Frida

by Hayden Herrera

  She elaborated in a letter to Ella and Bertram Wolfe:

  You see, I had my belly full of anarchists and every one of them would have put a bomb in some corner of my poor intestines. I felt that until this moment the situation was hopeless since I was sure that la pelona [death] was going to take me away. Between the belly pains and the sadness of finding myself alone in this pinchisimo [vile] Paris, which seems to me like a kick in the navel, I assure you that I would have preferred that with one tug the devil had taken me. But when I found myself in the American Hospital where I could “bark” in English and explain my situation, I began to feel a little better. [Frida’s inability to speak French doubtless contributed to her low opinion of Paris.] At least I could say: “Pardon me I burped!!” (Of course that was not the case, since to be precise, I could not even complain or curse by burping.) Not until four days ago could I have the pleasure of letting out the first “burp” and from that happy day until now I feel better. The reason for the anarchist uprising in my belly was that it was full of colis, and those wretches, wanted to transgress the decent limit for their activity, and it occurred to them to go out on a spree promenading through my bladder and kidneys, and frankly it began to burn me up, since they played the devil in my kidneys and they were now sending me to the morgue. In a word, I was only counting my days until my fever went down so that I could catch a boat and escape to the United States, since here they did not understand my situation nor did anyone give a damn about me. Little by little, I began to bounce back.

  She did not “go back to the damn hotel because I couldn’t stay all alone.” Instead, Mary Reynolds, “a marvelous American woman who lives with Marcel Duchamp invited me to stay at her house and I accepted gladly because she is really a nice person and doesn’t have anything to do with the stinking ’artists’ of the group of Breton. She is very kind to me and takes care of me wonderfully.”

  By this time, the question of the exhibition was finally settled, and she told Muray:

  Marcel Duchamp has help me a lot and he is the only one among this rotten people who is a real guy. The show will open the 10th of March in a gallery called “Pierre Colle.” They say its one of the best here. That guy Colle is the dealer of Dali and some other big shots of the surrealism. It will last two weeks—but I already made arrangements to take out my paintings on the 23rd in order to have time to packed them and take them with me on the 25th. The catalogues are already in the printing shop, so it seems that everything is going on alright. I wanted to leave on the “Isle de France” the 8th of March, but I cable Diego and he wants me to wait till my things are shown, because he doesn’t trust any of this guys to ship them back. He is right in a way because after all I came here only for the damn exhibition and would be stupid to leave two days before it opens. Don’t you think so?

  Despite her miseries, Frida did participate in the “surrealistic” pleasures of Paris. She got to know such luminaries of Surrealist circles as the poet Paul Eluard and Max Ernst, whose intense blue eyes, white hair, and beaky nose appealed to her, and whose painting she liked, but whose personality she found a little inaccessible—like dry ice. Her new friends escorted her to artists’ cafés and to nightclubs like the Boeuf-sur-le-Toit, where she listened to jazz (she came to love the music of the black American pianist Garland Wilson) and where, as usual, she watched other people dance. Already proficient at the cadavre exquis, she now became an expert at other Surrealist games. Breton’s favorite—and he took it very seriously, becoming irate if anyone spoke out of turn—was the jeux de la vérité (truth or consequences). People who refused to tell the truth were asked to do things like crawl into the room blindfolded and on all fours and then guess who it was who had kissed them. On one occasion Frida refused to answer the question “What’s your age?” and the punishment was: “You must make love to the armchair.” “Frida sat on the floor and did it beautifully,” one player remembers. “She caressed the armchair as if it were a beautiful creature.”

  The world of haute couture embraced her too. Schiaparelli was so taken with her Tehuana costumes that she designed a robe Madame Rivera for fashionable Parisians, and Frida’s beringed hand appeared on the cover of Vogue.

  When she was able, she visited Chartres and a chateau or two on the Loire, and spent some time in the Louvre. She also went to the “thieves market” and bought

  lots of junk, which is one of the things [she wrote Muray] I like best. I don’t have to buy dresses or stuff like that because being a “tehuana” I don’t even wear pants, nor stockings either. The only things I bought here were two old fashioned dolls, very beautiful ones. One is blond with blue eyes, the most wonderful eyes that you can imagine. She is dressed as a bride. Her dress was full of dust and dirt, but I washed it, and now it looks much better. Her head is not very well adjusted to her body because the elastic which holds it, is already very old, but you and me will fix it in New York. The other one is less beautiful, but very charming. Has blond hair and very black eyes, I haven’t wash her dress yet and is dirty as hell. She only have one shoe, the other one she lost it in the market. Both are lovely, even with their heads a little bit loose. Perhaps that it is which gives them so much tenderness and charm. For years I wanted to have a doll like that, because somebody broke one that I had when I was a child, and I couldn’t find it again. So I am very happy having two now. I have a little bed in Mexico, which will be marvelous for the bigger one. Think of two nice hungarian names to baptize them. The two of them cost me about two dollars and a half.

  But for all the amusements, and even after she had left the Bretons’ house and recovered her health, Frida found Paris decadent; most of all she hated what she saw as the empty posturing of the Bohème.

  You have no idea the kind of bitches these people are. They make me vomit. They are so damn “intellectual” and rotten that I can’t stand them any more. It is really too much for my character. I rather sit on the floor in the market of Toluca and sell tortillas, than to have any thing to do with those “artistic” bitches of Paris. They sit for hours on 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. Next morning—they don’t have any thing to eat in their houses because none of them work and they live as parasites of the bunch of rich bitches who admire their “genius” of “artists.” shit and only shit is what they are. I never seen Diego or you [Muray], wasting their time on stupid gossip and “intellectual” discussions. that is why you are real men and not lousy “artists.” —Gee weez! It was worthwhile to come here only to see why Europe is rottening, why all this people—good for nothing—are the cause of all the Hitlers and Mussolinis. I bet you my life I will hate this place and its people as long as I live. There is something so false and unreal about them that they drive me nuts.

  She despaired over the Loyalist defeat in the Spanish Civil War and she saw firsthand the suffering of Spanish refugees. With Diego’s help, she arranged for the departure of four hundred of them for Mexico.

  If you knew in what conditions those poor people who have succeeded in escaping from concentration camps exist it would break your heart. Manolo Martinez, the compañero of Rebull [Daniel Rebull was one of the Spanish militiamen whom Frida met in Mexico in 1936 or 1937] has been around. He tells me that Rebull was the only one who had to stay on the other side since he could not leave his wife who was dying. Perhaps now that I am writing this to you they will have shot the poor man. These French mules have behaved like hogs with all the refugees, they are a bunch of bastards of the worst kind that I have ever known. I am nauseated by all these rotten people in Europe—and these fucking “democracies” are not worth even a crumb.

  Although Frida represented Mexico at one or more Trotskyite meetings and continued to consort with the group until she left Paris—indeed, she had a bri
ef affair with one of them, staying with him for a week in Mary Reynolds’s Montparnasse home—she was ready to support Diego when she learned, not long after she reached Paris, that he had broken with Trotsky. “Diego has now fought with the IVth [International] and told piochitas (Trotsky) to go to hell in a very serious manner,” she wrote to Ella and Bertram Wolfe. ". . . Diego is completely right. "

  Personal and political conflicts had begun to erode the Rivera-Trotsky friendship at about the time Frida left Mexico in October to attend her New York exhibition. Her absence made Rivera feel dejected and a little lost. In this irritable mood, it was inevitable that Trotsky’s didactic manner would get on his nerves. In turn, Rivera’s unpredictability and his self-indulgent fablemaking irked Trotsky. One incident points to the differences in temperament. On November 2, 1938, the Day of the Dead in Mexico, Rivera appeared at the Coyoacán house brimming with mischief and presented Trotsky with a large purple sugar skull with “Stalin” spelled out in white sugar on its brow. Trotsky did not acknowledge the humor or the gift, and as soon as Diego left the house, he told Jean van Heijenoort to destroy it.

  Before long, political arguments that both men would previously have kept below the simmering point came to a boil. They disagreed about the class nature of the Soviet state, Rivera’s involvement with trade union groups, and Rivera’s support of Francisco Mújica (whom Trotsky considered to be the bourgeois candidate) in the current presidential election campaign. The real problem was that Rivera’s Trotskyism was neither consistent nor profound. He would say things like: “You know, I’m a bit of an anarchist,” and behind Trotsky’s back he would accuse him of being a Stalinist. With his anarchic attitude toward any dogmas or systems other than his own, Rivera was incapable of staying obediently under Trotsky’s ideological wing or serving as a reliable party functionary. Also, like many intellectuals in the period just before World War II, he became disillusioned with Trotsky’s Fourth International, seeing it as a futile and “vainglorious gesture.” He was displeased when Trotsky, after trying to persuade him that he could serve the cause better through his art than through administrative work, took steps to limit his influence within the Mexican Trotskyite party. In late December, he wrote Breton a letter criticizing Trotsky’s methods, and Trotsky asked him to rewrite it, eliminating two untrue statements. Rivera agreed, but never made the alterations.

  Early in the new year, Rivera resigned from the Fourth International. On January 11, Trotsky stated to the Mexican press that he no longer felt any “moral solidarity” with Rivera, and that henceforth he could not accept Rivera’s hospitality. Yet on January 12, Trotsky was still hoping to bring Rivera back into the fold, for he wrote to Frida about the conflict, soliciting her help. Beneath the letter’s detailed explanations and political arguments—he told Frida about Diego’s trade union work and the letter to Breton—there is a note of passionate urgency that suggests how much the loss of Rivera as a friend and political comrade meant to Trotsky. “Dear Frida,” he wrote:

  We here are all very happy, and even proud of your success in New York, because we consider you as an artistic ambassador not only from San Angel, but also from Coyoacán. Even Bill Lander, objective representative of the American press, informed us that, according to press notices, you had a genuine success in the States. Our heartiest congratulations. . . .

  However . . . I wish to communicate to you some complications with Diego, which are very painful to me and to Natalia and to the whole household. It is very difficult for me to find the real source of Diego’s discontent. Twice I tried to provoke a frank discussion on the matter, but he was very general in his answers. The only thing I could extract from him was his indignation at my reluctance to recognize those characteristics in him which would make for a good revolutionary functionary. I insisted that he should never accept a bureaucratic position in the organization, because a “secretary” who never writes, never answers letters, never comes to meetings on time and always makes the opposite of the common decision is not a good secretary. And I ask you, why should Diego be a “secretary"? That he is an authentic revolutionary needs no proof, but he is a revolutionary multiplied by a great artist and it is even this “multiplication” which makes him absolutely unfit for routine work in the party. . . .

  A few days ago Diego resigned from the 4th International. I hope his resignation will not be accepted. For my part, I will do everything possible to settle at least the political matter, even if I am not successful in settling the personal question. However, I believe your help is essential in this crisis. Diego’s break with us would signify not only a heavy blow to the 4th International, but—I am afraid to say—it would mean the moral death of Diego himself. Apart from the 4th International and its sympathizers I doubt whether he would be able to find a milieu of understanding and sympathy not only as an artist but as a revolutionary and as a person.

  Now, dear Frida, you know the situation here. I cannot believe that it is hopeless. In any case, I would be the last to abandon the effort to reestablish the political and personal friendship and I sincerely hope that you will collaborate with me in that direction.

  Natalia and I wish you the best of health and artistic success and we embrace you as our good and true friend.

  After the break, Trotsky tried to persuade Rivera to accept money for rent while he looked for another place to live. Rivera refused. Finally, in April 1939, Trotsky moved with his entourage to a house on Avenida Viena in Coyoacán, within walking distance of the blue house on Avenida Londres. He left behind, among other mementos, the Self-Portrait Frida had given him, and a pen that had also been a gift from her. She had bought it from Misrachi’s book store, and she had gone to the trouble of getting a sample of Trotsky’s signature without his knowledge in order to have it engraved on the pen’s barrel.

  Although Frida went along with Diego’s move away from Trotsky, she retained a fondness for him, even after his death. In 1946, for example, she denied Rivera’s demand that she lend him the pen she had given Trotsky so that he could use it to sign his application for readmission to the Communist party. She was endlessly indulgent of Diego’s political caprices, yet some part of her continued to respect her old friend’s memory. In the end, however, in connection with her own readmission to the Communist party, she too denounced Trotsky, describing his January 1939 letter to her as “absolutely impossible.” She also recalled meeting his murderer, Ramón Mercader, alias Jacques Mornard, during her stay in France:

  In Paris I had met Mornard, the one who killed him, and he went around insinuating to me that I should take him to Trotsky’s house. “Not me, because I am quarreling with the old Trotsky,” I told him. “I only ask you, please, to find me a house near there.” “Well look for it yourself, because I am too sick to look for houses for anyone, and I cannot give you lodging in my house, nor can I introduce you to Trotsky, I never will introduce him to you.” But the girlfriend [Sylvia Ageloff] came and introduced him.

  While Mercader, a GPU agent who posed as a Trotskyite, was courting Sylvia Ageloff, an American Trotskyite visiting Paris at the same time as Frida, he apparently also pursued Frida, without success. A friend of Sylvia Ageloff, Maria Craipeau, wanting to explain Sylvia’s role in the assassination, wrote an article in which she repeats the story “Mornard” told her about his meeting with Frida Kahlo, a story the young man found so hilarious it made him laugh till he cried. “I’m going to tell you something funny,” “Mornard” began. “Really I have never in my life been so ridiculed. Listen: I learned about the arrival in Paris of Frida Kahlo, the wife of Diego Rivera. I bought an enormous bouquet and went in search of her.” “Mornard” followed Frida from one place to another, armed with his gigantic floral offering, which he finally attempted to bestow on her at an exhibition opening. When Frida rejected both the flowers and the man, he went out in the street and offered the bouquet to the first woman he saw. She fled in terror, and the flowers ended up in a gutter. Asked by Maria Craipeau why he had been s
o intent on meeting Frida Kahlo, the agent said merely, “It would have amused me to meet her,” and left the room.

  By the time it finally opened, Frida told Muray, she no longer cared “if the show will be a successful one or not. . . . People in general are scared to death of war and all the exhibitions have been a failure, because the rich bitches don’t want to buy anything.” (She canceled a London exhibition that was to have been held at Guggenheim Jeune, Peggy Guggenheim’s Cork Street Gallery, in the spring. “So what is the use,” she asked rhetorically, “of making any effort to go to London to waste time only?")

  The show was called “Mexique,” and if it was not exactly a one-woman exhibition (Breton did indeed surround Frida’s paintings with pre-Columbian sculptures, paintings from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, photographs by Manuel Alvarez Bravo, and his own collection of what Frida had called “all that junk"—toys, a ceramic candelabrum, a huge sugar skull, ex-votos, and other popular art objects that he had acquired in Mexico), Frida was the main feature. Jacqueline Breton recalls that the opening was a lively affair, but that during most of it, Frida stayed in the corner; since her French was limited, she may well have felt left out. And as she had feared, the exhibition was not a financial success. The French were too nationalistic, says Jacqueline Breton, to be very interested in the work of an unknown foreigner. Besides that, “Women were still undervalued. It was very hard to be a woman painter. Frida said, ’Men are kings. They direct the world.’ ”