Thank you JJ for your astute comment. I agree that it is fascinating to look at magazines from an earlier time period in order to gain a better understanding of that era and/or different culture. I did some digging for Panorama as well and I couldn't find anything about a magazine from the 1920s. I did find an Italian Panorama beginning in 1939, but I don't think this is the same one. I'll have to go deeper. This is the process of research. You first skim the surface to see if you can find any leads. If you do, then you have to keep following that trail. With the Internet, this trail could go on for quite a long time. You just hope that the trail leads to the information you need to create a more complete story. Unfortunately, many trails just wander off into oblivion. I've spent hours, sometimes days, researching, and in the end, I still couldn't put all the pieces together. In other words, I have many fragmented stories that I have to leave out of the larger article. You would think that with an artist as well known as Frida that all the information would be on the table, but it isn't. Of course, all the information never will be.
Just think about your own life. Could you recover all the information about it? Do you need to recover all the information? Probably not. You have to decide what information is the most important to include. In the case of a memoir, you're making these decisions about your own life; however, as a scholar, you make decisions about someone else's life and art. The differences are obvious, but one aspect that is similar has to do with perspective. In both cases, there are a myriad of ways to write the "story." It depends, in large part, upon the perspective of the author. With a memoir, you'd think that there would be one "true" story, but the author's family members or friends could remember things from a different vantage point. Which one is true? Is one more valid? In the case of scholarly research, we might think that there would be fewer discrepancies between authors, yet, you can interpret a letter, painting, critics' reviews, etc. in many ways. You can piece together the information you think is most important, leaving out what you find less significant. Another author might disagree and highlight the parts you've deemed unimportant. Which story is more accurate?
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Celia Stahr teaches art history at the University of San Francisco. She’s interested in women artists and artists who cross cultural boundaries. She fell in love with the power of Frida Kahlo's art in the 1980s, a feeling that has intensified over the years. Frida in America took 10 years to research and write, but Stahr never lost interest in this fascinating woman and artist.
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October 2022
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