by Frida Kahlo
92. Fruits of Life, 1953. Oil on hard fibre, 47 x 62 cm.
Raquel M. de Espinosa Ulloa Collection, Mexico City.
Letter to Nickolas Muray (written in English)
February 27, 1939
My beloved Nick,
This morning I received your letter after so many days of waiting. I felt such happiness that I started crying even before I read it. My child, I really should not complain about anything that happens to me in life, so long as you love me and I love you. [This love] is so real and beautiful that it makes me forget all my pain and problems; it makes me forget even distance. Through your words I feel so close to you that I can feel your laughter, so clean and honest, that only you have. I’m counting the days until my return. One more month! Then we’ll be together again...
Darling, I must tell you that you’ve misbehaved. Why did you send that check for 400 dollars? Your friend “Smith” is imaginary. It was a very nice gesture, but tell him that I will keep his check untouched until I come back to New York; we’ll discuss this matter then. My Nick, you’re the sweetest person I’ve ever met. But listen, my love, I really don’t need the money now. I still have a little bit from Mexico; plus I’m a very rich bitch, did you know that? I have enough to stay one more month. I already have my return ticket. Everything is under control; it’s true, my love, it’s not fair that you spend extra money.... In any event, you don’t know how thankful I am for your willingness to help me. I don’t have the words to describe how happy I am, knowing that you tried to make me happy and that you are so good and adorable….My lover, my heaven, my Nick, my life, my child, I adore you.
I lost weight because of my illness. When I come back, you’ll blow once, and ... up I’ll fly to the fifth floor of the La Salle Hotel! Listen, my child, do you touch every day that thing for fires that hangs on the stair landing? Don’t forget to do it every day. Also, don’t forget to sleep on your little cushion, because I really like it. Don’t kiss anyone while you read the signs and names on the street.
Don’t take anyone else to our Central Park. It belongs to Nick and Xóchitl exclusively.... Don’t kiss anyone on the couch in your office. Blanche Heys is the only one who may massage your neck. You can only kiss Mam as much as you want. Don’t make love to anyone, if you can help it. Do it only if you find a real F. W. [fucking wonder], but don’t fall in love. Play with the electric train once in a while if you aren’t too tired after work. How is Joe Jinks? How is the man who gives you a massage twice a week? I hate him a little because he took you away from me for many hours. Have you been practicing fencing a lot; How is Georgio?
Why do you say you were only half successful on your trip to Hollywood; Tell me about that. Darling, don’t work so hard if you can help it, since it makes your neck and back tired. Tell Mam to take care of you and make you rest when you’re tired. Tell her that I’m much more in love with you, that you ate my darling and lover, and that when I’m not around she has to love you more than ever to make you happy.
Is your neck bothering you a lot; I am sending you millions of kisses for your beautiful neck, so it will feel better, and all my tenderness and all my caresses for your body, from head to toe. I kiss each inch from far away.
Play the Maxine Sullivan record on the gramophone very often. I’ll be there with you listening to her voice. I can imagine you lying on the blue couch with your white cape on. I see you shooting at the sculpture that stands by the fireplace; I can see how the spring jumps into the air and I hear your laughter – a child’s laughter, when you get it right. Oh, my dear Nick, I adore you so much. I need you so much that my heart hurts.
93. Self-Portrait with Braid, 1941.
Oil on masonite, 51 x 38.5 cm. Jacques and
Natasha Gelman Collection, Mexico City.
Muray had better luck. He had met Frida in Mexico and helped her with the catalogue for her show. The socially prominent photographer was handsome and self-confident. Their affair began in Mexico City, but without gun-toting Diego lumbering about, they caught fire in New York and she fell hard for him. In a letter to her “…adorable Nick” from Mexico on February 27, 1939, she wrote concerning $400 he had sent her from a “Mr. Smith…”:
I have enough to stay one more month. I already have my return ticket. Everything is under control; it’s true, my love, it’s not fair that you spend extra money.... In any event, you don’t know how thankful I am for your willingness to help me. I don’t have the words to describe how happy I am, knowing that you tried to make me happy and that you are so good and adorable…. My lover, my heaven, my Nick, my life, my child, I adore you. [30]
Art lovers purchased about half the paintings that were offered for sale – which is a good first outing – and Frida managed to snag a few commissions. Clare Booth Luce ordered a portrait of her friend Dorothy Hale who had recently committed suicide by jumping off a skyscraper. Unfortunately, Frida misunderstood the request and painted a two-part re-enactment of the death, The Suicide of Dorothy Hale shows Hale in mid-flight through swirling clouds down the side of the building and also sprawled on the blood-soaked ground. Blood also spatters the base of the frame and the retablo banner across the bottom of the work that describes the scene is written in red. All Luce wanted was a memorial portrait to present to her friend’s mother. After her first viewing, Luce never laid eyes on the painting again and it was given to her friend Frank Crowninshield for safe keeping.[31]
The painting, Fulang Chang and I, was so popular that when Conger Goodyear found the work had been given to Frida’s friend Dorothy Shapiro (now Sklar), he commissioned another painting of Frida and her monkey. Frida worked in her room at the Barbizon-Plaza Hotel for a week to complete Self-Portrait with Monkey.
By the time the show closed, Frida was exhausted. Her health had failed near the end of their stay and she spent considerable time visiting doctors to deal with her back, spine, foot, and leg problems. But she returned to Mexico looking forward to her next sortie, this time into the bastion of the Europeans, a show of her work by André Breton in Paris, France.
In 1939, Paris life had a nervous edge to it. Hitler’s Germany had spent almost four years testing new military hardware in Spain and was rattling its blooded sabre at Poland. The French army was confident that its Maginot Line of fixed fortifications would defeat any attacks. French politicians were confident that Hitler was a blow-hard and would never challenge the Republic. The French people waved the tricolore, sang the Marseillaise and updated their passports.
The avant-garde was no longer avante as the absurdities of the world stage replaced the fantasies of aging artists, writers, and poets of the 1920s. But Paris still retained much of its allure and cultural cachet as it struggled to maintain sang-froid in the face of news bulletins. André Breton’s “Mexique” exhibition of Mexican art arrived at the Colle Gallery in time to provide a distraction.
As a show organiser, Breton turned out to be a disaster. Frida found her paintings still held unclaimed in customs and no gallery had been selected for the show. She was furious. Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase stepped in, rescued her paintings and eventually helped the hapless Breton book the gallery of Pierre Colle.
Frida lodged with the Bretons for a while, but found it impossible to stay as problems with the show deepened. She fumed in her letters about the “…coo-coo sons of bitches of the surrealists”. Even after the show found walls, its composition further inflamed her. In a letter to Nickolas Muray, she wrote:
Now Breton wants to exhibit together with my paintings, 14 portraits of the XIX Century (Mexican), about 32 photographs of Alvarez Bravo and lots of popular objects which he bought on the markets of Mexico – All this junk, can you beat that? …the 14 oils of the XIX Century must be restored and the damned restoration takes a whole month. An old bastard and son of a bitch, saw my paintings and found that only two were possible to be shown, because the rest are too “shocking” for the public!! I could kill that guy and eat it afterwards…[32]
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br /> 94. The Chick, 1945. Oil on masonite,
27 x 22 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.
95. Sun and Life, 1947. Oil on hard fibre,
40 x 50 cm. Galería Arvil, Mexico City.
Letter to Ella and Bertram Wolfe
Paris, March 17, 1939
Beautiful Ella and Boitito, my true pals,
After two months, I’m writing to you. I know you are going to think the same as always: “Chicua is a jerk!” But believe me, this time it was not my jerkiness but my damned bad luck. Here you have my explanations – powerful explanations:
First, since I came back, things have not been going well for me. My exhibit was not ready – my paintings were quietly waiting for me at the customs office because Breton had not even picked them up. You don’t have even the slightest idea of what kind of old cockroach Breton is, along with almost all those in the surrealists’ group. In a few words, they’re a bunch of perfect sons of... their mothers. I’ll tell you the whole story about the exhibition when we see each other’s faces again, since it is long and sad. But in summary, it took a month and a half before we could be completely sure about the date/place, etc., etc. of the damn exhibition. All this happened to the accompaniment of arguments, discussions, gossip, anger, and nuisances of the worst kind. Finally, Marcel Duchamp (the only one among the painters and artists here who has his feet on the ground and his brains in their place) was able to make the arrangements for the exhibition with Breton. It opened on the 10th of this month at the Pierre Colle Gallery, which they tell me is one of the best here.
They say there were a great number of compatriots the day of the “opening”. [There were] lots of congratulations for the Chicua, among them, a big hug from Joan Miró and great praises from Kandinsky on behalf of my painting; congratulations from Picasso, Tanguy, Paalen, and from other “big shits” of surrealism. Overall, I’d say that it was a success, and considering the quality of the stuff (meaning the bunch of congratulators), I think this whole thing turned out quite well.
Second, of the two months that I’ve been in Paris, I’ve been in bed for a month and a half (ten days in a hospital and the rest at the home of Duchamp’s wife). One day I woke up with my abdomen like a drum and could not burp, go pee, or anything. It was like having my belly full of anarchists, each one of them planting a bomb in a corner of my poor gut. I felt really beat up and thought that la pelona [Death] would take me away. Between the pain and the sadness of being alone in pinchísimo [miserable] Paris, which to me is like a kick in the belly, I assure you that I would’ve much preferred to kick the bucket. But I started feeling a little better when I was at the American Hospital where I could “bark” in English and explain my situation. At least I could say, “Pardon me, I burped!!” (Of course, this was not the case, since burping is exactly what I could not do, nor the aforementioned). It was not until four days later that I had the pleasure of producing the first burp and from that happy day on, I’ve felt better. The reason for the anarchist revolt in my gut was that it was full of colon bacillus.
These rude things tried to go beyond the decent limits of their activity. They decided to go out on a binge, running through my bladder and my kidneys, and I started to burn. Frankly, they screwed me up, because they had such devilish parties in my bladder and kidneys that they almost sent me to the funeral home. I was counting the days for the fever to go away so I could take a boat to the United States, since here nobody understood my situation and they did not give a damn. I got used to it gradually, and friends of the Bretons came to see me, so I could make cool pals. Now you can understand why I frankly did not feel like writing letters, since my belly and head were a real mess.
Martin visited me several times at the hospital and here at Mary Reynolds’s house; she is Duchamp’s wife. I have been staying here since I left the hospital. My address is F. K., c/o Mary Reynolds, 14 rue Halle, Paris. I was very glad to see Martin because I felt that I was not so alone anymore. Plus, here I have a school buddy named Renato Leduc, who is a very neat person. Ask Martín and he will tell you what kind of pal Renato is.
Lately I have seen comrade Leo. I like him very much and I think he is a great element (I do not know his full name but you know who he is). Today, I just saw Andrade and Gorkin. I have already sent Diego a telegram regarding the matter of the comrades from the Poum. I think that it will be taken care of in Mexico. I am waiting for definite news from Diego to arrange, once and for all, the departure of those 400 people. If you knew what condition these poor people are in – the ones that could escape from the concentration camps – your heart would break. Manolo Martínez is here, Rebull’s friend. He told me that Rebull was the only one who had to stay on the other side, since he could not leave his dying wife behind. Perhaps now as I am writing you the poor guy may even have been executed. These French jerks have been real pigs with the refugees, they are asses of the worst kind I have known. I am nauseated by all these rotten people from Europe – all these damned democracies are worth nothing. We will talk about all this later. Meanwhile, I want to let you know that I miss you a lot; that I love you more and more; that I have behaved and have not had any adventures, “slips” or lovers – nothing of that sort – that I miss Mexico like never before; that I love Diego more than my own life; that sometimes I also miss Nick a lot; that I am turning into a serious person; and finally, that I want to send many, many kisses to both of you for the time being.
Share some of them equally among Jay, Mack, Shiba, and all my buddies. And if you have a little bit of time, visit Nick and give him a little kiss also and another to Mary Sklar.
Your Chicua that never forgets you, Frida
Boitito, how is the book going, my friend? Are you working a lot: More gossip: Diego had problems with the IV [International] and seriously kicked “piochitas” Trotsky out of his life. I will tell you about the problem later. Diego is absolutely right.
96. The Suicide of Dorothy Hale, 1938-1939.
Oil on masonite with decorated wooden frame,
60.4 x 48.6 cm. Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix (Arizona).
To her benefit, Frida received her closest exposure to the Surrealists since being admitted to their number. Max Ernst, Duchamp, Man Ray and Breton all welcomed her and she did her best to be no less outrageous than they, but she had little sympathy or time for the hangers-on and poseurs.
They sit for hours in the “cafes” warming their precious behinds, and talk without stopping about “culture” “art” “revolution” and so on and so forth, thinking themselves the gods of the world, dreaming the most fantastic nonsenses and poisoning the air with theories and theories that never come true.[33]
Her paintings displayed at “Mexique” received good reviews and her presence was a show in itself. Powerhouses such as Kandinsky and Picasso sang her praises. She also managed a stroke of recognition that had been withheld from her famous husband. The Louvre purchased Framed Self-Portrait “The Frame” that today is part of the George Pompidou Centre collection. Unfortunately, Framed Self-Portrait “The Frame” was her only sale.
By March, 1939, Frida was sated with Parisian art life and packed up for a trip to New York to spend some time with Nick Muray. As with Noguchi, separation had cooled Muray’s love and Frida discovered he was engaged to be married to another woman. The destruction of this romance hurt Frida deeply and pointed out to her how trapped she was in her relationship with Rivera.
Her life had opened up with many possibilities following her trips abroad and exposure to a new independence, but her identity remained tied to emotionally and professionally. A Noguchi or a Muray might have opened even more doors to her independent life, but she had thrown in her lot with Rivera at such an early age, they were seen as two sides of the same coin, he as “heads” and she as “tails”.
She returned to Mexico in May, 1939 and as her relationship with Rivera deteriorated, she poured her emotions and frustration into two paintings. Two Nudes in the Wood transports the pair of women
from a floating sponge in What the Water Gave Me to a patch of desert land at the edge of a frightening jungle alive with entwined shapes and inhabited by a voyeur Fulang Chang. Frida once told a friend that whenever she portrayed her hands over her genitalia, it meant she was masturbating. This pair shares a loving moment, the fair Frida in the lap of the dark Indian girl and yet Frida pleasures herself, still separate from sharing the act with her companion.
The men in her life had done Frida a great disservice from which she would never completely recover. She needed a final act that was both symbolic and real.
Sexual relations had ended. Civility had ended. The gayety and adventures had ended. All that remained were obligations Diego and Frida accepted as parts of an unspoken agreement, the trickle of a relationship that no legality could sever. It is possible that Diego had heard of Frida’s affair with Trotsky. Her reasons were obvious and humiliating. He wrote in his autobiography that:
The situation between us grew worse and worse… I telephoned her to plead for her consent to a divorce… It worked and Frida declared that she too wanted an immediate divorce… I simply wanted to be free to carry on with any woman who caught my fancy…What she could not understand was my choosing women who were unworthy of me, or inferior to her…
They were formally divorced on November 6, 1939.
The second painting would become her signature masterpiece, the six-foot square The Two Fridas. A mirror had long played a central role in her paintings, at first from necessity due to her bed-ridden state. Later, the mirror became a reflection of reality that could be manipulated and translated into a fantasy vision of her very personal verité.