211[Natalia] wrote her husband a letter: Ibid.
211Trotsky’s distinctly underplayed report: Ibid. The following day (July 12), Trotsky wrote that he had just received a letter Natalia had written on July 10, before she learned of Frida’s trip. The July 10 letter is missing from the Trotsky archives, almost certainly because Natalia, feeling that it revealed too much about her pain over the affair, destroyed it after her husband’s death.
211“Now, let me tell you about the visit”: Ibid.
212“I remembered that yesterday”: Ibid.
212Ella Wolfe believes: Ella Wolfe, private interview.
212“It was impossible to go on”: van Heijenoort, private interview.
213In a film showing Trotsky: The film was taken by Ivan C. F. Heisler, who was visiting Trotsky with his father, Francis Heisler. It is now in the Trotsky Collection, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Natalia’s approach to Frida was a rather odd combination of aloofness and affection. Sometimes when Diego and Frida came to the Coyoacán house, Natalia would not come out of her room. At other times, she would greet Frida with a kiss or give her flowers (van Heijenoort, private interview). Many photographs of outings in the environs of Mexico City show Natalia next to Frida, as if she were keeping an eye on someone she did not trust. A more subtle reason for Natalia’s attentiveness to Frida might be that curious emotion that causes some people to love the person his or her loved one loves. Loving the same man can create a kind of complicity between two women. Natalia’s bond with Frida lasted even after Trotsky was killed and Natalia had not seen Frida for years. Natalia made a special point, for example, of taking a French Trotskyite visiting Mexico in the 1940s to see the frescoes in Coyoacán done by Frida’s students under her supervision (van Heijenoort, private interview).
214“I have for long admired”: André Breton, “Frida Kahlo,” in Surrealism and Painting, pp. 141–44.
CHAPTER 14: A PAINTER IN HER OWN RIGHT
215a letter dated February 14, 1938: Frida’s letter to Lucienne Bloch is in Mrs. Bloch’s personal archive.
215She wrote to Ella Wolfe in the spring: The letter is dated “Wednesday 13,” 1938.
219Mexico’s ancient heritage is reborn in each new generation: Frida said she depicted herself with the body of an infant and her head as it looked at the time when she made the painting because she wanted to show the continuity of life (Lesley notes). In her perception of the continuity of Mexican culture, she would have agreed with Octavio Paz, who observed that the traditional Mexican attitude toward time is a passionate feeling of connection with the past. Mexico is a “land of super-imposed pasts. Mexico City was built on the ruins of Tenochtitlán, the Aztec city that was built in the likeness of Tula, the Toltec city that was built in the likeness of Teotihuacán, the first great city on the American continent. Every Mexican bears within him this continuity, which goes back two thousand years. It doesn’t matter that this presence is almost always unconscious and assumes the naive forms of legend and even superstitution. It is not something known but something lived” (Paz, “Reflections: Mexico and the United States,” New Yorker, Sept. 17, 1979, pp. 140–41).
220the ducts and glands: Here, as on many other occasions, Frida used a medical illustration as a source for interior anatomy. Frida Kahlo’s personal archive has a page from a catalogue selling “physiological supports scientifically designed” that illustrates the ducts and glands of a lactating breast. Another precedent for the idea of showing the ducts and glands inside the breast is the breast with its inner structure revealed as if by X-ray vision in Rivera’s Palace of Fine Arts mural, the second version of his Rockefeller Center fresco.
220“milk from the virgin”: Lesley notes.
220“I appear with the face”: Ibid.
221Dolores del Rio . . . says: Dolores del Rio, private interview. Frida painted the child with the death mask again in a very similar painting (now lost), which was reproduced in Novedades (Mexico City), supplement, “México en la Cultura,” June 10, 1951, p. 2.
221a family in Ixtapalapa: Bertram D. Wolfe’s Portrait of Mexico illustrates several of Rivera’s portraits of the children of the Rosas family (see, for example, Portrait of Dimas, 1935, plate 51), and Wolfe writes of the the family in Ixtapalapa on pp. 27–28. Alejandro Gómez Arias believes that Dimas was the son of one of the Riveras’ household servants (Gómez Arias, private interviews). Dimas wears a cardboard crown: One can only hope that poor Dimas’s festive apparel has nothing to do with the old Mexican custom that continued into the first quarter of the twentieth century and was described by Ernest Gruening in his Mexico and Its Heritage, published in 1928. Gruening speaks of the practice that was part of the wakes of poor families and consisted of suspending dead babies “for the edification of the neighbors, for twenty-four hours or more.” And he quotes a report on Mexico by a French priest who lived in Mexico for twenty years in the mid-nineteenth century: “I have spoken of the custom of dressing up deceased children, of decorating them with silk wings, paper crowns, flowers and ribbons, of displaying them seated on a chair or stretched on a table, of burying them to the noise of petards, or of instruments playing polkas and quadriles. In Mexico City, and in the interior, I have seen even more revolting things. Pulque merchants hired these corpses called angelitos (little angles) to attract trade: First there were prayers; then one drank; young girls made these occasions for rendezvous with their beaux. The corpse would serve several merchants and be buried only when putrefaction was well advanced.” Gruening notes the resemblance of this custom to the Aztec practice of decorating the dead with various kinds of papers. The portrait of the dead Dimas dressed as an angelito retains something of the barbarism of such customs.
222se petateó means: Wolfe, Portrait of Mexico, p. 22.
224Pitahayas (now lost): Pitahayas was shown in the Golden Gate International Exposition and it was probably sold to someone in California in 1940. A letter to Frida (July 29, 1940) from Thomas Carr Howe, Jr., director of the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, says that a Mrs. Ryan (head of the sales department at the exposition) had an offer for $120 from an important collector. (The painting was priced at $150.) The result of this inquiry is not known.
224“I never imagined”: Breton, Surrealism and Painting, p. 143.
224the tumultuous Mexican sky: Frida’s intuition of nature’s responsiveness to her emotions is also demonstrated in the way the knots of the wooden table on which the fruit is displayed in Fruits of the Earth are made to look like wounds. Old photographs of this painting show that it originally had a pale blue sky with fleecy white clouds. Some time after it was finished, Frida repainted the sky a dark gray with stormy clouds, leaving a strip of the original blue sky at the top, so that one section of the sky overlaps the other as if both were theatrical backdrops. Possibly she made this change in order, to express her gloom after her separation from Diego in 1939. Like the tablecloth that metamorphoses into landscape and sky in Tunas, the double sky is a surrealistic device, the kind of thing Magritte might have done, and it underscores the fictional, mutable—indeed, the totally unreliable—nature of Frida’s reality.
225“She’s working now”: van Heijenoort, private interview.
225“Diego always wants”: Letter to Julien Levy, undated draft, Frida Kahlo archive.
225she told Lucienne: Lucienne Bloch, private interview.
225“For that price”: Private interview with an old friend of Frida’s who wished to remain anonymous.
225“It must be because”: Lucienne Bloch, private interview.
226“I kept about twenty-eight paintings hidden”: Bambi, “Frida Kahlo Es una Mitád,” p. 6. A letter from Gladys Lloyd Robinson to Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo (Sept. 7, 1938) in the Kahlo archive says: “Everybody raved about Frida’s four paintings and yours. . . . They simply fell in love with ’Me and My Doll’ and the portraits and were crazy about the way they were framed. . . . Everybody agreed that Frida is a great artist and are falling over
themselves to see all the new additions to our collection.”
226“Surrealist place par excellence”: This and the following quote are from Ida Rodríguez Prampolini, El Surrealismo y el Arte Fantástico de México, p. 54, and from an interview with Breton by Rafael Helidoro Valle that appeared in Universidad (Mexico, D.F.), 29 (June 1938): 5–8.
227[Trotsky] became incensed: van Heijenoort, private interview.
227“Conversations in Pátzcuaro”: van Heijenoort, Trotsky in Exile, p. 127. The ideas explored in these “Conversations” led to the founding by Trotsky, Breton, and Rivera of an International Federation of Independent Revolutionary Artists (IFIRA) to resist totalitarian encroachments on art and literature and to counterbalance Stalinist organizations. They produced a manifesto entitled “Toward an Independent Revolutionary Art,” stressing the need for artists to be free of political controls, provided that they not use this liberty to attack the revolution. Because it was directed to artists, it was signed not by Trotsky but by Breton and Rivera, even though Rivera had nothing to do with its writing.
227“We acted like two pupils”: Jacqueline Breton, private telephone interview, Paris, October 1980.
228“My surprise and joy”: Breton, Surrealism and Painting, p. 144.
228“she led friends like Noguchi”: Noguchi and Levy, private interviews.
229“You ought to do a portrait of Mrs. Luce”: Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, pp. 358–59.
229“I recommend her to you”: Ibid., p. 360. The Lewisohns did befriend Frida and purchased a painting from her show. A letter to Frida from Mrs. Lewisohn (Frida Kahlo archive, Frida Kahlo Museum) says: “We love your painting which is much admired in my sitting room.” Mr. and Mrs. Lewisohn’s daughters have pleasant memories of Frida’s visits to their parents’ country house, but none of them recalls there being a Kahlo painting in their mother or father’s collection. The sculptor Sidney Simon, once married to one of Lewisohn’s daughters, does recall the painting, and says it was a still life. Stanton Loomis Catlin was kind enough to give me an old photograph of a 1937 still life of flowers in a vase that is decorated with the words “I Belong to My Owner.” The photograph has “Mrs. Sam Lewisohn” written in pencil on the back. Presumably this painting was the one exhibited as I Belong to My Owner at Frida’s Julien Levy show. Frida listed the Lewisohn purchase of one of her works from the Levy show in her application for a Guggenheim grant in 1940.
230The press release: A copy of the press release is in the Frida Kahlo file in the Museum of Modern Art’s library. Also in the library is the exhibition’s catalogue, a brochure consisting of a single piece of folded yellow paper.
230The catalogue listed these titles: The identity of some of these works can only be guessed at; others have been lost or are known by different titles. Frida saw nothing immutable about her paintings’ titles, and according to Julien Levy, they were often made up on the spur of the moment during conversations with her various suitors (Levy, private interview). Obviously, with My Nurse is My Nurse and I. The Square Is Theirs is Four Inhabitants of Mexico. My Family is My Grandparents, My Parents and I. The Heart is Memory. My Dress Was There Hanging is My Dress Hangs There. Dressed Up for Paradise is The Deceased Dimas. Birth is My Birth. Burbank—American Fruit Maker is Luther Burbank. Other identifications are less certain. She Plays Alone might be the version of Girl with Masks (now in Dolores del Rio’s collection) that Levy exhibited, but it could as well be Me and My Doll, which, though not listed in the brochure as such, was one of the paintings Edward G. Robinson lent to the exhibition. Passionately in Love could be the Portrait of Diego, also lent by Robinson (Diego’s portrait was reproduced in Wolfe’s “Rise of Another Rivera"), but I suspect that this was Frida’s ironical title for A Few Small Nips, which Wolfe, calling it “Just a Few Small Jabs,” said was in the Levy exhibition. Robinson also lent the 1933 Self-Portrait with jade beads that Frida painted in Detroit. This might be the work listed as Xochitl, since Frida sometimes signed her name this way. (Xochitl was the name of a Toltec lady who popularized pulque in the ninth century B.C., and Frida also made Xochitl the name of one of her hairless Mexican dogs.) As for the painting called Eye, it could be the Portrait of Diego, whom we know she thought of as having a particularly acute eye. Or it could be a self-portrait, with the title a pun on the word “I.”
231“flutter of the week”: Time, “Bomb Beribboned,” Nov. 14, 1939, p. 29.
231“more obstetrical than aesthetic”: New York Times, Nov. 16, 1939, p. 10.
231Another critic quibbled: Undated newspaper clipping, private archive, New York City.
232one to . . . Chester Dale: Levy, private interview. Mrs. Elise V. H. Ferber, in the Art Information Service of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., wrote me on April 26, 1977, that no Frida Kahlo paintings came to the National Gallery with the Chester Dale bequest. Mrs. Chester Dale told me in a telephone conversation (April 1977) that there were no Kahlos in her husband’s collection. She added that she remembered Frida as a “slim little thing who sat on chaise longues a lot. She had humor, and was vivacious in a quiet way.”
233Frida said that art critic Walter Pach . . . purchased a painting: Frida Kahlo, list of patrons included in her application for a Guggenheim fellowship, 1940.
233[Clare Boothe Luce] purchased the Self-Portrait dedicated to Trotsky: Mrs. Luce recalls that she was in Mexico in 1940 at the time of Trotsky’s assassination. “What happened was this,” she remembers: “I had commissioned a symphony in memory of my daughter who was killed from Carlos Chávez, who was at that moment minister of fine arts. I went to Mexico, and I saw a lot of Diego and Frida, who were close friends of Carlos Chávez. She showed me this self-portrait in her studio, which had been a birthday present to Trotsky. And the next day, or that night, Carlos told me that Trotsky had been murdered. Now Carlos said, “Frida cannot bear to look at it again,” so I said, “Carlos, could you get it for me?” Carlos negotiated for me, and it left her studio, and I took it home. I kept the painting after I sold the rest of my collection, because it is very beautiful.”
233Frida received a commission: Sklar, private interview.
233Conger Goodyear fell in love: Ibid.
233“I did that: Levy, private interview.
233“In a private collection”: Letter to Gómez Arias, Nov. 1, 1938.
234“arriving inside the bank”: Levy, Memoir.
234“I like this guy”: Levy, private interview.
234“fit completely the Surrealist ideal of woman” Nicolas Calas, private telephone interview, New York City, fall 1974.
234“She didn’t jump to it”: Levy, private interview.
234Her right foot: Begun, medical record.
235Levy saw Frida as a kind of “mythical creature”: Levy, private interview.
235Edgar Kaufmann, Sr., . . . wanted to be Frida’s patron: Levy, Memoir, p. 85.
235She was “very cavalier with her men”: Levy, private interview.
236the Wednesday evening gatherings: Paul Gallico, “Memento Muray,” essay in The Revealing Eye: Personalities of the 20’s in Photography, by Nickolas Muray, with text by Paul Gallico, pp. 16–17.
236letters Frida wrote: Frida Kahlo’s letters to Nickolas Muray, 1930–1940, are in his daughter Mimi Muray’s personal archive, Alta, Utah.
238Mi niñita chiquitita”: Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, pp. 358–59.
240“Do not stop giving thirst”: In the diary there are seven lines crossed out after the word “blossoms.” The poem’s original ending was:
Name of Diego—Name of love
Do not stop giving thirst to
the tree that loved you so much
That treasured your seed
That crystallized your life
At six in the morning
Your Frida
CHAPTER 15: THIS PINCHISIMO PARIS
243“You see, I had my belly full”: Letter to Ella and Bertram Wolfe, Mar. 17, 1939.
243“go back
to the damn hotel”: Letter to Nickolas Muray, Feb. 16, 1939.
244“Marcel Duchamp has help me a lot”: Letter to Nickolas Muray, Feb. 27, 1939.
244Frida did . . . participate: Sources for this account of Frida’s stay in Paris, in addition to her letters, are private interviews with Michel Petitjean, Jacqueline Breton, Alice Rahon (Mexico City, March 1977) and Carmen Corcuera Baron (interviewed by Elizabeth Gerhard at the request of the author, Paris, May 1978).
244On one occasion Frida refused: Alice Rahon, private interview. Carmen Corcuera Baron, who in 1939 was married to Frida’s Paris dealer, Pierre Colle, says that Frida “always sat on the floor and she was constantly doing things with her hands,” such as braiding the silk fringes of antique furniture (Gerhard interview).
245The world of haute couture embraced her: Time, “Fashion Notes,” May 3, 1948, pp. 33–4.
245She went to the “thieves market”: Letter to Nickolas Muray, Feb. 27, 1939.
245“You have no idea”: Letter to Nickolas Muray, Feb. 16, 1939.
246“If you knew in what conditions”: Letter to Ella and Bertram Wolfe, Mar. 17, 1939.
246indeed, she had a brief affair: Petitjean, private interview.
246“Diego has now fought”: Letter to Bertram and Ella Wolfe, Mar. 17, 1939.
247Personal and political conflicts: van Heijenoort, Trotsky in Exile, p. 136.
247One incident points: Ibid., p. 132.
247They disagreed about: This account is based on Payne, Trotsky; and van Heijenoort, Trotsky in Exile and private interview. Since Trotsky was closely associated with Rivera in the public eye, he felt it was necessary to disassociate himself from Rivera’s political whims. Rivera characterized Lázaro Cárdenas as “an accomplice of the Stalinists” and he believed Mújica would continue the revolution in Mexico. When Mújica withdrew his candidacy, Rivera gave his support to the right-wing General Juan Andrew Almazàn, who was closely tied to American business interests. This capricious act befuddled Rivera’s leftist friends. But by this time (1940), the break between Rivera and Trotsky was complete.
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