331“The only help she gave us”: García Bustos, private interview.
331“Frida’s great teaching”: Rabel, private interview.
332“Muchachos,” she would announce: Monroy, private interview.
332“When we were leaving”: Hector Xavier, private interview, Mexico City, November 1977.
333“We got so used to Frida”: Fanny Rabel, interviewed by Karen and David Crommie.
333“The whole garden is ours”: Monroy, private interview.
333“I remember particularly”: García Bustos, private interview.
333Monroy was equally bewitched”: Guillermo Monroy, “Hoy Hace 24 Años que Fallecío Frida Kahlo.”
334"[She] constantly renewed the scenography”: Rabel, Crommie interview.
334“When she was ill”: Ibid.
334“root of our modern art”: Arturo Estrada, private interview, Mexico City, March 1977. From Estrada, too, comes the list of Frida’s favorite painters.
335“great and many-sided painter”: Ibid.
335Fanny Rabel recalls: Rabel, private interview.
335Posada-like broadside: A copy of the announcement is in the Frida Kahlo archive.
336corridos written for the occasion: Copies of these corridos are in the Frida Kahlo archive.
337Rivera was photographed . . . Frida . . . danced: La Prensa (Mexico City), June 20, 1943, p. 27. Clipping of an unsigned article about the inauguration of La Rosita in the Frida Kahlo archive.
338“the greatest thing of that afternoon”: Xavier, private interview.
338All the dignitaries made speeches: La Prensa clipping, June 20, 1943, p. 27.
338“Frida Kahlo, satisfied with her work”: Ibid.
339Another newspaper took a more skeptical view: Clipping (unidentified) in Frida Kahlo archive.
339another mural project for the “Fridos”: Arturo Estrada, “Recuerdo de Frida,” text of lecture delivered on Aug. 11, 1967. Arturo Estrada’s personal archive.
339the laundresses contributed: Arturo García Bustos, interviewed by Karen and David Crommie.
339“at the moment of definitive selection”: Estrada, “Recuerdo de Frida.”
340“My particular project”: García Bustos, private interview.
340Each painter took responsibility: Estrada, “Recuerdo de Frida.” This collective, anti-individualistic idea was, Estrada notes, very much in vogue at the time.
340“dog without a master”: Rabel, Crommie interview.
340A photograph of the preparatory drawings: Photographs of these drawings are in a scrapbook on this mural project put together by Arturo García Bustos. It is in his personal archive.
340A rather formal invitation: A copy of the invitation is in García Bustos’s personal archive.
341Fanny Rabel says: Rabel, private interview.
341there was also music: García Bustos, Crommie interview.
341As early as June 1943 . . . they had a show: There is an announcement for this show in the Frida Kahlo archive.
341The “Fridos” contribution: Estrada, “Recuerdo de Frida.” For a description of the painting, see Tibol, Crónica, pp. 135–37.
341“She encouraged the development of a personalized style”: Diego Rivera, “Frida Kahlo: Biographical Sketch.”
341“If Diego had said”: Guillermo Velasco y Polo, private interview, Tepoztlán, Morelos, Mexico, October 1977.
342Frida . . . was welcomed back into the Communist fold: Octavio Paz said that when Rivera rejected Trotsky and embraced Stalinism, his application for readmission to the Mexican Communist party was “an abject and uncalled for mea culpa. " Bertram Wolfe recalled that Frida “dragged her feet” when Rivera made his political switch. She could not, said Wolfe, bring herself to grovel or to admit to the wrongs of her past political behavior the way Rivera chose to do when he underwent the ritual of “self-criticism” that the Communist party required (Wolfe, Diego Rivera, p. 396). Octavio Paz would disagree. According to him, Frida did not abstain from humiliating statements in her written application for readmission to the party: “Frida Kahlo’s retraction, no doubt influenced by Rivera, was no less shameful” (Octavio Paz, “Social Realism in Mexico: The Murals of Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros,” Artscanada 36 [December 1979–January 1980]: 63–64).
342“She was a humanist”: Rabel, private interview.
342Painting . . . should play a role in society: This information on Frida’s attitude toward the relationship between politics and art is from private interviews with García Bustos, Monroy, and Estrada.
342“Her roots in the tradition of our people”: Estrada, “Recuerdo de Frida.”
343“I’m going to be very sad”: Monroy, private interview.
CHAPTER 20: THE LITTLE DEER
344Dr. Alejandro Zimbíon . . . prescribed: Begun, medical record. All the details of Frida’s medical history are from that report, unless otherwise noted.
345Alejandro Gómez Arias recalls: Gómez Arias, private interview.
345Frida described the succession of orthopedic corsets: Bambi, “Un Remedio de Lupe Marín.”
346She spent three months: Dromundo, private interview.
346“We were horrified”: Adelina Zendejas, private interview, Mexico City, October 1977.
346“It was very exciting”: Ella Paresce, interviewed by Karen and David Crommie. Actually, the plaster corset displayed on Frida’s bed in her museum is not the same one that Ella Paresce helped to remove, for it shows no signs of having been cut in the front. Frida decorated it with decals, painted vegetal designs, and a broken classical column that runs down the middle. Until someone plucked them out, another “decoration” consisted of yellow thumbtacks stuck into the plaster’s surface. They recall the nails driven into Frida’s flesh in the Broken Column, and one can imagine her laughing as she pushed then in, but they look like points of pain.
347Dr. Eloesser believed: Joyce Campbell, private interview.
348“Now you can eat anything”: Monteforte Toledo, “Frida: Paisaje de Sí Misma,” p. 2.
348the doctors made her eat puréed food: Jacqueline Breton, private interview.
348Everything moves in time with what the belly contains: In her diary, Frida wrote a mysterious poem that ended with the same words:
Numbers. economy,
farce of the word,
nerves are blue
I don’t know why—also red,
but full of color
From round numbers
and red nerves
stars are made
and worlds are sounds.
I would not want to nourish
even the least hope,
everything moves in time
with what the belly contains.
348the microscope and the solar system: Frida’s vision of the world as a continuum and of herself as connected to a microcosm/macrocosm dialectic was, as we have seen, shared by her husband. Rivera’s murals show the span of life from the cellular to the cosmic. To take one example, he described a portion of his Radio City mural in the following words: “In the center, the telescope brings to the vision and understanding of man the most distant celestial bodies. The microscope makes visible and comprehensible to man infinitesimal living organisms, connecting atoms and cells with the astral system” (Wolfe, Diego Rivera, p. 321).
351The operation was performed in June: Dr. Philip Wilson’s son, Dr. Philip D. Wilson, Jr., M.D., who works at the Hospital for Special Surgery, wrote to me (July 21, 1977) that he remembers his father speaking of Frida but could find no trace of either hospital records or office records bearing the name Kahlo or de Rivera.
351“She was there with Cristina”: Noguchi, private interview.
352“My dear Engineer”: Letter to Eduardo Morillo Safa, Oct. 11, 1946, Mariana Morillo Safa’s personal archive.
354Dr. Wilson fused the wrong vertebrae: Gómez Arias, Dr. Velasco y Polo, private interviews.
354Cristina maintained that the operation. . . was so painful: Tibo
l, private interview.
355Lupe Marín recalled: Marín, private interview.
355She is said to have had osteomyelitis: del Conde, Vida de Frida Kahlo, p. 16.
356“Tree of Hope, keep firm” was her railing cry: Henestrosa, private interview. In his article “Frida,” Henestrosa compared Frida to a tree when he said: “Frida Kahlo has died. And with her goes, silently, a lesson of firmness in the face of adversity; with her death comes the end of the spectacle of a woman who was like a tree, small and weak, but so deeply rooted in the earth of life that death struggled for years to pull her out.”
357“the agony of living with Diego”: Ella Wolfe, private interview.
357the arrows signify Frida’s suffering due to male oppression: Frida’s Spanish-refugee lover, private interview.
357Once when a gardener brought her an old chair: Ibid.
357“in the pre-Hispanic world”: Rodríguez, private interview.
357As Anita Brenner explained: Brenner, Idols Behind Altars, p. 155.
358There is a popular song: García Bustos, private interview, March 1977. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: The connection between The Little Deer and this poem was pointed out by Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen in their essay “Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti” in Whitechapel Art Gallery, Exhibition Catalogue, Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti, p. 25.
359your Olinka: Olinka is the name of Isabel Villaseñor’s daughter.
CHAPTER 21: PORTRAITS OF A MARRIAGE
360“sacred monsters”: Interview with Frida’s Spanish-refugee friend who wishes to remain anonymous.
361He would tell people: Rivera, “Frida Kahlo: Biographical Sketch.” Frida’s painting, purchased by the State of France in 1939, is now in the Musée National de Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
361“There is no artist in Mexico”: Rosa María Oliver, “Frida la Unica y Verdadera Mitád de Diego.” Undated newspaper clipping, Isolda Kahlo archive.
362“We are all clods next to Frida”: Private interview with an old friend of Frida’s who wished to remain anonymous.
362“In the panorama of Mexican painting”: Rivera, “Frida Kahlo y el Arte Mexicano,” p. 101. Frida’s opinion of herself was humbler. To one friend who inquired about her art she said, “And how can you want me to have ambitions given the physical state in which I find myself? . . . They have performed eleven operations on me; and from each of them I come out with only one hope: to see Diego triumph again” (Antonio Robles, “La Personalidad de Frida Kahlo").
362Diego was the “architect of life”: Paul Boatine, private interview, Detroit, January 1978.
362She listened to his stories: Ella Wolfe, private interview.
362“His supposed mythomania"; Kahlo, “Retrato de Diego.”
363“Against the cowardly attacks”: Ibid.
363Once, in a restaurant: Wolfe, Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, pp. 360–61.
364Diego and Frida 1929–1944: There are, in fact, two versions of this painting. A visitor who saw the painting in 1944 described it as a “portable medallion” (Oliver, “Frida la Unica"). Frida did paint several oval miniatures, following a tradition of miniature painting that flourished in Mexico in the nineteenth century; one of them, barely two inches high and painted about 1946, was a self-portrait that she gave to her Spanish-refugee lover. Although it is only five by three inches, the extant version of Diego and Frida 1929–1944, is not locket size. The other version (documented in a photograph that was probably taken during Frida’s lifetime and is in the archive of Mexico’s Department of Fine Arts) is signed, and because it is more minutely painted, less cramped in organization, and slightly more elaborate in detail, I believe it to be the original. The other, I think, is a slightly later copy, also by Frida.
364she was, . . . the embryo that “engendered him”: Frida Kahlo, diary.
364shells were symbols of birth: Paul Westheim, “Frida Kahlo: Una Investigación Estética.”
364“the two sexes”: Kahlo, “Moses,” p. 6.
364the notion of showing duality: Frida was not the only twentieth-century artist to borrow the idea of the duality contained in a single figure from pre-Cortesian culture. Her friend Roberto Montenegro picked up on the idea in his Así es la Vida (Thus Is Life), 1937, where an elegant woman holding a mirror is divided vertically into half skeleton and half flesh-and-blood woman.
365intertwined branches look like Christ’s crown of thorns: The allusion to Christ’s martyrdom is obvious enough; Frida did, after all, transform Christ’s crown of thorns into a necklace in two 1940 self-portraits. On the other hand, Frida may have also intended the necklace-tree to be a symbol of the strong and vital bond between herself and Rivera—for Frida, trees were usually auspicious symbols denoting the perseverance of life against terrible odds.
365“To the celebrated painter”: The note is in the Frida Kahlo archive.
365“Being the wife of Diego”: Lozano, dispatch to Time, Nov. 9, 1950.
365“I will not speak of Diego as ’my husband’ ”: Kahlo, “Retrato de Diego.”
366“when I was alone with her”: Ella Wolfe, private interview.
368“The marvelous Nefertiti”: Kahlo, “Moses,” p. 5.
368“I’ve never seen anyone”: Interview with a lover of Frida’s who wishes to remain anonymous.
370“she consoled herself”: Tibol, private interview.
370her “Zapata” mustache: One wonders which of Frida’s courtiers (or was it Frida herself) wrote the rhyme scribbled on a scrap of paper that Frida always kept and that is now in the Frida Kahlo archive, Frida Kahlo Museum: “When I see you with a mustache, and like a little bald kid, I feel that I would like to turn into a homosexual.” The complete Spanish is: “Me gusta tu nombre, Frida,/pero tú me gustas más/ en lo ’free’ por decidida/ y en el final porque das./ Cuando te veo con tu bozo/ y como chico pelón/ siento que sería mi gozo/ el volverme maricón.”
370“Of his chest it must be said”: Kahlo, “Retrato de Diego.”
370The press posed the question: “Un Retrato de Escandalo,” undated newspaper clipping, Isolda Kahlo archive.
371Three leading papers published the “news”: Time dispatch from Mexico, Aug. 14, 1949.
371“I adore Frida”: Ibid.
371Frida took an apartment: Reyes and Rabel, private interviews.
371Rivera kept her informed: Rosa Castro, private interview.
371[Frida] even wrote María Félix: Ríos y Valles, private interview.
371Rivera also had an affair [with Pita Amor]: Ric y Rac, “In-Mural.”
371Adelina Zendejas tells of the time: Zendejas, private interview.
372“miserable and hurt”: Rivera, My Art, My Life, pp. 264–65.
372Diego and I was just a sketch: Samuel A. Williams, private telephone interview, November 1981.
375“Women . . . amongst them I”: Kahlo, “Retrato de Diego.”
375He holds a maguey plant: Frida compared Rivera’s resilient strength to that of a cactus: “Like the cacti of his land, he grows strong and astonishing, equally well in sand as in rock. . . . Even if they yank him from the earth, his roots live. . . . He rises up with surprising strength and, like no other plant, he flowers and gives fruit” (Kahlo, “Retrato de Diego,” p. 5). Rivera used a plant similar to the one in The Love Embrace, and likewise, sprouting upward, as a sexual symbol in his mural The Fecund Earth: “ My symbol for Nature was a colossal, dreaming woman. Securely clasped in her hands was an equally symbolic phallic plant” (My Art, My Life, p. 139). The nude Lupe Marín was Rivera’s model for fertility here. Frida, on the other hand, chose her naked husband as her model for a similar subject. The orange hue of the cactus in Rivera’s hand also recalls Frida’s Flower of Life, 1944.
375“His form: with his Asiatic-type head”: Ibid.
375“Oh, that boy”: Rabel, Crommie interview.
376Antonio Rodríguez remembers”: Rodríguez, private interview.
376“The images and ideas flow”: Kahlo, “Retra
to de Diego.”
377ojo avisor: Isolda Kahlo, private interview. Frida herself wrote “ojo avisor” on a large disembodied eye that she drew in the 1940s (Collection Rafael Coronel, Mexico City). And in her discussion of her Moses, she said she gave Moses an “ojo avisor” because he was “more alert and sharper than other people” (Kahlo, “Moses,” p. 4).
378Frida once drew her notion of love: In 1950, Frida and Diego each made a series of drawings expressing their responses to various human emotions. This was partly a game and partly a psychological experiment (Olga Campos, private interview).
378“If I had died without knowing her”: Lara Barba, “Sor Juana y Frida Kahlo: Paralelamente,” p. 8.
CHAPTER 22: NATURALEZA VIVA
383“the calvary that would lead to the end”: González Ramírez, “Frida Kahlo o el Imperativo de Vivir,” p. 22.
383Dr. Eloesser . . . scribbled some notes: The notes are among Dr. Eloesser’s letters from Frida in Joyce Campbell’s personal archive.
384“Forgive me the trouble”: Frida Kahlo, letter to Dr. Fastlich, Dr. Fastlich’s personal archive.
385“Today I answer your letter”: Matilde Kahlo, letter to Dr. Leo Eloesser, Joyce Campbell’s personal archive.
388Diego could be extraordinarily tender: Reyes, private interview.
388According to Dr. Velasco y Polo: Velasco y Polo, private interview.
388“she never complained”: Ibid.
388“With my new bone”: Velasco y Polo, private interview, and Lozano, dispatch to Time, Nov. 9, 1950.
388She also liked to let friends peek: Campos, private interview.
389Campos . . . had plans to write: Ibid.
389“when I leave the hospital”: Lozano, dispatch to Time, Nov. 9, 1950.
389Dr. Velasco y Polo recalls her fear of solitude: Velasco y Polo, private interview.
390“We healthy people”: Elena Vásquez Gómez, private interview, Mexico City, August 1977.
390“She did not concentrate on herself”: Rabel, private interview.
390“He has great talent”: Lozano, dispatch to Time, Nov. 9, 1950.
390When she had seen the whole series: Antonio Luna Arroyo, private interview, Mexico City, March 1977.
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