Pop Goes The World
Joann Ware
I recently traveled to Richmond to see the exhibit “Frida Kahlo: Beyond The Myth” at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Before seeing the exhibit, I had a very basic knowledge of the Mexican artist. I knew that she was famous for wearing flowers in her hair and donning brightly colored dresses. I knew that she endured a lot of physical pain in her life after surviving a terrible accident in her youth. I knew of her tumultuous marriage to fellow artist Diego Rivera. The exhibit filled in the gaps of my understanding of her as an artist and a passionate woman who dared the world to define or categorize her.
The exhibit, on loan from the Dallas Museum of Art, tells the story of Frida Kahlo through her paintings, her drawings, archival film footage and photographs. The first items one sees are photographs taken of her as a small child by her photographer father, Guillermo Kahlo. Even just starting out in life, there was a look of budding self awareness in her dark eyes. As she grew into adolescence, Frida became aware of her sexual ambiguity, making friends with the boys in school and dressing like them. In a family photograph, her siblings and parents are dressed in their Sunday best. Frida chose one of her father’s three-piece suits for the sitting and leans heavily into her father who seems far from thrilled that his daughter is dressed like a man. In another photo taken by her father, Frida wears a fashionable dress cut just below the knee, a pair of silk stockings and black kitten heels. She gazes into the camera with a slightly pained look as though she’s thinking, “This is not who I am.”
Unfortunately, infirmity became a part of who she was very early in life. She was 18 when she was traveling in a bus that collided with a streetcar, resulting in numerous casualties. Frida was impaled by a railing. Rescuers were hesitant to help her as her injury appeared to be fatal and instead opted to assist passengers who seemed more likely to pull through. Her boyfriend, Alejandro Gomez Arias, was with her at the time and he pleaded with medics to save her. Though she did manage to survive, her recovery was lengthy and painful. She was confined to a bed for three months, during which time she began painting.
The portrait she painted of Arias is also part of the exhibit. Though she produced it early in her career, the inscription in the top right hand corner of the painting, in which she refers to Arias as her “comrade forever,” was written much later in her life.
When Frida sought someone to critique her work, she reached out to Diego Rivera. The two became a couple and were married from 1929 to 1939. The pair reconciled and remarried in 1940. Their relationship was fraught with turmoil and neither was faithful to the other. But in one very moving part of the exhibit, one sees a short and silent color film of the two being affectionate with one another. At this time Frida had adopted the look that has made her such an instantly recognizable icon. In the footage, she adorns her hair with fresh flowers.
The quote “I paint flowers so they will not die” is often attributed to Frida. She knew that a person’s life had but so many years, but art lives on indefinitely. In a sketch Frida created in 1932, she depicts herself crying while holding a heart-shaped artist’s palette. The embryos on the left side of the drawing represent the children she lost to miscarriage. Frida realized she would never be a mother, and her art would serve as her living legacy.
Frida never fully recovered from the accident in her youth. She endured many surgeries that never delivered what they promised. Despite her constant pain and her frustration dealing with it, she managed to live an adventurous life. She was a world traveler and spoke five languages fluently. She was also an avowed communist who had a long friendship with Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky.
Following spinal surgery in 1949, Frida spent nine months in the hospital. After she was discharged, her mobility was compromised and she had to use a wheelchair. To pass the time while lying in bed, she took up painting brightly colored still lifes.
In photographs of her and in her self portraits in the early 1950s, one can see her vitality vanish. She appears completely depleted of energy. After the amputation of her right leg due to gangrene in 1953, she was photographed in her wheelchair looking exasperated and dispirited.
In the early hours of July 13, 1954, Frida died at her home in Mexico City. The last words of her diary read, “I joyfully await the exit – and I hope never to return.”
