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Author Hayden Herrera: From “Frida” to “Upper Bohemia”

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Author Hayden Herrera: From “Frida” to “Upper Bohemia”

Introduction to Hayden Hettera. 2:24 min. Interview: Raymond Elman.  Post-Production: Lee Skye.  Recorded via Zoom.  9/9/2025.  Truro–Miami.

 

HAYDEN HERRERA is an art historian, critic, and biographer. Her doctoral dissertation about the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo became her first book: “Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo” (Harper & Row 1983). Her other biographies include Pulitzer Prize nominee “Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work” (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2003), and “Listening to Stone: The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi” (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2015), which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. To pursue her research for her Gorky biography Herrera was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. A Japan Foundation grant made it possible for her to travel to Japan to interview people about Isamu Noguchi. Herrera has contributed articles and reviews to such publications as Art in America, Art Forum, and the New York Times. She has lectured widely, taught art history at the School of Visual Arts and at New York University, and curated several exhibitions, among them a Frida Kahlo exhibition that toured U. S. museums in 1978 and a traveling Frida Kahlo centennial exhibition that opened at the Walker Art Center in 2008. She lives and works in New York City and Truro, MA.

The videos below were recorded via Zoom, are organized by Success Factor, and run between 30 seconds and 6 minutes. Click on any video. You must be connected to the Internet to view the videos.

 

CRITICAL THINKING:    0:34 sec.

The title of your memoir, “Upper Bohemia,” seems so apt for your family. Who coined that phrase?

 

EXPOSURE TO BROAD INFLUENCES:    0:47 sec.

Nude swimming and sunbathing by people of all ages was a common phenomenon on the Outer Cape when you were growing up.

 

EXPOSURE TO BROAD INFLUENCES:    1:08 min.

What was your first awareness of art of any discipline?

 

INSIGHT & INSPIRATION:    1:07 min.

I was surprised to read in your memoir that you didn’t receive grades in high school.

 

CREATES A UNIQUE PERSONAL BRAND:     0:25 sec.

Tell me about the photographs in “Upper Bohemia.”

 

INSIGHT & INSPIRATION:       2:10 min.

As you describe in “Upper Bohemia,” your life with your parents, each of whom married five times, was alternately magical and borderline child abuse.

 

CREATES A UNIQUE PERSONAL BRAND:       1:40 min.

Was the “Upper Bohemia” mindset of being superior something you rebelled against as you grew older?

 

PERSEVERANCE FURTHERS:      5:53 min.

Tell us about your evolution as a writer.

 

UNDERSTANDS THE AUDIENCE’S PERSPECTIVE:       1:36 min

What was the path from the publication of your biography of Frida Kahlo to making the movie that made Salma Hayek a star?

 

COLLABORATION:      1:14 min.

Did you have any participation in the selection of the cast for “Frida”?

 

INSIGHT & INSPIRATION:      0:41 sec.

Ben Mezrich, whose book about Mark Zuckerberg was made into the movie “The Social Network,” told me that from then on, he simultaneously sees the books he is writing as movies.

 

CRITICAL THINKING:      2:37 min.

In 2005, your book about the artist Joan Snyder was published, and I believe she was artist-in-residence at Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill in 2016.

 

EXPOSURE TO BROAD INFLUENCES:      1:46 min.

You wrote a biography of the artist Arshile Gorky, while your father was married to Gorky’s ex-wife, Agnes Ethel Magruder (“Mougouch”). Was she a rich resource for your biography?

 

SEIZES OPPORTUNITIES:     1:36 min. 

What was your pathway into your 1993 book about Henri Matisse?

 

INSIGHT & INSPIRATION:   0:48 sec.

And then there is your 2016 biography of Isamu Noguchi.

 

INSIGHT & INSPIRATION:       1:16 min.

What was the impact of your peripatetic life as a child?