MEXICO: COYOACAN, PART II--LA CASA AZUL

March 10, 2018

Finally it was time to go inside La Casa Azul.

I've always been intrigued by Frida Kahlo, but visiting her home in Coyoacán made me a little obsessed, which I have been ever since. 

Her life was crazy.  She was born in Coyoacán in 1907 to a German immigrant father and a mestiza, or mixed race, mother. She had polio at age six, which made one leg shorter than the other. A very intelligent young woman, she planned to attend medical school, but at age 18 she was in a bus accident in which a iron handrail went through her pelvis, fracturing her pelvic bone, puncturing her abdomen and uterus, breaking her spine in three places and her leg in eleven places, and crushing her right foot. She lived with significant pain for the rest of her life.

She met Diego Rivera, already a famous painter and 20 years her senior, in 1928. He had been married twice (and was still married). They were married in 1929. I don't get what was so appealing about him to her. Her parents, who didn't approve of him, called it "a marriage between an elephant and a dove."

Diego and Frida, 1933  (Photo from here)

They lived for a time in Cuernavaca, then they lived in various cities in the United States where Diego got commissions, including San Francisco, Detroit, and New York City. They built a house in 1934 in San Angel that was really two houses, his pink and white and hers blue, joined by a bridge. They lived there together until their divorce in 1939, at which point Frida moved back to her childhood home, La Casa Azul. She began to experience more and more success with her art, which was featured in major exhibitions in Mexico City, San Francisco, and New York City. She and Diego remarried in 1940. However, her poor health and escalating physical problems increasingly confined her to La Casa Azul.

By the mid-1940s she could not sit or stand for any length of time. She had a failed operation on her back in NYC in 1945, and further surgeries in Mexico City in 1950. Her right leg was amputated to the knee in 1953, and she became dependent on pain killers, even attempting an overdose when Diego had yet another affair. She died at age 47 in July 1954 of a pulmonary embolism. Her body lay in state under a Communist flag in the Palacio de Bellas Artes, and a few days later she was cremated as she had wished. Diego lived three more years.

Her art can be bizarre, and yet far more approachable for me than that of many others of her era. She spoke for feminism and social justice, and yet there was a deeply personal aspect of much of her work. There just isn't anyone like her--and I have to confess that I am part of the movement that has been called (and criticized extensively) "Fridamania."

In any case, La Casa Azul was opened as a museum just four years after her death; it is one of the most popular museums in Mexico City. It serves to preserve her personal possessions and to highlight the way she lived, as well as a kind of art museum.

I'll start with the art.

Frida started but never finished this Self-Portrait while she and Diego were living in Detroit in 1932.

In Henry Ford Hospital, 1932, Friday depicts herself hemorrhaging in a hospital bed while she miscarries a baby.

Unos Cuantos Piquetitos! or A Few Small Nips (1935) may be related to Diego's affair with Frida's sister Cristina.

Still Life (1942) is one of numerous still life paintings by Frida.

Ruin (1947) is a pencil sketch. The words on what looks like a tombstone on the right translate as "Bird house, Love Next, All for Nothing."  In the top right corner she has written "For Diego."

Frida was very close to her father, Guillermo Kahlo, but not at all close to her mother. She painted this portrait of her father in 1952. She notes in the caption that he was of Hungarian-German descent, was a photographer by profession, was a generous and intelligent character, suffered from epilepsy, and never stopped fighting against Hitler. She signs it, "With adoration, Your Daughter, Frida Kahlo."

Frida started painting this version of her Family Tree in the 1940s and was still working on it when she died in 1954. Two of Frida's sisters are on her right and one on her left. The faceless bodies may be her two half-sisters, or may be her nieces. The third faceless child may be Frida's older brother who lived only a few days, and the fetus next to Frida may be the children she lost due to abortions and a miscarriage.

Self Portrait with Stalin (1954) was painted just after Stalin died. (She and Diego were members of the Mexican Communist Party.)

Marxism Will Heal the Sick (1954) was among the last paintings Frida completed. In it, she appears to be wearing an orthopedic corset and a Tehuana skirt, representing both her physical issues and her cutural heritage. The gentle hands of Karl Marx reach out to embrace her while another hand strangles Uncle Sam's head on the body of an eagle. Frida appears to be experiencing a miracle cure and freedom from the trauma she has suffered. She has discarded her crutches and is holding the red book of Marxism.

Viva La Vida or Long Live Life (1954) is thought to be Frida's final painting. Although it seems to be quite a cheerful painting considering Frida's health problems at the time, watermelons are typically associated withe the Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) and symbolize connections to the dead or being consumed by the dead.

La Quebrada or The Gorge (1956) was actually painted by Diego Rivera two years after Frida's death. Diego dedicated this artwork to her. How many hidden forms can you find in this painting of Acapulco's famous cliffs where divers jump into the sea?

The Alarm Clock by Diego was painted in 1914 long before he met Frida and seems out of place in La Casa Azul.

I enjoyed some photographs of Frida that were also on display.

Here is Frida with Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky

Frida with Magenta Scarf (1939) is a photograph by Nickolas Muray, who happened to be Frida's  lover from 1931 to 1941. Six years into the relationship he began taking photographs of her. About 90 survive.

I must say, Bob, you did a pretty good job taking pictures of the art. That's not usually your thing. Only three of the above photos were taken by me. 

Between us we took about ten photos of the house, and I wish there were more. (I'm sure there were more on my lost/stolen camera.)  Here is what I have.

The kitchen/dining area:  

Frida's love of vibrant color is everywhere.

Diego and Frida shared a studio. The table on the left below is Diego's, and Frida would set up her wheelchair in front of her easel facing him:

I particularly loved the multiple Judas figures in the house. They are papier-mâché figures that are filled with explosives on or around Easter and blown up in the middle of the street. This one below, highlighting the spien and pelvis, looks pretty personal to Frida--perhaps representing the betrayal of her own body.

There were times when Frida was unable to get out of her bed to paint, and so she had a mirror installed on the ceiling of her four-poster bed. That way she could at least paint on the corset she was strapped into. Some of these corsets were on display at La Casa Azul.

I can't remember what those baby-like figures are that are hanging from the wooden canopy.

At the other end of the canopy she had some butterflies to look at.

What is that resting on the coverlet of her bed?

It's Frida! Well, it's her death mask, anyway. The shawl is changed on a regular basis.

The gardens around the house were lush and colorful.

This is the only picture we took of the blue paint that gives the house its name.

Here is a borrowed one.

From Wikipedia

Any by the way, guess whose faces grace to 500 peso bill, worth about $22 when we were there?  I'm glad to see that Frida is worth as much as Diego, but I'm not happy about the fact that she appears to be the BACK of the bill.

Sadly, a few months after we were there, Diego and Frida were overthrown by a new bill sporting the face of former president Benito Juarez on the front and a gray whale on the back.

READING
In doing some research for this post I ran across The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, which features Frida and Diego as some of the main characters.  I've had a hard time finding something that I wanted to read about Frida, and the recent movie starring Selma Hayek is far too graphic for me.  However, I have read and loved several of Kingsolver's novels, so I decided to give this a try. I was glad I did.

I think what I loved about this book was the fact that Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera were significant characters and the story takes place in numerous places we visited in Mexico. The main character is a Mexican-American boy who grows up in Mexico and who, after moving to the US, becomes an author of best-selling historical novels about Mexican history. His journal is compiled by the other main character, his female secretary, to create this book. Besides the lives of Frida and Diego, the plot also covers Trotsky’s time in Mexico. Because of the main character’s involvement with him, he becomes a victim of the 1950s McCarthy hearings in the US. A section on the polio epidemic was also especially interesting in light of the current Covid-19 pandemic.

I listened to the audible.com version this book, partly because it was read by the author, and she did an excellent job.

Here is one of my favorite quotes from the novel: "How strange to read of a place in a book and then stand on it, listen to the birds sing, and spit on the cobbles if you want." (Chapter 15)  I did the reverse of this--I read about the places that I had been. Very fun.