Today is both Halloween and the beginning of Dias De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead). For both celebrations, skeletons abound. Frida kept a papier mache skeleton on the top of her canopied bed. Such sculptures are popular in Mexico as we can see with Linares' Skeleton. It is a wonderful visual representation of the interconnection of life and death. I love all the colorful flowers, cactus, plant leaves, birds, serpent, and frog that give life to this smiling dynamic skeleton. If you want to see this amazing sculpture, it is part of the Dobles Vidas exhibition at the Thatcher Gallery on the campus of the University of San Francisco. It is one of many incredible folk art pieces that are on loan from The Mexican Museum. If you like Mexican folk art, you don't want to miss this exhibition! It runs through December 12th.
Skeletons also appear in Frida's paintings as you can see in the Portrait of Luther Burbank shown above. I'll be discussing this painting and a few others on November 6th at the University of San Francisco as part of the Dobles Vidas exhibition and Dias De Los Muertos. I'm including the flier below with all the information if you're interested in coming. I hope to see you there!
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Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera on their wedding day, August 21, 1929 "I did not know it then, but Frida had already become the most important fact in my life. And she would continue to be , up to the moment she died, twenty-seven [twenty-six] years later." Diego Rivera recounted this about Frida in his memoir My Art, My Life when he was first getting to know her around 1928. The two seemed like a fascinating couple. He was passionate about art and politics and so was she. He could be irreverent and dramatic and so could she. He was a prankster and so was she. He had a wealth of knowledge and so did she. He wasn't monogamous in relationships and she wasn't either. Yet, Frida's parents were not too sure about this relationship. Frida’s mother Matilde was vexed by the large 20-year age difference as well as by Diego’s hefty 300-pound stature and his Communist atheist beliefs. Both parents said it was like the marriage between an elephant and a dove. Matilde refused to support her daughter’s decision to marry the elephant. Only Frida’s father was present for the civil ceremony in Coyoacan, on August 21, 1929. Was Matilde’s bad feeling about her daughter’s marriage to Diego a portent of a deeply painful union to come or just the mistrustful feelings of a protective Catholic mother who doesn’t want her daughter to marry an atheist? There was cause for great concern because, like Diego’s friend Pablo Picasso, he reveled in his sadistic acts toward women. As Diego put it: “If I loved a woman, the more I loved her, the more I wanted to hurt her. Frida was only the most obvious victim of this disgusting quality.” Clearly Diego had a problem and even though he recognized it in this statement, he didn't change. Was Frida aware before she married Diego th hurt a woman the more he loved her before she married him? Was she conscious of any potential problems that could emerge in the marriage? According to Frida's father, his daughter was no saint either. Guillermo Kahlo pulled Diego aside one day to warn him that Frida was a "devil." I've always wondered what he meant by this. How was she a devil? Certainly, Frida was not a typical traditional Mexican woman. This is evident in the family photo that I showed in the last blog where Frida wears a man's suit. Is that what Guillermo meant by devil or was he thinking about other qualities? He said that Frida was his favorite daughter and the one who was most like him. Does he call her a devil because he thinks of himself as a devil? Whatever Guillermo Kahlo meant by the term devil, I think it is safe to say that with Frida, Diego had met his match! Guillermo Kahlo's family photograph, 1926 Diego's androgynous depiction of Frida in his Ministry of Education mural from 1929 is not the first image to play with her gender. In 1926, Frida's father snapped a black and white family photo that shows Frida wearing a man’s suit. Lined up in three rows, everyone wears their finest dresses or suits for this seemingly conventional family photo. All looks typical for this time period, except for Frida standing off to the left clad in a three-piece suit, tie included. Her light colored suit jumps out of the photograph because it contrasts to the darker clothing near her. Her pose also steals the viewer’s attention because she stands at a slight angle with one leg bent and her right hand nestled into her pant’s pocket while the left arm rests on her uncle’s shoulder. Is this an inside joke between Frida and her father? Frida’s mother and uncle look as if they take the photo shoot seriously, but it’s possible that the stern expression on Frida’s uncle’s face is really anger over having to go along with his niece’s cross-dressing, allowing her to emerge as the dominant “male” of the family. In another photo taken that day, the women in the family and a younger male cousin are standing in a line and Frida, still donning a man’s suit while holding a cane, occupies the middle position, just like in Diego’s painting. With her unwavering gaze, she stares down viewers as if she defies them to scoff at her. While Frida often dressed in clothing that could be viewed as genderless or male attire, her public image shifts in August of 1929 from the androgynous communist comrade to the wife of Diego Rivera. Diego Rivera's mural The Distribution of Arms, Ministry of Education, Mexico City, 1928-29 Nine months after the May Day debacle, Tina was accused of the attempted assassination made on the newly elected President Ortiz Rubio. Although the accusation was preposterous, while locked up in the Lecumberri Penitentiary, with just an iron cot and the stench of a dirty toilet, the authorities gave the “dangerous agitator” a choice--either abandon communist activities or leave Mexico. Tina chose deportation, embarking on the S.S. Edam headed for Europe on February 24, 1930. Frida lost an important friend, but Diego’s painting on the Ministry of Education’s wall in Mexico City, 1928-29, immortalized these two devoted comrades. In this mural, Diego painted Frida front and center in a bustling firearms factory. In a ¾ pose, she looks off to the left while handing a rifle to her comrade. She is distributing arms to the peasants who are seen on horseback outside the factory in the upper right corner of the mural. Diego chose to dress Frida in a bright red worker’s shirt with matching star over the left pocket, making her an eye-catching figure. She and Tina are the only females depicted; however, Frida looks androgynous compared to Tina. Frida’s black hair, cropped close to her scalp, could be mistaken for a man’s hairstyle. Likewise, her jeans and loose-fitting worker’s shirt, that camouflages her breasts, make it difficult to discern whether this person is male or female. In contrast, Diego painted Tina, who stands on the far right holding a bullet-filled bandoleer, wearing a form-fitting red shirt, knee-length black skirt and Mary Jane type shoes. Although her hair is pulled back, the profile perspective reveals a bun touching the nape of her neck. Perhaps Tina’s more “feminine” presentation connects to her love for Julio Antonio whom she gazes intently toward. Tina was known in Mexico as a sensual woman who was a free spirit, some referring to her more negatively as a femme fatale, especially after her sensationalized trial. Her sexualized image emerged, in large part, after the American photographer Edward Weston exhibited nude photos he had taken of her in 1924. By 1928, with Weston back in the United States, Tina was also known as a passionate defender of social and economic justice. In Rivera’s mural, both the passionate lover and activist are portrayed. Due to Frida’s young age of twenty-two, her image hadn’t had time to solidify in the realm of public perception. It’s possible that Diego portrayed Frida as an androgynous figure because this is how he viewed his new lover who often greeted him in overalls. Tina Modotti photograph of May Day Protest, 1929 The comrade Frida was often seen wearing jeans, a khaki skirt, and a workman’s button down shirt, adorned with an enameled hammer-and-sickle pin, a treasured gift from Tina. Frida’s new look is captured in this photograph Tina took at a May Day protest in 1929, just two months after the Mexican government had outlawed the Communist Party. Tina was working on assignment for El Machete, the worker’s newspaper that Rivera, David Alfaro Siquieros, and Xavier Guerrero (seen on the far left) founded in March, 1924. Holding her Graflex camera up to her eye, Tina was finally at ease with the stressful job of seizing significant moments in time as they quickly unfolded before her viewfinder. As Frida and Diego stood at the beginning of the delegation representing the Union of Technical Workers, Painters, and Sculptors, Tina brought them into focus and snapped the picture. Surrounded by men in suits and worker’s attire, Frida, the lone woman, wears a skirt with a button down shirt that is embellished with a kerchief tied around her neck. In her hand, she holds a worker’s cap. Frida’s outfit, her serious visage, and penetrating gaze tip the viewer off to the violence that awaited the protesters. Diego’s smile, on the other hand, conceals the mounting tensions that unfolded as protesters surrounded the American embassy. The police quickly infiltrated the crowd in an attempt to disperse it. Instead, mayhem ensued. As people were running in different directions, riot squads were beating them. Soon, gunshots were fired into the crowd. At this point, the Communist Youth League pleaded with soldiers to disarm. They agreed and began arresting people instead. The bruised, bloodied, and imprisoned bodies did not suffice as a stern enough warning. The police headed to the Party’s headquarters and demolished it by smashing their printing presses. When they left, they locked the building. By June, the government officially closed El Machete. The ease Tina felt in her role as photojournalist that day was undercut by an added strain. This particular May Day parade was fraught with tension and sorrow because of the crackdown on the Communist Party and the assassination of Julio Antonio Mella four months earlier by political opponents. Although Tina had to witness her beloved’s lethal gunshot wounds while walking together on a dark street in downtown Mexico City, authorities accused her of killing her lover in a crime of passion. Those close to the couple knew this was a ridiculous claim and that the investigation put Tina Modotti’s sexuality on trial in an attempt to ruin her reputation and embarrass the rank and file with the ultimate goal of destabilizing the Party. Frida entered Tina's world of art and politics at an intense and significant period in Mexico's history. Tina Modotti and Frida Kahlo, c. 1929 By June of 1928, when Frida's five-year relationship with Alejandro was finally ending despite her continued adoration, it was time to focus on new passions. The twenty-one-year-old discovered them through German de Campo, a former Cachucha school mate who was now a law student. He introduced her to a group of politically engaged communists and artists. They congregated on the fifth floor of Tina Modotti’s red brick Zamora apartment building on Abraham Gonzalez Street, just fifteen minutes from the center of Mexico City. Tina, the dark-haired, aquiline-eyed Italian American photographer and political activist, who had lived in Mexico since 1923, had ensconced herself within the political and artistic circles of her new home. Frida was drawn to this intriguing 33-year-old and her vibrant and volatile circle of friends because Frida, who had been weaning herself from Catholicism, found a new passion in communism. While the Mexican government had supported the Communist Party after the Revolution ended in 1920, by 1928, tensions between the Calles-backed Emilio Portes Gils’ regime and the Communist Party were increasing. Many committed activists in Mexico were willing to risk their lives in order to effect social change. Julio Antonio Mella was one of them. The exiled Cuban anti-imperialist communist had ignited the Mexican Communist Party with both his youthful exuberance and his independent thinking. Tina, an official Communist Party member since 1927, was far from irritated by the striking Cuban with the thick black wavy hair that set off his protuberant brow, nose, and dimpled chin as well as his deep-set piercing eyes and succulent lips. In September of 1928, when the two met at El Machete, the Communist Party’s paper, sparks were flying. Sparks also flew when muralist Diego Rivera shot his pistol at a phonograph during one of Tina’s parties to emphasize a point. Such outrageous antics beguiled Frida. Although she and Diego had crossed paths before, it was through Tina that they met as comrades, with Frida joining the Communist Youth League in 1929. Thank you JJ for your thoughts on change. I agree with you that the evolution of a person's beliefs is a fascinating subject. I like your example of the Buddha who changed from a prince to a man of compassion. Of course, his enlightenment didn't happen all at once. He endured a lot of physical and emotional suffering. In this way, his journey is similar to Frida's. I don't know if Frida felt that she attained enlightenment after recovering from the bus/trolley accident, but I think she questioned the purpose of her suffering. Her letters reveal a young woman who felt she deserved to suffer, but I think as she gained physical strength and mobility, she began to cast off her martyrdom. Once she encountered other like-minded artists and intellectuals through some of her former school friends and her new friend, the photographer Tina Modotti, Frida turned her full attention toward art and politics.
In my last post, I mentioned that Frida was Catholic before she was communist. I wonder when she converted to communism? It was probably around 1928 or 1929 when this painting of Frida was created by Diego Rivera on his Ministry of Education wall. Frida is part of a larger image, but we see her dressed with the red shirt and star of communism handing out weapons to the peasants. This painting shows us a changed Frida, but I'd love to know more about her thought process during the shift from Catholicism to communism. I'm not aware of any letters or journal entries that discuss a moment of realization or a gradual process of moving away from Catholicism. If anyone knows of a letter or journal entry, let me know. In the same August 2nd letter I quoted in the last blog, Frida is writing to Alejandro, who is in Europe, about girls he's met. She instructs: "Don't flirt much with the girls in the health resorts..." Then Frida tells him about the exquisite girls in Mexico who look like Botticellis. "They have pretty legs and only here can they be addressed like this: Miss (M'ss), do you want to be my girlfriend? But you can't do that in France or Italy, and definitely not in Russia, where there are so many vulgar communists..." I wonder if Frida is being sarcastic when she writes about the "vulgar communists." I'm inclined to think she is, but I'm not sure what her political beliefs are at this point in 1927. Four months earlier, she told Alejandro that she was reading a daily article in the newspaper about "The Russian Revolution." Unfortunately, she doesn't say what she thinks about the Revolution in Russia. In the August 2nd letter, Frida also writes: "I think this time I have really suffered, I must deserve it, right?" This sounds like classic Catholic guilt. It doesn't prove that she's still one of the faithful since many ex-Catholics have discussed carrying the weight of guilt around after leaving the Church. Nevertheless, it makes me think that Frida still has a toe, or even a foot, dipped in Catholicism. In the opening paragraphs of the letter she recalls Esperanza's saint's day party and there is no indication that Frida disapproves of it. My sense is that Frida is still in between. She's not as staunchly Catholic as she was before the accident, but she's not a passionate follower of communism either. Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, 1940 Nickolas Muray Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin JJ, I agree with you that film can be another source that allows us to immerse ourselves in the past. I've looked at Masha Salazkina's book on Eisenstein and it offers some interesting perspectives upon post-revolutionary Mexico. When the Revolution ended in 1920, Mexicans had to pick up the pieces. How were they going to put them back together? How did Mexicans define themselves after Spanish rule for more than three centuries and the thirty-four year dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz? How did the Mexican government create national unity? These are questions with complicated answers, but the more we grasp the culture that helped form Frida's identity, the deeper our understanding of her as a person and artist. Usually, when we think of Frida in post-revolutionary Mexico, we think of her connection to Diego Rivera and communist politics; however, before Frida became a passionate advocate of communist ideals, she was Catholic. Reading her letters in the twenties, references to Catholicism or Catholic notions abound. For example, on August 2, 1927, she writes Alejandro: "Yesterday was Esperanza Ordonez's saint's day and they threw a party at my house because they don't have a piano. ...I was taken in the living room in my little car and I was watching everybody dance and sing. ...I was like a 'little tear' [sad], as always. Even though they take me into the sunlight (for four hours) every morning, I don't feel I have gotten any better, since the pains are always the same and I am very thin. But in spite of this, I want to have faith... But I will still have to wait for a time to see if the absolute rest of these three months (I could almost call it martyrdom) works or not" (The Letters of Frida Kahlo, Martha Zamora, 35). I'm struck by several things in this letter. The little car she is pushed in. It's a cute image, but the cuteness vanishes when Frida sits in her car watching everybody else dance and sing. This "real street wanderer" has been confined to a plaster corset and a toy car that gets pushed into the sunlight for four hours a day. No wonder she was like a "little tear." But, isn't it interesting that she refers to her three months of confinement as "martyrdom?" It makes me think of all the paintings she made with references to Christ, such as, Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, 1940. Even though in 1940, she was no longer aligned with Catholicism, she still refers to it symbolically with the crown of thorns around her neck. On the other hand, this self-portrait also refers to Aztec religious beliefs by including the hummingbird and butterflies, both associated with the deity Huitzilipotchtli. Thus, we find in Frida's art the same type of complex overlay of images and ideas that gave birth to a new concept of Mexicanness or Mexicanidad in post-revolutionary Mexico. Of course, there is no one truth; however, a problem that arises in art history, as well as other scholarly fields, is that one narrative dominates the literature. Usually, this narrative can be traced back to one or two particular scholars who provided groundbreaking research. Other scholars coming into the field later accept the narrative and continue to promote it. We're all dependent upon what others have written, but when researching a book, it is paramount that we step back and try to see things anew with fresh eyes. It's not as easy as it sounds.
JJ in your comment you mention that you'd like to know how Frida's art was viewed in her time period. I always tell my students that we have to time travel and try, as best as we can, to put ourselves in the mindset and visual environment of the period and culture we're studying. Part of this process involves reading what the critics had to say about a particular work of art. In Frida's case, this is a bit more difficult in the 1920s and 1930s because she didn't have a solo exhibition until 1938. If a photograph of her portrait of Miguel Lira was reproduced in Panorama, then there might be some commentary that accompanied it. Without art criticism to provide a bit of insight into how Frida's work of the 1920s and 1930s was perceived, we can look to letters to see if any of her contemporaries commented on her work and we can look to histories of Mexican art in the 1920s and 1930s to see if her subjects and styles coincide with other artists' works. My posts right now are focused on Frida's letters of the 1920s in order to gain a better understanding of her development as a person and artist while recovering from the bus/trolley accident, but I intend to expand upon Frida's inner world by looking more closely at the paintings she created in the late 20s while still in Mexico. Then, we'll travel with Frida to the United States to see how this experience affected her on a personal and creative level. |
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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