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| Frida Kahlo, 1944 |
Take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are a bourbon biscuit.
Being in Brooklyn close to the Statue de la Liberté (as the French who gifted it to the US would say), I found it poignant to see her drawing of the statue, where, in place of the torch are an atomic bomb and money bag, labeled as such in Spanish by Frida’s hand. Nearby, a list of names like Hitler and the Pope, people who she alluded to with the rising fascist use of power by the US following WWII. Education and views on politics united her and Diego and even introduced them.
The most important part of the body is the brain.
Of my face, I like the eyebrows and eyes.
The exhibit also highlighted how she constructed her identity along the gender blur, something quite significant in her time, via the ever-present cigarette (as a liberated woman), her facial hair and face that she said are those of a man, and clothes at times. Her strength, which I heard female spectators around me commenting on, was everywhere demonstrated: in her writing, her education, her painting, her passion, her colors, and her disability. One section of the exhibit was called “Disability and Creativity” and you could see how her boots were altered to accommodate her slightly shorter leg: fashionable, practical, colorful and survivalist. The last room was called “Art and Dress,” featuring her amazing ensembles that she bought from indigenous Mexican vendors. (She never bartered, one vendor said.) For an amazing virtual peek at this exhibit visit this special site on Frida Khalo's work.
Pain, pleasure and death are no more than a process for existence.
The revolutionary struggle in this process is a doorway open to intelligence.
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| Frida with Granzino, 1939 Photo by Nickolas Muray |
Born Magdalena Frida Carmen Kahlo y Calderón in the "Casa Azul" just south of Mexico City, Frida (1907-1954) chose to use the name given to her by her German immigrant father, though she identifies through clothing and in other ways with her mother’s indigenous people (her mother was half-Spanish and half-indigenous Mexican). There were some outstanding qualities to these clothes, one of which was the fact that they hid Frida’s leg that had deteriorated from the polio she contracted as a child, as well as the medical corsets she would wear to help support her deteriorating spine. The femininity seems to exude from her conscious and considered self-fashioning, and she was highly aware when she came to Gringolandia, as she nicknamed the US, that the gringos were dropping their jaws at her Tehuana dress and wanting to paint her.
The first city she came to in the US was San Francisco and she found its Chinatown particularly vibrant. She also loved New York city, especially Harlem. Detroit not so much, but the exhibit mentions that following her time in Detroit, where her husband was painting the industrial panels (there is a beautiful video of her sketching to herself and then by him as he paints the mural), her artistic expression grew remarkably. Later in the exhibit, we see a beautiful drawing of a woman whose fetus is there outside her body…. It represents her miscarriage as tears visibly go all down one of her legs at the same time that a third arm comes out of the tear-stricken Frida--and it is holding a painter’s palette. A mention is made that she suffered a complicated miscarriage in Detroit, and this reinforces the notion of her delving deeper into self-expression through art to help with her suffering---especially when you take a good look at the drawing below. Because her body had been pierced in the bus accident when she was age 19 (and one of the very few girls in the school; she was studying to be a doctor) from one side to the other, which left much shattered. Forever crippled in this way, she suffered through miscarriages—and expressed her grief in a rare way (rather than letting silence engulf it all).
I paint flowers so they will not die.
She was held in traction in bed often, her head in straps, the doctors thinking taking the weight of the head off the spine may help with her pain. She painted from her bed where she had to pass much of her time. She endured more than thirty surgeries and many treatments that did not work. There is no painting of the accident that nearly killed her and left her disabled, but there is a drawing, a photo of which was at the exhibit.
In a stroke of beautiful symbolism, a man was traveling alongside Frida on the nearly fatal bus ride carrying gold leaf foil to bring to a cathedral, if I recall, and when the accident occurred gold flakes went all over Frida.
No matter that he was a womanizer and known as such; I cannot believe that Diego her husband had an affair with her sister, Cristina. They divorced over that but remarried a year later. She seemed so very in love and affectionate with him. She said in her last years that she had the ignorance to think he needed her, as he had told her so and she believed him, but she says that she is suffering so.
Of the shawls, amazing green necklaces and colorful skirts and shirts, I am particularly struck by the medical corsets for her body. They were casts, and apparently for one body cast she was hung by her head alone for a couple hours and then stood on tiptoes for over an hour to make it. I try to imagine this but cannot. On one she has painted the Communist hammer and sickle across the chest and a beautiful fetus in the stomach area. In the next corset however, there is the symbolic hammer and sickle but there is a four to five-inch hole cut in the belly area, perhaps practical in nature, and perhaps also signifying the loss of her child(ren).
This is the first time the exhibit has been shown in the US (it was unearthed in 2004), and it is a sold-out exhibit.
Living one’s life is so important, as I have learned during my trip to the city (and the words a chemo patient said to me in the waiting room at MSK). And also I see the deep, inner value in letting oneself be shaped by suffering—and letting the flowers come up out of the mud… this is all something Frida did so marvelously that, years after her death, some of her magic is still trickling down powerfully to those who lack the color and strength and passion she had.
My painting carries with it the message of pain.
In a stroke of beautiful symbolism, a man was traveling alongside Frida on the nearly fatal bus ride carrying gold leaf foil to bring to a cathedral, if I recall, and when the accident occurred gold flakes went all over Frida.
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| Frida's prosthetic leg, following her amputation later in her life (mid-1950s) |
I love you more than my own skin.
No matter that he was a womanizer and known as such; I cannot believe that Diego her husband had an affair with her sister, Cristina. They divorced over that but remarried a year later. She seemed so very in love and affectionate with him. She said in her last years that she had the ignorance to think he needed her, as he had told her so and she believed him, but she says that she is suffering so.
Nothing is absolute.
Everything changes,
everything moves,
Everything changes,
everything moves,
everything revolves,
everything flies and goes away.
everything flies and goes away.
Of the shawls, amazing green necklaces and colorful skirts and shirts, I am particularly struck by the medical corsets for her body. They were casts, and apparently for one body cast she was hung by her head alone for a couple hours and then stood on tiptoes for over an hour to make it. I try to imagine this but cannot. On one she has painted the Communist hammer and sickle across the chest and a beautiful fetus in the stomach area. In the next corset however, there is the symbolic hammer and sickle but there is a four to five-inch hole cut in the belly area, perhaps practical in nature, and perhaps also signifying the loss of her child(ren).
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| Frida painting her medical corset |
These were two of the corsets she wore, and thus the utter feel, intimacy, and significance of this exhibit are at a maximum. In fact, her husband Diego would order that her belongings be locked up in her Blue House for decades beyond her death. According to this article, there were 22.105 documentos, 5.387 fotografías, 168 trajes, 11 corsés, 212 dibujos de Diego, 102 de Frida, 3.874 revistas y publicaciones, y 2.170 libros in the room.
This is the first time the exhibit has been shown in the US (it was unearthed in 2004), and it is a sold-out exhibit.
They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t.
I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.
Staring at photographs and videos of her face, I am willingly taken by her, marveling at how beautiful and serious and thoughtful she was. Seeing the videos of the Tehuana girls wearing the resplandor headdresses, I was taken by the special aspect of making the young women’s faces like flowers. I enjoyed seeing the couple that Diego and she were as they worked quietly side by side at the industrial panel and their affection in other media clips.
Here is a modern clip on Tehuana women and their dress--made for a tourism outlet (not in the exhibit) and thus not nearly as interesting as the black-and-white video from the exhibit, but still an interesting glimpse of the resplandor:
As for her clothing, I couldn’t help but visualize her alive and beautiful in them, having her being in her world in such uniqueness through dress, while also being extremely practical for her disabled and uncomfortable physical condition. This exhibit revealed the Frida we know of as a Frida to know even further. She seemed to come alive through her personal objects, family photos, and journal writing. She was bored in bed, disabled, and learned to paint, her parents finding her a special easel so she could paint from bed following her accident. She would say Diego got along okay as a boy painting but that she was the big artist. Her life is inexhaustible.
Here is a modern clip on Tehuana women and their dress--made for a tourism outlet (not in the exhibit) and thus not nearly as interesting as the black-and-white video from the exhibit, but still an interesting glimpse of the resplandor:
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| "Self-Portrait as a Tehuana" (1943) |
You deserve the best, the very best,
because you are one of the few people in this lousy world
who are honest to themselves, and that is the only thing that really counts.
The intimacy of the photos taken by her lover, someone who had profound influence on Frida, Nickolas Muray, are really remarkable and are worth reading about in the article, "The Intimate and Iconic Photos Nickolas Muray took of Frida Kahlo."
Living one’s life is so important, as I have learned during my trip to the city (and the words a chemo patient said to me in the waiting room at MSK). And also I see the deep, inner value in letting oneself be shaped by suffering—and letting the flowers come up out of the mud… this is all something Frida did so marvelously that, years after her death, some of her magic is still trickling down powerfully to those who lack the color and strength and passion she had.
I was a child who went about in a world of colors…
My friends, my companions, became women slowly; I became old in instants.
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| "Appearances Can Be Deceiving" Drawing by Frida Kahlo |
This drawing, uncovered in the locked room in 2004, reveals how the Tehuana dress allows her to choose whether to reveal her disabilities or not. From the outside one cannot see her leg or medical corsets. "Las Apariencias Engañan."
Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light. Tragedy is the most ridiculous thing.
I think that little by little I’ll be able to solve my problems and survive.
I hope the exit is joyful. And I hope never to return.
I hope the exit is joyful. And I hope never to return.
I am deeply inspired by Frida's words (some quoted in color throughout the post) and her massive strength, talent, and perseverance. It may very well be life-changing to come in proximity to her belongings and drawings as the aura speaks volumes about strength and resolve. I am in awe of nearly every aspect of her passion & life as the true woman and true artist she was. What she did while suffering is unforgettable. Here, I am not simply speaking of how prolific she was.
Many thanks to Brooklyn Museum for this amazing exhibit.
