Creativity: It’s Not Just for Fun Anymore

Frida Kahlo’s story highlights your most urgent task right now.

AI anxiety? Frida Kahlo’s story highlights your most urgent task right now.

Photo by Camila Cordeiro on Unsplash

On the screen, I see Salma Hayek as Frida plop into a wooden chair, a bottle of clear spirits in her hand. A version of the mournful song “Paloma Negra,“ where Chavela Vargas teeters between crying and raging while she sings, brings up emotion as a palpable lump in my throat.

I’m totally immersed in the movie Frida, which depicts the bold and controversial life of the Mexican surrealist by the same name, and we’ve just learned of Diego Rivera’s dalliances with his sister-in-law.

Hayek masterfully portrays Frida hacking away at her long, black, curly hair, slugging back the tequila, and sitting before a blank canvas. Before the song is over, the 1940 masterpiece Self Portrait With Cropped Hair emerges before us. In the painting, Kahlo wears Rivera’s oversized black suit. The lyrics and a brief score of another Mexican folk song appear at the top of the finished work of art. “Loo…