Performing the Self and the Other: Portraits and Self-Portraits by and Kahlo1

Ellen G. Landau

"The Strange Couple from the Land Like Nefertiti and, of course, Frida of the Dot and the Line": although Kahlo herself, Neferisis has thick con- used this inscription on spicuous eyebrows. Ojo único, unlike one page of her journal to identify an Akhenaton, has a full fleshy look; so imaginary Egyptian couple she depict- too his child and baby Moses. All ed in accompanying drawings, there is three, in fact, more or less share the little doubt that she intended it to facial qualities of Diego Rivera, Frida have a personal double meaning.2 Kahlo’s husband (whom she actu- Playing both visually and linguis­ tically on Amarna ruler Akhenaton 1 This essay was written as a lecture for and his famous consort, Kahlo no the international symposium Diego Rivera: A Transcu­­ltu­­ral Dialogu­­e, held at the Cleveland doubt generated her fictional charac­ Museum of Art (CMA) in February 1999 in ters, Ojo único, Neferisis, and their little conjunction with the opening of Diego Rivera: son, through a multi-layered process Art and Revolu­­tion, co-organized by INBA and CMA. I am indebted to William H. Robinson, of psychic associations. Indeed, flanking CMA Associate Curator of Modern Art, for the central fetus, the real historical inviting me to speak on this topic at the sym- spouses face each other in Kahlo’s posium. I would also like to thank Irene Herner, Moses, or Nu­­cleu­­s of Creation, a can- Debby Tenenbaum, and Amy Reed Frederick, as well as Bertha Cea of the American Embassy vas painted in 1945 (probably around in , for helping to make this essay the time of her undated diary entry); possible, and Leticia López Orozco for inviting and a contemporaneous statement me to publish it in Cró­nicas. 2 All quotes from Kahlo’s diary are taken clarifies Kahlo’s interest in this pair: "I from the 1995 Abrams English edition. The imagine", Kahlo mused, "that besides pages referenced in this essay are discussed having been extraordinarily beautiful, by Lowe, 213-15, 220, 235. 3 [Nefertiti] must have been ‘a wild one’ Herrera, Frida, 326 and 482, quoting an informal lecture by Kahlo on Freud’s Moses and a most intelligent collaborator to and Monotheism given in 1945 at the home of her husband".3 Domingo Lavin. ally married twice, in 1928 and, after Diego my mother a brief divorce, in 1940). Moreover, Diego my father her word-picture of Nefertiti rather Diego my son deftly encapsulates Frida’s own auto- Diego = me biography. A few pages earlier, Kahlo used Once again, she concludes with a different set of artistic binaries meaningful wordplay: to metaphorize her relationship Diego Universo to Rivera. Here she called herself Diversidad en la u­­nidad. ‘Au­­xocromo’ and him ‘Cromoforo’: Without a doubt, the diversity She who wears the color and He between Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo who sees the color. was patently obvious to all; indeed, their Since the year 1922. very visible physical discrepancies led Until always and forever. Now in Kahlo’s parents to complain she was 1944. After all the contracting a ludicrous marriage "bet­ hours lived through. ween an elephant and a dove".4 Also apparent were the conspicuous distinc- In an annotation clearly meant tions between their oeuvres: the much for Rivera to read, Kahlo assigned her more famous Rivera was primarily a role in their marriage as subordinate, muralist with grand social and political but complementary; "You fulfill", she intentions. By contrast, Kahlo, influenced proclaims, "I receive". by primitive retablos, created small, But was their union really so con- intensely introspective works. But was ventionally gender-specific? In a later there a unity of intention and ethos that diary entry, Kahlo specifically enunci- transcended or linked their opposing ates each and every role she believed personal and artistic characteristics? that Rivera played in her life. Not all I will focus in this essay on of these are typically masculine. Her addressing this question by examin- list reads like a mantra: ing their shared practice of making self-portraits and mutual depictions. Diego beginning Through these, Rivera and Kahlo Diego bu­­ilder Diego my child 4 Bambi, “Frida es una Mitad”, Excélsior Diego my boyfriend (México City), June 13, 1954, 6; quoted in Diego painter Hayden Herrera, “Beaty to his Beast: Frida Diego my lover Kahlo and Diego Rivera”, in Witney Chad­ wick and Isabelle de Courtivron, eds., Signifi­ Diego "my hu­­sband" cant Others: Creativity and Intimate Partnership. 16 Diego my friend (: Thames and Hudson, 1993), 119. Reprografía, Frida y sus hermanas Adriana y Cristina, su prima Carmen y el niño Carlos Veraza, 1926. Foto: Archivo Fotográfico Manuel Toussaint/IIE. often portrayed their deepest fee­ R i v e r a ’ s v a u n t e d a b i l - lings for their beloved Mexico and ity to embroider the truth was a trait betrayed the complexity of their noticed early, and it took on more personal emotions. of his own gargantuan proportions Imbricated within an admit- throughout his life. In his largely fanciful tedly fractious alliance, their affinities ‘autobiography’, told to Gladys March and polarities –so closely tied to the between 1944 and 1957, he describes strengths and weaknesses of their his first ‘apparition’ of Frida, their 1922 nation– often played out at a level of meeting on the scaffold while he, aged highest intensity when they looked 37, was painting Creation, a at inward and at each other. I will exam- the National preparatory School in ine in particular the performative Mexico City, and she was a 15-year aspects of these portraits analyzing old pre-medical student. "She had them as visual texts, in which Rivera unusual dignity," Diego recalled, "and and Kahlo invent meanings with both self-assurance, and there was a strange individual and national importance. fire in her eyes. Her beauty was that 17 Frida Kahlo, Autorretrato en la frontera entre México y Estados Unidos, 1932, Óleo y collage sobre masonite. Foto: Archivo Fotográfico Manuel Toussaint/IIE.

of a child, yet her breasts were well- ity as seen in her incarnation as The developed".5 Liberated Earth, at the Autonomous This event (which prompted University of Chapingo. Frida to tell friends her new ambi- In a particularly evocative passage tion was to have the great painter’s in the March book, Rivera also tells of baby) supposedly took place only his first glimpse of Lupe. Whereas a few days after Rivera began living Kahlo was tiny and doll-like, Marin with Guadalupe Marin, who would was "a strange and marvelous-looking soon become his first wedded wife creature, nearly six feet tall". and would remain his most impor- 18 tant model of voluptuous feminin- 5 March, 75. [Lupe] was black-haired, yet her this remark in a telling way. Hers was hair looked more like that of a not, he pointed out, "an ordinary and chestnut mare than a woman’s. regular beauty", but "the exceptional Her green eyes were so transpa­ and characteristic beauty of what she rent she seemed to be blind. Her produces". Reckoning her "a vital force", face was an Indian’s, the mouth Rivera lauded Kahlo’s sincerity (which with its full, powerful lips open, he termed "both tender and cruel"), the corners drooping like those giving a Marxist assessment of "her exac­ of a tiger. The teeth showed spar­ titude and intensity" as "always reaching kling and regular: animal teeth a universal plane and extension and set in coral such as one sees in playing a social role we would dare to old idols. Held at her breast, her call poetically didactic and rigorously extraordinary hands had the dialectic". Additionally, Rivera acclaimed beauty of tree roots or eagle tal- Kahlo’s "velocity", "absolute frankness", ons. She was round-shouldered, "fantastic logic", and "constant power yet slim and strong and taper- to penetrate the ideas, intentions, and ing, with long, muscular legs that feelings of others". In short, he seems made me think of the legs of a most attracted by her "great possibili- wild filly.6 ties of imaginative creation".8 Notably, Rivera mentions to Although he had certainly taken Tibol his wife’s "ability to stand pain immediate notice of Frida’s budding far beyond the normal". Kahlo had chest, Rivera apparently did not feel polio as a child which withered one of similarly moved to rhapsodize either her legs, a physical characteristic she verbally or visually about the sexual shared with the Aztec God of War. nature of her physical characteristics, In September 1925, while a student except to admire her mustache and at the preparatory School, she was her eyebrows. The latter seemed to impaled by a rod in a bizarre collision him "like the wings of a blackbird, between a tram and a bus. According their black arches framing two extra­ ordinary brown eyes". (Frida, on the 6 Ibíd., 74. other hand, fixated –in her diary and 7 For Diego’s description of Frida, see in humorous drawings– on what she March, 102; for Frida’s of Diego, Abrams edi- considered Diego’s most erotic body tion of her diary, 17, commentary by Lowe, 213. parts: his breasts and "flower-foun­ 8 See Rivera, "Frida Kahlo and Mexican tain", her petname for his penis!).7 Art", Boletin del Seminario de Cu­­ltu­­ra Mexicana, Diego did describe Frida to Raquel v. 1 (oct., 1943) and Raquel Tibol, "Frida Kahlo, artista de genio", La Prensa (Buenos Aires, Tibol in 1953 as "an extraordinarily Argentina, July 12, 1953), excerpts reprinted in handsome woman," but he qualified Tibol, "An Exchange of Looks", 65-66. 19 to an eyewitness (her boyfriend, Diego was never again inspired to Alejandro Gómez Arias), Frida was use Frida as a model in this way. somehow thrown clear. She landed in Although Lupe Marin was actually the street, naked although sprinkled a middle-class girl from Guadalajara, with the residue of another passen­ for Rivera her strong physicality and ger’s packet of gold dust. "tempestuous beauty" quite literally Partially due to this accident, seemed to embody the indigenous Kahlo subsequently had 32 operations vitality of primitive Mexico. Kahlo, (some needed and some not), several whose mother was part Spanish/part miscarriages, and numerous required Indian and whose father was a Hun­ abortions; she never was able to pro- garian Jew, had perforce to demon- duce a little ‘Dieguito’. Despite many strate the Mexicanidad Rivera loved extramarital liaisons with both men in a more artificial manner. Frida, as and women who obviously desired seen in the "signature" carved into her, Kahlo always perceived her body stone beneath her in Self Portrait on as imperfect for love.9 the Borderline between Mexico and the Interestingly, although he depic­ United States (1932) sometimes used ted Lupe nude many times, Rivera one of her middle names to become represented Kahlo unclothed only ‘Carmen Rivera’.11 Indeed, her some­ once, right after their initial marriage what atypical mestizo status not­ when they were living temporarily in withstanding, she managed to exhibit Cuernevaca so that he could paint a indigenismo with the greatest panache. mural cycle at the palace of Cortés. In 1930 Diego drew Frida’s definitely somewhat boyish body as she sat 9 See Amy Fine Collins, "Diary of A Mad on the edge of their bed wearing Artist", Vanity Fair (Sept. 1995), 185, citing an unpublished 1949-50 interview with Olga only high-heeled shoes, in the pro- Campos in which Frida stated: cess of either clasping or unhook- ing a heavy beaded Indian necklace. The most important part of the body is The lithograph which was based on the brain. Of my face I like the eyebrows and eyes. Aside from that I like nothing. this pencil sketch indicates that Kahlo My head is too small. My breasts and was not at ease posing for her hus- genitals are average. Of the opposite sex, band naked. Her eyes are "modestly I have the moustache and in general the face. averted"; according to Rivera’s most recent biographer, patrick Marnham, 10 Marnham, 229-30. "there is something sacrificial about 11 See Rebecca Block and Linda [this depiction], in her resigned, sub- Hoffman-Jeep, "Fashioning National Identity: Frida Kahlo in ‘Gringolandia’ ", Woman’s Art missive attitude, [there is] something Jou­­rnal 19 (Fall 1998/Winter 1999), 10, and 10 20 almost masochistic". In any case, Herrera, Frida, 134. As Rivera told Tibol, Kahlo mani- fested her Mexicanness:

in her hairdos, in the way she dresses, in her opulent taste for adorning herself with jewelry that is stranger and more beautiful than costly. She loves thousand- year-old jade, and she wears the huipil and the Tehuantepec cos- tume with skirt of ironed batiste that the Tehuantepec women and those from Juchitán in Oaxaca used to wear and still do.

He proclaims with evident pride, that Frida’s "manner of dress is the very embodiment of national splendor. She has never betrayed its spirit", without conceding that she donned the costume of the strong matriarchal cultures of the isthmus of Tehuantepec in large measure to please his fancy.12 Rivera’s generative role in Kahlo’s performance of Mexicanidad is clarified by examining photos and Diego Rivera, Fiesta del Día de Muertos, fres- co, Secretaría de Educación Pública. descriptions of her at other points Foto: Archivo Fotográfico Manuel Toussaint/ in her life. It is particularly reveal- IIE. ing that Frida did not present herself this way before she became involved with Diego (whom she once dubbed natty male attire displays herself as "her second accident"), nor during the declaratively androgynous. year they were divorced. Many of her Conversely, at the time Kahlo and other outfits, however, demonstrate Rivera re-met two years hence (at a the co-option of equally theatrica­lized party given by expatriate photographer alternative identities. For instance, in who, also modeled for, several 1926 family pictures taken 12 professionally by her father, Frida in Tibol, "An Exchange of Looks", 65-66. 21 and had sexual relations with Rivera order to signal solidarity with the at Chapingo), Kahlo, often performed proletariat, Diego sometimes traded the ultra-femininity of a professional the macho look for simple workman’s coquete. According to the jealous Lupe, duds, but his humility took on more when Frida came a second time to visit than a whiff of posturing. A notable Diego at work, this time at the Ministry example of this is his triptych, The of Education, "her face was painted, she Making of a Fresco, painted in San wore her hair Chinese style, her dress Francisco at the School of was décolleté à la flapper".13 Or, when Fine Arts in 1931, where suspiciously she appeared in more politicized con- Christ-like, he appears dead center, texts such as Modotti’s gathering, Kahlo high up on the plank of a scaffold, assumed the drab, asexual garb of a but sitting backwards with his large Russian Communist. buttocks amply displayed. Flanked not The earliest known picture of by attendant saints, rather similarly Diego and Frida together shows dressed-down technicians and co- them marching side by side as pCM workers, he relegates the architects members, under the banner of the in expensive suits and hats to the Sindicato de Pintores y Escu­­ltores, in lowest register. a 1929 Labor Day demonstration. In Mexico City at the Ministry Frida, now aged 22, her hair cut very of Education, however, Rivera had short, wears something akin to a also appropriated the latter per- khaki Girl Guide uniform, complete sona. Presenting himself in a second- with kerchief and sensible shoes; an floor stairwell as an architect, not an enormous-bellied Diego –looking artisan, may have been intended in old enough to be her father (which this instance to express his self-per- he was at 43)– strides along in his ceived importance as ‘the builder’ of own para-military outfit (but without a new style of revolutionary mural- the high boots, bandolier, or holster ism. But he does not look complete- and pistol he sometimes sported to ly happy in this more bourgeois role. shock and amuse the tourists). His In August 1929, one of his American face is shaded from the May sun by acolytes, Ione Robinson (purport- his signature Stetson hat. edly yet another mistress), pulled Cer tainly, one of the most no punches when she described important roles Kahlo and Rivera fre- in her diary the typically egotisti- quently adopted concurrently in their on-going masqu­­erade à deu­­x was as 13 Quoted in Herrera, Frida, 94. joint incarnations of what he termed 14 14 Rivera, "Frida Kahlo and ", the ‘collective-individual’ spirit of reprinted in David Craven, Diego Rivera as Epic 22 Mexican revolutionary socialism. In Modernist (NY: G.K. Hall and Co., 1997), 184. cal Diego as here "looking very sick to his stomach. He might well be feeling like that now, for there is an undercurrent of resentment against him that is growing very strong".15 Indeed, slumped on a scaffold step below the painter , Rivera refers somewhat discon­ solately to the blueprints on his lap, while simultaneously keeping an eye on the sculptor Martinez pintao at work. This pose was actually copied from a 1924 photo taken at the Ministry site by Modotti’s lover Edward Weston, in which Rivera, look­ ing even more world-weary, rests and smokes a cigarette. Elsewhere, on the ground floor of the Ministry in the Court of Fies­ tas, Rivera (easily identified once again by his autographic Stetson) is followed by Lupe in a fashionable cloche hat. Now, the artist makes eye contact with the viewer from Reprografía, Frida Kahlo y Diego Rivera. Foto: Archivo Fotográfico Manuel Toussaint/ the back of a motley crowd of revel- IIE. ers celebrating the November 1st festival of the Day of the Dead. In a happier, or perhaps more sardon- time The Day of the Dead was being ic mood –both appropriate to the painted, in 1925, Diego described Mexican carnival spirit– Diego plays himself as a kind of su­­i generis every­ the Hitchcockian flâneur, mediating man, in touch "with the sentiments the spectacle and giving the tradi- tional form of the participant self- 15 Robinson, A Wall to Paint On (NY: E.P. portrait a rather witty update. Dutton and Company, Inc., 1946), 105-6 (entry As Max Kozloff has convincingly dated Mexico City, Aug. 11, 1929). argued, Rivera’s seemingly insignificant 16 Kozloff, "Orozco and Rivera: Mexican cameo role on this panel may also Fresco Painting and the Paradoxes of Natio­ nalism", in Waldo Rasmussen, ed., Latin Ameri­ be based in the artist’s ongoing bid can Artists of the Twentieth Centu­­ry (NY: The 16 for legendary status. About the Museum of Modern Art, 1993), 67. 23 Diego Rivera, Alegoría de California, 1931, fresco, San Francisco, California. Foto: Archivo Fotográfico Manuel Toussaint/IIE.

of his people". Speaking in the third Work on the 124 frescoes at the person, Rivera proclaimed, not quite Ministry spanned the period 1923 modestly, that: to 1928, broken only by Rivera’s short trip to Russia and the project He was a unit identical with the at Chapingo. By the time he had com­ thousands of Mexican co-workers. The artist did not have to pretend 17 Rivera, "Los frescos de la Secretaría any spiritual or philosophical pos- de Educación," in Antonio Rodríguez, A ture, nor much less take a political History of Mexican Mu­­ral Painting, trans. By Marina Corby (NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1969). stand, but simply listen to his own 17 Originally pub. in El Arqu­­itecto (Sept. 1925), 24 deepest feelings . . . 17. Quoted in Kozloff, 67-8. pleted the last installment, an epi- It seems significant that, by com- sode of the second-floor Corrido of parison, the only time Kahlo painted the Revolu­­tion, known variously as The herself in male attire with mannish Arsenal, Distribu­­tion of Arms, and The hair, she wears her husband’s grossly Insu­­rgents, in current American slang, oversized suit, and has just shorn her Lupe was "history". As the American own tresses to spite him after their leftist Bertram Wolfe (Rivera’s first 1939 divorce. There is no patriotic biographer), put it, looking at this banner above her head proclaiming composition, anyone who knew him a ballad of the Revolution as seen well would come to the obvious con­ in The Arsenal; instead, she seems to clusion that "Diego had a new girl".18 subtly mock Rivera’s epic, messianic Instead of celebrating himself pretensions by inscribing at the top at the center of The Arsenal, Rivera of her picture the mundane plaintive situated Frida Kahlo in the place of lyrics of a popular romantic song: honor, presenting her as a radical "See, if I loved you, it was for your Mexican version of Saint Joan.19 hair; now you’re bald, I don’t love you Dres­ed not in Joan’s suit of armor, any more".20 Once again, by con- but her tailored red shirt with Com­ trast, she often depicted herself as a munist star pinned above the breast, Tehuana or indigenista, while Diego Frida stands proudly amidst denim- presented her only twice in the clad worker-soldiers, distributing guise of his beloved ‘u­­na Mexicana, materiel. Above her, one of the men mu­­y bonita’. holds aloft a red flag emblazoned This person came into being on with the hammer and sickle, symbols October 21st 1929, when Frida bo­ the Mexican Party adopted from the rrowed a skirt, blouse and rebozo, USSR. or shawl, from her Indian maid in Of course, Kahlo did not really order to get married: not in church, participate in such dangerous mili- but at the City Hall in Coyoacán, a tant activities as handing out arms Mexico City suburb. Her father, who to revolutionaries, although Rivera’s fellow muralist , 18 Bertram Wolfe, The Fabu­­lou­­s Life of seen gazing outward at left, actually Diego Rivera (NY: Stein and Day, 1939), 244. did. Tina Modotti, by then embroiled 19 Carlos Fuentes, "Introduction", Abrams ed. of Kahlo’s Diary, 11. in a complicated three-way relation- 20 See Tibol, An Open Life, 23-5. This ship with Comintern agent Vittorio portrait has been extensively discussed by Vidali, and the soon-to-be assassi- art historians in Mexico, the U.S. and Great nated, exiled Cuban Communist Julio Britain, especially feminists and Marxists. See, for example, Terry Smith, "From the Margins: Antonio Mella, is featured with them Modernity and the Case of Frida Kahlo", Block, at far right. no. 8 (1983), 11-23. 25 Diego Rivera, La educación obrera, 1929, 1935, 1945, fresco, detalle, Palacio Nacional. Foto: Archivo Fotográfico Manuel Toussaint/IIE.

somewhat oddly warned Diego that genous costume in Diego and I, a trouble might lie ahead, as his favo­ wedding portrait she created after rite child was actually u­­n demonio the fact, in 1931 in Gringolandia, Fri­ ocu­­lto was the bride’s only family da’s pejorative term for what she member to attend. Even he seems considered the too mechanistic and to have been confused as to whet­ materialistic United States. (A prepa­ her this unlikely union was really hap­ ratory sketch for this folkloric and pening; when he rose and queried stylized canvas –painted as a gift for those assembled, "Gentlemen, is it the man who arranged Rivera’s U.S. not true that we are play-acting?",21 entry visa– shows their positions Guillermo Kahlo quite unintentio­ reversed. Kahlo wears her double- nally summarized a key component flounced dress, and her husband of his daughter and new son-in-law’s looks more informal without his jac­ unusual romance. As her biographer Hayden 21 Quoted in Herrera, Frida, 99. For Herrera has noted, Kahlo also looks recent feminist discussion of the wedding, see 26 somewhat uncomfortable in her indi­ Lindauer, 12-20. Diego Rivera, Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central, 1947, fresco, deta- lle, Hotel del Prado. Foto: Archivo Fotográfico Manuel Toussaint/IIE. ket, brushes and palette.) By the time painted in San Francisco, in close pro­ she developed her signature self-ima­ ximity to their re-marriage in that ges mostly painted during the 1940s, city. In this case, on the far right Frida had obviously learned to mani­ panel, in full Tehuana regalia, and with pulate with greater artistic sophis­ a mask-like, impassive Pre-Columbian tication the rhetoric underlying her face, it is she who wields palette and performative status as an exemplar brushes, standing next to a make- of Mexican cultural identity. shift easel. purportedly to reinforce Rivera’s most conspicuous pre­ the fresco’s theme of pan-American sentation of Kahlo this way was in Unity, Rivera sits behind Kahlo, clasp- his 1940 Allegory of California, also ing hands around ‘the tree of life and 27 love’ with actress paulette Goddard, cation, not only Frida (wearing a the wife of Cha­lie Chaplin, who is hammer and sickle necklace), but depicted several times elsewhere her sister Cristina, recently divorced. in the mural. Of course, Diego and The latter’s two children, Antonio Goddard were also having an affair, and Isolda, are seated next to their so once again he was acting the mother. macho or pelado, flaunting his most Rivera’s liaison with the more elemental impulses. In her isthmus seductive and fertile Cristina (who clothing, Kahlo, as opposed to signify- appears at the National palace ina­ ing matriarchal power, reads here as ppropriately dressed for revolu- La Chingada, the personification of a tion, with an even more blank-eyed, long-suffering Mexico violated and orgasmic stare than Goddard’s) deceived by liars and outsiders.22 was, without a doubt, his cruelest Rivera gets himself off the hook, so betrayal. Earlier, in 1929, the begui­ to speak, by implying (more than ling and curvaceous Cristina had somewhat callously) that Frida has served as his model for Eve corrup­ the power to sublimate her personal ted by the serpent at the Ministry anguish through her art. of Health and Education; Frida had In the March ‘autobiography’ naively suggested her for this posi­ Diego admits, "If I loved a woman, tion. Kahlo’s own subsequent affair the more I loved her the more I with –for whom she wanted to hurt her. Frida was only painted a primitivistic self-depiction the most obvious victim of this dis- gusting trait",23 and Pan-American Unity was actually not the first nor 22 For a recent discussion of Rivera’s the only time he committed chin­ Pan-American Unity and Allegory of California, see paul J. Karlstrom, "Rivera, Mexico and gar, publicly humiliating her. Rivera Modernism in California Art", in Diego Rivera: highlighted in colossal size the head Art and Revolu­­tion, 219-34. For the pelado and of American tennis star Helen Wills macho as Mexican types, see Samuel Ramos, Moody, another of his paramours, at The Mexican Mind: Profile of Man and Cu­­ltu­­re in Mexico, (México, Imprenta Mu­­ndial, 1934); the pacific Stock Exchange in 1930- Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitu­­de: Life and 31 and, even worse, a few years later Thou­­ght in Mexico, transl. By Lysander Kemp created what Jean Franco incisively (NY: Grove Press Inc. and London: Evergreen 24 Brooks Ltd., 1991); Mathew C. Gutmann, The terms ‘a male polygamous fantasy’ Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City when painting The Stru­­ggle of the (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1996). Classes, the south stairwell panel at 23 See Herrera, 183. 24 the National palace in Mexico City. See Franco, Plotting Women: Gender and Representation in Mexico (NY: Columbia There he included, in the guise of University press, 1989)as well as Lindauer, 28 Cardenista teachers of Marxist edu­ 31-33. Frida Kahlo. El amoroso abrazo del universo, de la Tierra, Diego, yo y el Sr. Xólotl, óleo sobre masonite, Foto: Archivo Fotográfico Manuel Toussaint/IIE. holding a message "dedicated with the tables were turned, provoked all love"– was probably in retaliation, a situation with truly momentous and indeed Diego, infuriated when political repercussions. 29 In point of fact, many who knew tion, a 1930 lithomontage,26 this is them believed that more impor- the only time he ever represented tant to the success of Rivera and their bodies touching. Kahlo’s union than sexual satisfac- While, in the Hotel del prado tion was the perfect match between mural, Rivera outfits his ten-year-old her desire to be a mother and his incarnation with umbrella, pet snake to be pampered and indulged like and frog (one of Frida’s many en­ an overgrown child. Artistically, both dearing names for him was El Sapo- expressed this psychologically fraught Rano, the ‘Frog-Toad’, for obvious connection (Oedipal in more ways reasons), he places in her left hand than one), from obviously different a Chinese Yin-Yang symbol. This Eas­ personal vantage points. tern icon, also found throughout her In his Dream of a Su­­nday After­ diary, signifies the fated reconciliation noon in the Alameda, painted in of male/female, light/dark, life/death 1947-48 for the dining room of and all such contradictions. Central Mexico City’s Hotel del prado, to the allegory of his own destiny among the 140 historical and genre –which Diego obviously visualized figures (many posed by friends as intertwined with that of his coun- and family members), the 60-year try– Frida seems to play for him a old Rivera included himself twice salubrious and sheltering role. in the guise of a youth.25 At the In 1938, visiting French theorist far end of the composition he is André Breton tried to co-opt her as an seen in a wide-brimmed hat and exemplar of the potency of the Euro­ sailor suit eating a taco. More pean Surrealist movement. But Frida prominently, slightly left of center, protested, "I never painted dreams. I he appears again, this time holding painted my own reality".27 Although it hands with a Quetzacoatl-plumed Catarina Calavera, or female death’s- 25 For identification of the figures in this head dandy, the creation of revered mural, see Su­­eño de u­­na Tarde Dominical en la Mexican satirist posada, situated Alameda Central, Mu­­ral 50 Años 1947-1997 (Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura to her right. Rivera, in this instance y las Artes, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, dressed as he was the day he took Museo Mural Diego Rivera, 1997). his San Carlos Academy entrance 26 I am referring to the double litho­ exam, later described his pre-ado- graph, Au­­torretrato y desnu­­do de Frida (Colle­ ction: INBA-MCG), cat. no. 894 in Diego lescent self in the Alamada Park as Rivera Catálogo General de Obra de Caballete "dreaming of his ideal love" –Kahlo– (Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1989). See who stands behind him, a maternal Tibol, "An Exchange of Looks", 62. 27 Quoted in Time, April 27, 1953, 90. arm placed on his shoulder. With See Sarah M. Lowe, Frida Kahlo (NY: Universe 30 one significantly contrived excep- Publishing, 1991), 78-80. had not yet been created, her version easel self-portraits. For instance, she of herself as primary care-giver to her writes: immature husband, the elaborately titled easel painting, The Love-Embrace With his Asiatic head above of the Universe, The Earth (Mexico), which his dark hair grows, so thin Diego, Me, and Mr. Xó­lotl was the type and fine that it seems to float of picture that must have inspired in the air, Diego is a giant child, Breton to proclaim Kahlo a kindred immense, of kind face and a spirit. The psychic and cosmological slightly sad look. His bulging eyes, connotations of this work, painted dark, very intelligent and huge, about a year after Rivera’s dream at are constrained with difficulty the Alameda, are definitely more con­ –they are almost outside their flic­ed and disturbing than his some­ orbits– because of swollen and what egoistic utopianism. She too protruding eyelids . . . The form borrows from history painting, amal­ of Diego is that of an affection- gamating Christian iconography and ate monster, inspired by fear and the symbols of other world religions hunger, created by the ancient when she equips Diego’s fat, baby concealer, a necessary and eter- Jesus incarnation on her lap with fire nal element . . .29 and Buddha’s third eye of wisdom. By also placing his grown-up image in La Gran Ocu­­ltadora was in fact one the forehead position on her face, in of his endearing pseudonyms for her. several poignant self-portraits Frida Although, in depicting Kahlo traps Diego with her obsessive love. through words and pictures, Rivera Thus she fulfills, pictorially at least, her liked to pretend her meaning to father’s queer prediction.28 Mexico was more important than An article published in Noveda­ their personal association, as Wolfe des in 1955 soon after her death relates, after her probable suicide, shows that, like Rivera, Kahlo was "Diego became an old man in a few adept at appropriating Marxist minutes -pale and ugly". An observer rhetoric when asked to characte­ said that he scooped a handful of her rize and praise her husband. Many ashes at her cremation and ate them, additional comments on him in this essay are, not surprisingly, however, much more private and self-revela- 28 I am referring to Guillermo Kahlo’s tory. warning to Diego (cited earlier) that his daug- hter was u­­n demonio ocu­­lto, quoted in March, Sometimes her words virtually 104. narrate the parallel texts of his own, 29 Kahlo, "Portrait of Diego", Novedades, rather more brutally honest, later July 17, 1955; reprinted in Calyx (Oct. 1960), 93. 31 demanding that his own be mixed tute of Arts Founders Society and NY: W.W. Norton Co., 1986) with hers "molecule by molecule" (a Herrera, Hayden, Frida: A Biography of request not granted, as he was buried Frida Kahlo (NY: Harper & Row with other Mexican heroes).30 Pub., 1983). In her now-famous journal, no Hubert, Renée Riese, "Portraiture and doubt also referring by metaphor to Revolution: Frida Kahlo and Diego her marriage, Frida Kahlo observed, Rivera", in Magnifying Mirrors: Women, Su­­rrealism and Partnership "Only one mountain can know the core (Lincoln and London: University of of another". Despite her protestations Nebraska Press, 1994), 345-66. of primary allegiance to Lindauer, Margaret A., Devou­­ring Frida: The (which increased in intensity as she Art History and Popu­­lar Celebrity of became more ill), it should be evident Frida Kahlo (Hanover and London: that, for an orthodox Socialist, Kahlo Wesleyan University Press, 1999). Lowe, Sarah, ed., The Diary of Frida Kahlo, was much too subjective and emotional An Intimate Self-Portrait (NY: Harry about one individual, her husband. She N. Abrams Inc., pub. and La Vaca surely understood, however –as did Independiente S.A. de C.V., 1995); he– the power of the Marxist concept introduction by Carlos Fuentes. thesis/antithesis/synthesis, as the basis Marnham, Patrick, Dreaming with his Eyes Open: A Life of Diego Rivera (NY: of dialectical transformation. Alfred A. Knofp, 1998). Performing themselves as they Rivera, Diego, My Art, My Life: An depicted each other obviously pro­ Au­­tobiography (with Gladys March), vided an essential avenue through reprint edition (Dover pub., 1991); which these two extraordinary fabu­ originally pub. in English by The lators could continuously transform Citadel Press (NY, 1960). Schaefer, Claudia, Textu­­red Lives: Women, and reconfigure the ongoing dialectic Art and Representation in Modern that fueled their sometimes tense, Mexico (Tucson and Lon­on: The but always fascinating intimate and University of Arizona Press, 1992). artistic relationship. Tibol, Raquel, Frida Kahlo: An Open Life, trans. By Elinor Randall (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1993). Bibliography 30 Wolfe, 400, is quoting Ella parescu’s Burros, Christina, ed., Diego Rivera, recollection of Diego after Kahlo’s death. Frida Kahlo (Mar tigny, Switzer­ For Diego’s scooping of Frida’s ashes, see land: Fondation pierre Gianadda, Marnham, 311. After her death he wrote: 1998), especially Raquel Tibol, "Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo: An July 13th, 1954, was the most tragic day of my life, I had lost my beloved Frida Exchange of Looks," 55-66. forever. Too late I realized that the most Detroit Institute of Arts, Diego Rivera: A wonderful part of my life had been my Retrospective (Detroit: Detroit Insti­ 32 love for Frida.