Book reviews: Behind the Veil of Vice | Frida Kahlo

Published on Friday 13 August 2010 19:20

Behind the Veil of Vice by John R Bradley (Palgrave, £17.99)****

Some high-profile commentators would have us believe that Islamic terrorism is so much sublimated sex; that (roughly) young Muslim males have to blow themselves up in airliners to find release. This theory would be absurd even if it didn't confuse counsels of perfection from professional moralists with actual practice. But, as this investigation into Middle Eastern mores shows, the reality is quite otherwise. Far from a clash of sexual civilisations, Bradley finds East and West united in adherence to an ecumenical creed of "Do as I say, not as I do". Not that there aren't differences in the lies we tell ourselves or the ethical workarounds we've found: hence the institution of misyar – temporary marriages, which enable a society like Iran to work around its own self-denying strictures; or the freedom of relations between men and adolescent boys in Morocco (as long as no one comes out or calls it gay). Bradley finds both sleazy secrets and what he (a bit contentiously) calls higher hypocrisies in this revelatory and thought-provoking book.

Frida Kahlo *****

by Peter von Bruggen, et al (Prestel, 35)

It's always me, me, me with Frida Kahlo: one self-portrait after another, in endless, grotesquely elaborate variation. This is why she speaks to the age of the celebrity (and to postmodern collectors such as Madonna). Her self-consciousness could hardly be dismissed as vanity, though – and not just because of the monobrow and the moustache: Kahlo's awareness of her body was brought home to her the hard way by the excruciating effects of accident and illness.

There was no hope for her of separating her spiritual from her physical self – hence the way in which art and suffering sanctify each other in her works. Does the irresistible relevance she seems to have today depend on nothing more than a historico-cultural coincidence – a chord the 20th-century invalid strikes with our 21st-century cult of beauty? That debate is destined to continue, but this splendidly illustrated and rigorously argued Retrospective makes a powerful case for Kahlo's genuine importance.