A tradition rooted in the mythology of romanticism and its conception of the artist as a cultural hero would want to believe that everything pertaining to the life of a genius has to bear the mark of the sublime. Everything in their lives -gestures, decisions, personality traits, eccentricities, even the most dissonant mistakes- are thus transformed into esthetic substance. We would want their lives to be masterworks, a perfect coherence- and continuity between the work and its creator. Roland Barthes has criticized this conception as a basically bourgeois aberration - the perennial realism of the bourgeois culture, its need to identify the signified with the signifier. And then we learn about the real human dimension of these heroes- their pettiness, narcissism, avariciousness, arbitrariness, and childishness, all of which are no more than their human specificity. We are scandalized; either the work or the figure lies. A harmonious painting, a novel or masterful symphony cannot possibly be the product of a person capable of such spiritual smallness. Then we are left with two choices—to dismiss the work as an essentially hypocritical utterance, or to disqualify the creator as the accidental author of some work that happened to be marvelous but was simply by virtue of a great skill, not supported by an equally admirable human quality.

Summary: This text offers an analysis of Mexico's struggle for democratic development. Linking Mexico's state to Mexico-US and other international considerations, the authors, collaborating with Emilio Zebadua, offer perspectives from all sides of the border.

The riveting story of how three years spent in the United States transformed Frida Kahlo into the artist we know today "[An] insightful debut....Featuring meticulous research and elegant turns of phrase, Stahr’s engrossing account provides scholarly though accessible analysis for both feminists and art lovers." —Publisher's Weekly Mexican artist Frida Kahlo adored adventure. In November, 1930, she was thrilled to realize her dream of traveling to the United States to live in San Francisco, Detroit, and New York. Still, leaving her family and her country for the first time was monumental. Only twenty-three and newly married to the already world-famous forty-three-year-old Diego Rivera, she was at a crossroads in her life and this new place, one filled with magnificent beauty, horrific poverty, racial tension, anti-Semitism, ethnic diversity, bland Midwestern food, and a thriving music scene, pushed Frida in unexpected directions. Shifts in her style of painting began to appear, cracks in her marriage widened, and tragedy struck, twice while she was living in Detroit. Frida in America is the first in-depth biography of these formative years spent in Gringolandia, a place Frida couldn’t always understand. But it’s precisely her feelings of being a stranger in a strange land that fueled her creative passions and an even stronger sense of Mexican identity. With vivid detail, Frida in America recreates the pivotal journey that made Senora Rivera the world famous Frida Kahlo.

The classic reference work that provides annually updated information on the countries of the world.