287“I think you are quite right”: Conger Goodyear, letter to Frida Kahlo, Frida Kahlo archive, Frida Kahlo Museum.
287Anita Brenner wrote to offer help: Anita Brenner, letter to Frida Kahlo, Frida Kahlo archive, Frida Kahlo Museum.
288“She is an excellent painter”: Transcribed summary of Frida Kahlo’s application, prepared by the foundation’s staff, in the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation’s 1940 Inter-American competition. The original application has not survived.
290Clare Boothe Luce . . . says: Clare Boothe Luce, private interview, New York City, November 1978.
290“She was a very beautiful girl”: Noguchi, private interview.
290“Dorothy Donovan Hale was”: Luce, private interview. So Dorothy Hale’s admirer took the painting away: Mrs. Luce went on to tell the denouement of the painting’s saga: “My friend Frank Crowninshield, longtime editor of Vanity Fair, was also a well-known art collector. When the painting came back, with the legend removed, I took it to ’Crowny.’ I asked him to hold the painting for a few years—until the Hale suicide was forgotten—and then to give it—without using my name—to the Museum of Modern Art, as an example of modern Mexican art.
“Twenty years later, I was living in Arizona when there suddenly arrived an object I had long since forgotten—the same crate that had once arrived from Mexico with the Kahlo painting of the suicide of Dorothy Hale. A letter from the nephew—and heir—of Frank Crowninshield accompanied it, saying that the painting had been found among other pictures belonging to the estate of the late Frank Crowninshield. His nephew remembered Crowninshield’s telling him that the Kahlo picture was the property of Clare Luce, and so he was returning it to me.
“I then gave the picture to Mr. F. M. Hinkhouse, curator of the Phoenix Art Museum, with the express understanding that it would be listed as the gift of an anonymous donor. A few years later, Mr. Hinkhouse left the museum. Sometime in the early 1970s, his successor decided on a showing of the museum’s Southwest and Mexican art. He telephoned (I suppose) Mexican friends of the Riveras for background on the Kahlo painting for the catalogue and they, it seems, informed him that from his description, this must be the picture that Clare Boothe Luce commissioned of the suicide of her friend Dorothy Hale! And that was the way the painting was described in the catalogue of the Museum’s exhibition.
“Well, this whole episode led me to pen a phrase which has since been widely quoted:
’No good deed goes unpunished.’ ”
CHAPTER 18: REMARRIAGE
295“They acted like firecracker makers”: Bambi, “Frida Dice Lo Que Sabe,” pp. 1, 7.
295"[She] brought delicacies”: This and the following quote are from Rivera, My Art, My Life, pp. 228, 237.
296He planned to put Bohus in his mural: Packard, private interview.
296[Rivera] became an impassioned advocate of inter-American solidarity: The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda tells of witnessing one of Rivera’s and Siqueiros’s fiery debates on the subject. Having run out of arguments, the sparring painters “drew huge pistols and fired almost as a man, not at each other, but at the wings of plaster-of-Paris angels on the theater’s ceiling. When the heavy plaster wings started falling on the heads of the people in the audience, the theater emptied out and the discussion ended with a powerful smell of gunpowder in a deserted hall” (Pablo Neruda, Memoirs, trans. by Hardie St. Martin [New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977], pp. 153–54).
296He wanted to create: Timothy G. Turner, “What Happened to Diego Rivera?” Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, July 14, 1940, pp. 3, 8.
296She represents “American girlhood”: Rivera, My Art, My Life, p. 245.
296“Frida Kahlo, [the] Mexican artist”: Wolfe, Diego Rivera, p. 364.
297“They killed old Trotsky”: Bambi, “Frida Dice Lo Que Sabe,” p. 7.
297The police . . . interrogated her for twelve hours: Rivera, My Art, My Life, p. 239.
297“They sacked Diego’s house”: Bambi, “Frida Dice Lo Que Sabe,” p. 1.
297Rivera proudly claimed: Tibol, private interview and other interviews.
297he told . . . Pablo Neruda: Neruda, Memoirs, pp. 153–54.
298“Raquelito, we must open a bottle”: Tibol, private interview.
298He ordered an armed guard: Packard, private interview.
298“Diego loves you very much”: Dr. Leo Eloesser, letter to Frida Kahlo, Frida Kahlo archive.
298Dr. Eloesser rejected the grave diagnoses: According to Teresa del Conde, Dr. Eloesser diagnosed “poliomyelitis” (del Conde, Vida de Frida Kahlo, p. 29).
298“I was very ill”: Letter to Sigmund Firestone (undated; postmark Nov. 1, 1940).
300“He took me to the hospital”: Heinz Berggruen, private interview, New York City, November 1981.
301warning her that Rivera would not reform: Rivera, My Art, My Life, p. 242.
301“I’m going to marry her”: Packard, private interview.
301the separation . . . “was having a bad effect”: Rivera, My Art, My Life, p. 242.
301“He is basically a sad person”: Anita Brenner, letter to Frida Kahlo, Sept. 25, 1940, Frida Kahlo archive.
302She had seen old friends: Rivera, My Art, My Life, p. 241–42.
302[she] managed to finish a few paintings: Frida Kahlo, letter to Emmy Lou Packard, Oct. 24, 1940, Packard personal archive. Frida said that she would return to San Francisco from New York as soon as she had finished one or two paintings.
302“She would provide for herself: Rivera, My Art, My Life, p. 242. Two years after the remarriage, at a moment when Frida was showing The Two Fridas to a reporter, Rivera came into the room. He solemnly told the visitor that it had been painted during their divorce, and that was why Frida had painted her heart broken and bleeding. The visitor exclaimed, “How much she must have loved you! Did she, by any chance, give you the painting so that you would understand this?” “Oh, no!” Rivera replied. “It wasn’t necessary. You see, I never stopped loving her; what’s more, I divorced her because I thought that she would be happy if she recovered her freedom. But when I was convinced that it didn’t do that, I returned to her and we got married again” (Betty Ross, “Como Pinta Frida Kahlo Esposa de Diego, las Emociones Intimas de la Mujer.”).
303The marriage was performed by: Los Angeles Times, Dec. 9, 1940, “Diego Rivera, Mexican Mural Artist, Weds Former Wife,” clipping in Karen and David Crommie file.
303Rivera . . . went off to work at Treasure Island: Packard, private interview.
303"Emilucha linda”: Letter to Emmy Lou Packard (undated, 1941) Packard’s personal archive.
303the Treasure Island mural: The mural was eventually moved to the lobby of the Arts Auditorium of San Francisco Junior College.
305according to Emmy Lou Packard: Except where otherwise noted, this account of the Riveras’ daily life during the remarriage comes from the author’s private interview with Emmy Lou Packard.
305he was worried about his health: Emmy Lou Packard recalls the time when a blood vessel in one of Rivera’s eyes broke, and he was sure that he would die at any moment. “He was very conscious of dying. He was sick a lot, and Frida took care of him,” she says. Among Frida Kahlo’s papers in her archive is a note from Diego to Frida, probably dated c. 1940, that says: “Niñita Fisita: my heart is hurting: I have in the Banco de Commercio $14,000 pesos. . . . Alberto Misrachi owes me $10,000, reclaim them for yourself the same as the pieces of land, the house and my idols and paintings. Diego Rivera. This has the value of a testament.”
306“The niña Fridita”: Tibol, Crónica, p. 115.
306“She loved them”: Jacqueline Breton, private interview.
307“Imagine, the little parrot, ’Bonito,’ died”: Frida Kahlo, letter to Emmy Lou Packard, Dec. 15, 1941, Packard’s personal archive.
312Self-Portrait with Bonito: This painting was purchased in 1941 by Mrs. Somerset Maugham (Syrie Maugham). Its present whereabouts are unknown.
312“Frida and I
started a strange kind of ranch”: Rivera, My Art, My Life, pp. 249–52.
313In a style he described as a composite: Ibid., p. 249.
313Anahuacalli has been alternately called: Wolfe, Diego Rivera, p. 370.
313She gave her husband title: Ibid.
313“I have been worried about Diego”: Frida Kahlo, letter to Marte R. Gómez, Frida Kahlo archive.
314“The stupendous work”: Kahlo, “Retrato de Diego.”
CHAPTER 19: PORTRAITS, PATRONS, PUBLIC RECOGNITION
317“Since the accident changed my path”: Frida Kahlo, “Frida Habla de Su Pintura.” Though published under Frida’s name, the article was actually compiled from an interview with Frida conducted by Antonio Rodríguez.
317“the most recent of Rivera’s ex-wives”: Frank Crowninshield, “New York Goes Mexican,” Vogue, June 15, 1940, p. 82.
318Guggenheim commented: Peggy Guggenheim, Confessions of an Art Addict (New York: Macmillan, 1960), pp. 166–67.
318originally titled Flame Flower: Flower of Life was called Flame Flower when it was exhibited in the Salon de la Flor in the National Flower Show in 1944. Rivera was also wont to transform plants into male and female genitalia, to wit, the huge crocus-like flower in his 1929 Health Building mural, which, like Frida’s Flower of Life, is a hybrid of male and female sexual organs.
319Three concerns impelled her to make art: Frida’s comments are contained in an article entitled “Frida Kahlo y la Melancolia de la Sangre” (“Frida Kahlo and the Melancholy of Blood") in the magazine Rueca (Mexico City, No. 10 [1944], p. 80. The author is identified only with the initials A.F. The clipping is in Isolda Kahlo’s personal archive.
319“The education minister asked me”: Gómez Arias, private interview.
320Frida was asked by . . . Miguel N. Lira: Miguel N. Lira, letter to Frida Kahlo, Jan. 7, 1943, Frida Kahlo archive.
320her work for this organization: This information comes from various documents and clippings concerning the Seminario de la Cultura Mexicana in the Frida Kahlo archive.
320“The five Mexican women”: Letter to Dr. Leo Eloesser, July 18, 1941.
321“From what you tell me”: Letter to Emmy Lou Packard, Packard’s personal archive.
322“I am going to battle for you”: Emmy Lou Packard, undated letter to Frida Kahlo (undated), Frida Kahlo archive.
322“I did not feel so sad”: Letter to Dr. Eloesser, Mar. 15, 1941.
322it was purchased. . . because Frida desperately needed money: Fernando Gamboa, private interview, Mexico City, November 1977.
322Doña Rosita Morillo shows . . . an extremely refined miniaturistic realism: Frida’s extreme realism at this time may have been inspired by the portraiture of Hermenegildo Bustos, the late-nineteenth-century painter from Guanajuato, whom she admired and whose work was shown along with her own in the January 1943 exhibition of one hundred years of Mexican portraiture. Bustos’s portrait of his wife, Joaquina Ríos Bustos, must have especially delighted Frida, for its combination of detailed realism with primitivism, plus the undeviating frankness underlying its intense capturing of the sitter’s emotional presence, are characteristics seen in her portrait of Doña Rosita.
324Portrait of Mariana Morillo Safa: When Morillo Safa received this portrait of his daughter, he wrote to Frida, on Jan. 20, 1944: “I am sending you the thousand pesos for the one of Mariana, it turned out very well and it’s very pretty. Listen, how much will you charge me for two more portraits? One of Lupe and another of Eduardo [Morillo Safa’s other two children]? Let me know through them.” Eduardo Morillo Safa, letter to Frida Kahlo, Frida Kahlo archive.
324“turned into idiots”: Kahlo, “Retrato de Diego.”
324“Diego got me a job”: Bambi, “Frida Kahlo Es una Mitád.”
324Roberto BeHar remembers: Roberto BeHar, private interview.
325“I loved her”: Morillo Safa, private interview.
325“From Coyoacán, so sad”: Frida Kahlo, letter to Mariana Morillo Safa, Oct. 23, 1946, Morillos Safa’s personal archive. The pet “name,” "Cachita, changa, maranga, " is a nonsense rhyme.
326The painting was the result of a chance conversation: José Domingo Lavin, interviewed by Karen and David Crommie.
326“As this is the first time in my life”: Frida Kahlo, “The Birth of Moses,” p. 2. I have substituted my own translation for the one published alongside the Spanish original.
327“Solar energy, the life source”: Rivera, My Art, My Life, p. 131. In his explanation of the mural written shortly after he had finished it, Rivera called the central orb of light “The Light-One or Primal Energy,” and noted that the hands at the end of the light rays have their index and ring fingers pointing toward the earth, while the other fingers are closed. This gesture, he said, signified “FATHER-MOTHER" (Wolfe, Diego Rivera, p. 136).
327“the center of all religions”: Kahlo, “Moses,” p. 4.
327Moses’ birth stands for the birth of all heroes: Ibid. In her discussion of Moses (pp. 4–6), Frida listed the heroes, as well as the gods they invented because of their fear of death.
Like Moses [she said], there have been and there will be a great number of “higher-ups,” transformers of religions and of human societies. It may be said that they are a species of messengers between people that they manage and the gods invented by them in order to manage them.
Of these “Gods” there are many, as you know. Naturally I could not fit them all in, and I placed those who have direct relation with the sun (whether you like it or not) on either side of the sun. To the right, those of the West and to the left, those of the East.
The winged bull Asirus, Amon, Zeus, Osiris, Horus, Jehova, Apollo, The Moon, The Virgin Mary, Divine Providence, the Holy Trinity, Venus and . . . the devil.
To the left, Lightning, the Strike of Lightning and the Wake of Lightning, that is to say, Huarakan, Kukulkan and Gukumatz, Tlaloc, the magnificent Coatlicue, mother of all the gods, Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, the Centeotl, the Chinese god (Dragon) and the Hindu, Brahma. I missed an African god, but I couldn’t find him anywhere (but a little room can be made for him).
I cannot tell you something about each one of them, because my ignorance of their origin, importance, etc., is too much for me.
Having painted the gods that I could fit in, in their respective heavens, I wanted to divide the celestial world of the imagination and of poetry, from the terrestial world of fear of death, and I painted the skeletons, human and animal, that you see here. . . .
On the same earth, but painting their heads larger, to distinguish them from the “mass,” the heroes are pictured (very few of them, but well chosen), the transformers of religions, the inventors or creators of these, the conquerors, the rebels . . . in other words the real “big wigs.”
To the right, and this figure I should have painted with much more importance than any other, Amenhotep IV can be seen, who was later called Akhenaten. . . .
Later, Moses, who according to Freud’s analysis, gave his adopted people the same religion as that of Akhenaten, a little altered according to the interests and circumstances of his time. . . .
After Christ, follow Alexander the Great, Caesar, Mohammed, Luther, Napoleon and . . . “the lost infant” . . . Hitler.
To the left, marvelous Nefertiti, wife of Akhenaten, I imagine that besides having been extraordinarily beautiful, she must have been “a wild one” and a most intelligent collaborator to her husband. Buddha, Marx, Freud, Paracelsus, Epicure, Ghenghis Kahn, Gandhi, Lenin and Stalin (the order is in poor taste but I painted them according to my historical knowledge which is also bad).
Among those belonging to the “masses,” I painted a sea of blood with which I signify “War,” inevitable and fertile.
And finally, the powerful and “never well ponderated” mass of humanity, composed of all kinds of . . . rare types, the warriors, the pacifists, the scientists and the ignorant, the makers of monuments, the rebels, the flag-bearers, the medal carriers, the loudmout
hs, the sane and the insane, the gay and the sad, the healthy and the sick, the poets and the fools and all the rest of the race that you wish to exist in this powerful bunch.
Only the ones in the foreground are seen a little clearly, the rest con el ruido . . . no se supo [literally, they were drowned out by the noise; idiomatically, they were lost in the fog].
327“On either side of the child”: Kahlo, “Moses,” p. 4.
328“the trunk of age”: Ibid., p. 6.
328a conch symbolizes “love”: Ibid.
329Their aim was . . . to “prepare individuals”: A copy of a 1943 booklet published by the Ministry of Education, announcing the school’s purposes and program, is in the Frida Kahlo archive.
329“in the beginning there were only about ten students”: Guillermo Monroy, private interview, Cuernavaca, Mexico, March 1977.
329“It is an old vice of women”: Fanny Rabel, private interview, Mexico City, August 1977.
330“brotherly, an extraordinary teacher”: Monroy, private interview.
330“I remember her entering the school”: Guillermo Monroy, transcribed by María Idalia (Monroy’s articles in Excelsior are usually signed by another writer), “Homenaje de un Pintor a Frida Kahlo a los 22 Años de su Muerte,” p. 8.
331“this should be a little stronger”: Monroy, private interview.
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