

“Frida: Beyond the Myth,” a compelling show at the Dallas Museum of Art, follows the recent trend of dwelling less on Kahlo’s actual works than on her biography and the persona she cultivated. The implication of the exhibition title is not only that Kahlo was a mythmaker (as indeed she was) but also that, since myths are widely held and false beliefs, we should try to get beyond them.

The impulse is impeccable. But it might be equally interesting to ask why Kahlo (1907-1954) was so eager to make a myth of herself in the first place.

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