Gerry Souter

by Frida Kahlo

  Her fortunes were once again on the rise. She joined Diego in the International Golden Gate Exhibition where he executed a mural on Treasure Island. They spent Christmas in Mexico with Frida’s family and then he returned to complete the mural. While he was gone, Frida revelled in a period of relatively good health, shopping in Coyoacon and Mexico City, sunning herself in the garden, or preparing Diego’s room for when he returned. La Casa Azul had become a repository for their combined collections of Mexican arts and crafts and a zoo for Frida’s herd of animals, a mix of species including assorted cats, small deer and parrots who guzzled beer and complained raucously about their hangovers. Besides her big child – Diego – this coterie of critters was indulged as her surrogate children. When her pet osprey, Gertrude Caca Blanca (white shit) dropped a load of excrement on a guest’s hat, the large bird was laughingly scolded with a waggled finger like a delinquent. Everywhere, Frida’s own deep earthy laugh could be heard above the chatter of a never-ending stream of visitors who gathered around the big table, sat in cane chairs at her bedside, or reclined on petates, spread on the yellow-painted floor, discussing politics, art, gossip, and drinking from clay mugs.

  And still, while caring for Diego’s every need and seeing to domestic chores, every day she set aside time to paint through the warm weeks of spring.

  Bare shouldered, she peers from her painting, Self-Portrait with Braid, as if rising from a salad of greens wearing only a heavy jade necklace and a preposterous braid of woven hair on her head. As suggested by some, this crown of hair might represent the cuttings from her “cropped hair” portrait of the year before, a symbol of support for her re-marriage vows to Diego.

  She had been encouraged to continue her work by reaction to her paintings when The Two Fridas hung at the Museum of Modern Art’s show, Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art, her participation in the Surrealist show in Mexico City and the Golden Gate International Exhibition in San Francisco. She was determined to step from beneath Diego’s shadow and avoid such crass comments as Frank Crowninshield offered up in Vogue Magazine’s coverage of the MoMA show:

  …the most recent of Rivera’s ex-wives (was) a painter apparently obsessed by an interest in blood...[36]

  Just as her life had once again settled into a comfortable pattern, the summer heat brought with it a further deterioration in her health, a weakness and loss of weight. In July, her father, Guillermo, died. That blow added to her depression over the war and its horrendous effect on Russia. The June invasion had swept Stalin’s rag-tag army before Hitler’s mechanised juggernaut. As German troops marched northward, Frida’s troop of doctors marched back into her life with brand new plaster corsets for her back, X-rays, hormone injections, cures for the fungus that infected her right hand, pills and injections for angina and la grippe. She smoked too much and still drank a few too many copitas with meals.

  105. The Mask, 1945. Oil on canvas,

  40 x 30.5 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City.

  106. Self-Portrait with Monkey, 1945. 54.5 x 39.5 cm.

  Casa Museo Robert Brady, Cuernavaca.

  107. Portrait of My Father, 1951. Oil on masonite,

  60.5 x 46.5 cm. Museo Frida Kahlo, Mexico City.

  108. Self-Portrait “Time Flies”, 1929.

  Oil on masonite, 86 x 68 cm. Private collection, USA.

  She carefully hoarded her time for painting and maintained the appearance of an income with her self-portraits, still-lifes, portraits of friends and relatives. But her retinue of servants and nurses, shopping sprees, the cost of drugs and horrific doctor bills kept her dependent on Diego. On July 18, she wrote Dr. Eloesser from Coyoacon:

  My shank is getting better. But my general state is pretty fuc—bulous. I think it’s due to the fact that I don’t eat enough and that I smoke too much. What is rare is that I am not drinking any small or big aperitifs anymore. I feel pain in my belly and a constant need to burp. (Pardon me, burped!!) My digestion is in a shambles. My mood is really bad; I am becoming more corajuda every day… in other words, I am very crabby. If there is a remedy in medicine to control this mood, please give me a prescription so I can take it immediately. We’ll see what results I get.[37]

  Besides their painting, Diego and Frida poured considerable time into other pursuits. Diego had begun building a repository for his huge collection of Pre-Hispanic Mexican art, a temple-like museum he called the Anahuacalli, erected on volcanic lava beds outside Coyoacon. Frida had made the initial land purchase, but over the years, Diego had bought up surrounding parcels. She became ensnared in the project, keeping track of the considerable sums he poured into it, his papers, and even filed correspondence with his lady-friends.[38]

  While she toiled as his secretary, archivist, chief cook and bottle washer, when she wasn’t painting her own work, she began teaching in 1943 at the experimental School of Painting and Sculpture on Esmeralda Street in the Guerrero District. Like the National Preparatory School she had attended, this high school secundaria offered free courses in painting and drawing as well as French, art history, Mexican Art and culture. Like her own self- designed Bohemian education, she took her students beyond the walls of the school and into the streets to observe and experience life for their work. Her health forced the painting and drawing classes – such as they were – to be held in La Casa Azul. Often, instead of painting, the instructor and students engaged in long conversations, opening their minds to new ideas – some of which got her into trouble with the politically conservative school administration. She expanded their experience beyond easel painting by procuring commissions for them to paint murals on the walls of a pulqueria (street corner saloon), some houses and a laundry building. She loved this work and was, in turn, loved by her students, who came to be called, Los Fridos.

  To keep generating revenue, Frida accepted portrait commissions from local politicians, friends, and her patrons. After the unfortunate misunderstanding over The Suicide of Dorothy Hale for Clare Booth Luce, Frida was careful not to offend her clients with overstating what she saw, or transferring her current personal demons into symbolism that obscured the client’s expected result. Even diluting her visual intensity, Frida managed to achieve some remarkably intimate portraits.

  A friend and sincere patron of her work, engineer and career diplomat, Eduardo Morillo Safa, ordered Kahlo portraits of himself and his family. Of this series, the most sensitive and beautifully seen example is the 1944 Portrait of Doña Rosita Morillo, Eduardo’s mother.

  The family matriarch sits in front of a seething background of flowering vines, cactus and leaves. Her simple brown cloak covers the shoulders of her black dress that is buttoned to the neck. Doña Rosita’s ample bosom serves to support and isolate her head and frames the large-knuckled working hands that knit with rough brown yarn. Everything is painted in earth colours. Her luminous dark-skinned face capped by a crown of silver white hair looks out from the frame wearing an expression of weariness that must have touched Frida. Doña Rosita has fewer days in front of her than have passed. She is alone without her husband and is the guest of her children in her old age. There are more memories than expectations in those inward-focused eyes. The expression is not worn for the benefit of the artist, but has been etched there by life, smoothed and rounded by the erosion of time.

  These portraits executed in the 1940s demonstrate how far Frida Kahlo had come from her early groping with technique and struggle to see beneath the skin. These are not primitive copies of the retablo style churned out by local religious painters, but truly realised discoveries created by the facility of communication between her hands and fingers and the instinctual vision that drove them.

  Her own self-portraits benefited from this visual and mechanical maturity during this rich period in her creative arc. In letters to friends, she begged, “Don’t forget me!”[39] She preserved the memory of her presence in a symbolic tapestry of her fears and dreams as well as her stoic public image of the “survivor”. Alejandro Gómez Arias offered that the
se portraits served as,

  …a recourse, the ultimate means to survive, to endure, to conquer death…” [40]

  The self-portraits persisted as the body cannibalised itself toward eventual destruction and her mind endured the metamorphosis from youthful anticipation to the dawning realisation that the fantasy of a life without daily stabs of physical pain was a false hope. In effect, Frida created her own exhibition of self images that, over time, produced a visual documentary displaying the day by day corruption of her physical and mental world from behind a mask that never complained or cried. Every day, she added a brush stroke to her own impassive monument.

  Another outlet for Frida’s increasing introspection into her own mortality and the fragility of life appeared in her ongoing still life paintings. These works first appeared in the late 1930s with that erotic gem, The Flower of Life – also called The Flame Thrower – and simple dishes of fruit (Still Life with Pitahayas, 1938 and Tunas (Still Life with Prickly Pear Fruit), 1938, both painted on metal). They allowed her to explore uncomfortable internal ideas using benign subject matter that didn’t immediately scare away potential buyers. One particular example of this genre was the 1943 painting, The Bride Frightened at Seeing Life Opened.

  109. Self-Portrait with the Portrait of Dr. Farill, 1951.

  Oil on masonite, 41.5 x 50 cm. Private collection.

  Letter to Dr. Leo Eloesser

  Coyoacán, July 18, 1941

  Very dear Doctor,

  I wonder what you think of me – that I am a jerk. I didn’t even thank you for your letters or for the child that made me so happy – not even a word in months and months. You’re more than justified to remind me of my... family. But you know that the fact that I don’t write you doesn’t mean I think of you any less. You know I have the huge flaw of being as lazy as they come for this writing stuff. But believe me, I have thought of you a lot and always with the same affection. [...]

  My shank is getting better. But my general state is pretty fucbulous [think it’s due to the fact that I don’t eat enough and that I smoke too much]. What is rare is that I am not drinking any small or big aperitifs anymore. I feel pain in my belly and a constant need to burp. (Pardon me, burped!!) My digestion is in shambles. My mood is really bad; I am becoming more corajuda every day (in the Mexican sense) not meaning courageous (Academy of the Language, Spanish style); in other words, I am very crabby. If there is a remedy in medicine to control this mood, please give me a prescription so I can take it immediately. We’ll see what results I get.

  As for my painting, I am working. I paint little, but I feel that I’m learning something and that I’m not as stupid as before. They want me to paint a few portraits in the Dining Hall of the National Palace (there are): the five Mexican women who have had the most relevance in the history of our people. Right now I am researching what kind of cockroaches these heroines were, what kind of snout they had, and what kind of psychology burdened them, so that when I paint them, [people] can distinguish them from the vulgar and common females of Mexico, who, in my opinion, are more interesting and have “bigger teeth” [are more powerful] than the above-mentioned ladies. If among your trinkets you have a book that talks about Doña Josefa Ortíz de Domínguez, about Doña Leona Vicario de [illegible], about Sor JuanaInés de la Cruz, please send me some data, photographs, or engravings, etc. of those times and of their well respected effigies. For this job I’ll earn some moola, which I’ll use to buy some knick knacks that are pleasant to my eyes, nose, and hands, or some really cool planters that I saw in the market the other day.

  Remarriage is working well. Small amounts of arguing, greater mutual understanding, and, on my part, fewer obnoxious-type investigations regarding other ladies who suddenly occupy a preponderant place in his heart. You can understand that I finally learned that life is so and the rest is unimportant. If I were healthy I could say I’m happy, but feeling so bad from my head to my paws sometimes makes my mind go crazy and my life bitter. Bye, aren’t you going to attend the International Medical Conference that will take place in this beautiful City of Palaces – as they call it? Come on, do it. Take as teel bird that says “Zücalo México”. What do you say: yes or yes?

  Bring lots of Lucky or Chesterfield cigarettes since here they are a luxury, partner. I cannot “affordear” a buck a day just for smokes.

  Tell me what’s going on in your life; something that will show me that you always think that in this land of Indians and gringo tourists, there exists for you a girl who is your true friend.

  Ricardo was a little jealous about you because he says I use the informal way of address with you. I’ve explained to him all there is to explain, though. I love him very much and I already told him that you know it.

  I’ll close for now. I have to go to Mexico to buy paint and brushes for tomorrow and it’s getting very late.

  I wonder when you’ll write me a very, very long letter. Say hi to Stack and Ginett and to the nurses at Saint Luke’s — especially to the one that treated me so well – you know which one. Right now I cannot remember her name. It starts with an M. Goodbye, beautiful doctor. Don’t forget me.

  Lots of greetings and kisses from Frida

  My father’s death has been horrible for me. I think that’s why I’m rundown and why I lost quite a bit of weight. Do you remember how sweet and good he was?

  110. Coconut Tears (Crying Coconut), 1951.

  Oil on masonite, 23.2 x 30.5 cm. Private collection.

  111. Still Life dedicated to Samuel Fastlicht, “painted with all my love”, 1952.

  Oil on canvas mounted on wood, 25.8 x 44 cm. Private collection.

  The “bride” in this oil is doll-like, wearing a virginal white wedding dress and viewing a prickly landscape of quartered watermelons resembling pointed teeth and open jaws. There are cocoanuts with the “eyes” of one resembling the face of a small furry animal. It huddles next to blemished plantains beneath the stick legs of a striding locust. A sharp-leafed pineapple holds down the right side of the composition, just behind a fierce-eyed parrot. At the top is a cleft melon overripe with black seeds ready to pour out. This table top covered with fruits has been transmogrified into a trap that seems to pulse with life and promise of good things, but is actually a fragile illusion.

  Another – this time truly frightening – still life from her mind is The Chick. On a nest of barren sticks, a chick – you can almost feel it trembling – watches huge spiders continue to engulf a handled vase filled with lilacs, a caterpillar, a grasshopper and fronds with a network of sticky webbing. You want the chick to move away from the death trap, but it seems frozen in place, held in a thrall, vulnerable to the web and the terror of capture. It is a Hieronymus Bosch nightmare with the web slashed on with uncharacteristic palette-knife strokes.

  In 1944, Frida Kahlo created two significant windows into to her persona. She painted The Broken Column and began a diary that she continued until her death. If anyone needs to understand her suffering during the last years of her life, viewing The Broken Column and reading her diary dispels any questions.

  112. Still Life with Parrot and Flag, 1951.

  Oil on masonite, 28 x 40 cm. Private collection.

  The downward spiral of her health kept a gaggle of doctors busy. The pain in her right foot had become virtually constant and the need for permanent relief, not drugged respite that impaired her ability to paint, became a constant quest.

  Doctor Alejandro Zimbrón decided a steel corset would ease the pain and give her back support. With it in place, she began fainting and lost 13 pounds in six months. The pain was still there. Zimbrón added spinal injections to the treatment. She experienced excruciating headaches. A year later, in 1945, Doctor Ramiriz Moreno diagnosed syphilis and began blood transfusions. The pain continued and syphilis was never proved. Zimbrón tried again with a traction device that hung her face-down suspended by her chin from the ceiling to relieve stress on her spine. With sandbags laced to her feet, she hung there for thr
ee months, painting for at least an hour every day.

  While she dangled, other doctors conceived a variety of corsets made with plaster, steel, plaster and steel, leather, and one applied by an inexperienced doctor that didn’t cure properly and almost suffocated her before being frantically cut away. She had 28 corsets lashed or slathered onto her torso during her last ten years. The toes of her right foot contracted gangrene and required amputation. Actually, they dropped off of their own accord. Most of these “cures” only exacerbated the pain and deepened her addiction to narcotics which didn’t go well with the bottle of brandy she downed almost every day.

  113. Still Life with Pitahayas, 1938.

  Oil on plate, 25.4 x 35.6 cm. Private collection.

  By the late 1940s, Frida’s physical condition consumed her. Metamorphosed into the shape of a deer pierced by arrows that have drawn blood, she hurries through a wood of barren trees in The Wounded Deer (The Little Deer) painted in 1946. That same year she traveled to New York for major surgery. Doctor Philip Wilson, a back specialist, had suggested fusing certain of her vertebrae and fixing them in place with a steel rod.

  The Broken Column shows Frida against a ripped and rent desert background. She wears her hair long down her back and stands, as if for an examination, stripped to the waist except for the belts of Zimbrón’s wrap-around corset that hugs her nude torso. Down the centre of her body is a jagged autopsy-like slash revealing an Ionic column that is broken in a half-dozen places along its fluted length. Her naked flesh is pierced all over with pointed tacks. Tears pour down her cheeks, the tears that will be increasingly familiar in future compositions.