On July 6, 1907, Frida Kahlo was born at eight-thirty in the morning. Although her full name is Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón, she was known by her German name, Frida, which means "peace." Frida's father was German and she identified with his temperament in many ways. However, Frida grew up during the years of revolutionary chaos and radical change and she saw herself as part of this important shift in Mexican consciousness. She embodied the spirit of Mexicanidad, a new Mexican identity that embraced its indigenous past and present. In this new environment, the mestizo/a, a person of mixed racial and ethnic backgrounds, was celebrated. The Two Fridas foregrounds Frida's mixed ethnic heritage, highlighting her mother's indigenous Oaxacan roots, seen in the image on the right, and her father's European background, seen in the image on the left. The Frida on the right is dressed in the style of clothing worn by the women from Tehuantepec. With her dark skin and intact heart, this Frida holds a picture of Diego as a child. The Frida on the left side is dressed in a white, high-collared, Victorian style dress. Her skin is lighter and her heart has been ripped open, but she attempts to stop the bleeding with the hemostat in her hand. Frida makes the two sides distinct, but she also unifies them through the flowing blood and the holding of hands. Deep pain is expressed in this self-portrait, but ultimately, Frida embraces all the different aspects of herself in an attempt to find "peace." Carlos Fuentes has a slightly different interpretation of Frida's paintings in general: "The horrible, the painful, can lead us to the truth of self-knowledge." This is one reason why Frida's life and art have inspired so many people the world over. In honor of Frida's birthday, which she celebrated on the 7th of July, I'm publishing Parthenia Hick's incredible poem, Dos Fridas Hablando, and her statement about the power and importance of Frida. Dos Fridas Hablando You clamp our shared hearts to keep us from bleeding out drops of blood decorate the bedskirt of your dress mix with chrysanthemums and birds that fly near your hidden feet My left hand holds the portrait of us as a young boy, a pendant wrapped in a fine circle of gold our hearts beat right out of our blouses like bloody wild monkey fists Our faces are partitioned off we paint from behind our masks of pain that runs like starving rats up our legs and down our backs Our lips stay full of cherries and wine blood-swollen from the kiss of skeletons I wear our white lace dress Like royalty you say I watch your heart beat like a stick of dynamite about to blow up a canvas We split a part down the middle of our heads and pile our hair up like stacks of rope The sky gorged with graying clouds pushes on our heads there is something like ground the color of musk under our feet something solid that we cannot see We hold each other’s hand This poem is very special to me because I relate to the “splitting” of self, especially when it arises in art. My obsession (not too strong a word) with Frida comes from observing the way she turned her pain, both physical and psychic, into art. I have brought Frida into my own art as the personification of the kind of art that can come only through a woman’s experience and interpretation of the world and the plane on which we live. She showed me that, at least in art, one does not have to follow any rules and transparency has a sacred home. To me, this is profound. For so much of her life, she lived locked inside her back brace, carrying this burden with no choice. The legacy of her pain, however, has released so many women artists from having to carry their own burden of being braced and stitched in restriction. Long live Frida! Parthenia M. Hicks is the Poet Laureate Emerita of Los Gatos, CA and the recipient of the Dragonfly Press Award for Outstanding Literary Achievement; the Silicon Valley Arts Fellowship for Literature in the genre of Short Story; the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Poetry Prize; the Villa Montalvo Biennial Poetry Prize and several Pushcart nominations. She is a professional editor and the Managing Editor of the "Enlightenment Journal" as well as a jewelry maker, specializing in portraits of writers and artists. parthenia1@mac.com © Celia S. Stahr 2016
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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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