Frida Read online

  The theater likewise took on a native color. Tandas, intimate theatrical reviews that followed old Spanish forms, were “Mexicanized,” and parts were written for typically Mexican people, types that, as in the visual arts, were meant to symbolize aspects of the nation. Sophisticated urbanites flocked to see the carpas—street theaters set up in tents and showing satirical skits on the latest political fiascos—and people who used to enjoy only the classical ballet gathered in cities and towns to watch regional dances and learned to dance the jarabe and the sandunga at their own fiestas too. Gradually there developed a specifically Mexican style of modern dance, which adopted Indian themes and typical Indian movements such as, for women, grinding corn or carrying a baby in a rebozo (shawl), or, for men, planting and cutting in the fields. In 1919, Anna Pavlova danced a Mexican ballet, La Fantasía Mexicana, with properly indigenous music by Manuel Castro Padilla and sets and costumes based on native designs; it was so popular that extra performances were given in a bullring.

  No matter what their bents or backgrounds, all but the most retrograde artists incorporated Mexican elements into their work. Even Europe-oriented easel painters blended bougainvillea pinks, Indian motifs, and intensities of feeling that are characteristically Mexican with imported ideas that ranged from Cubism, Dadaism, and Surrealism to German Neue Sachlichkeit and Picasso’s neoclassicism of the 1920s. Others took a more purist approach to Mexicanism. Their nationalist fervor led them to believe that forging a truly noncolonial art meant rejecting foreign influences. They borrowed the simple forms and easily legible subject matter from Mexican popular art in hopes of creating a more direct and accessible style that would be free of the “elitist values” associated with European avant-garde painting; they resented Mexico’s imitation of European modes, just as they resented ownership of Mexican oil deposits by foreign companies. Diego Rivera held precisely this nationalistic position. Even though he recognized in his more candid moments the need to merge European tradition with Mexican roots, he fulminated against the “false artists,” the “lackeys of Europe” who copied European fashions and thus perpetuated the semi-colonial condition of Mexican culture.

  Primitivism and the adoption of certain aspects of popular art in “high” art represented not only a rejection of bourgeois or European values but a romantic yearning for a primitive agrarian world where handmade artifacts flourished—a world that the artists must have felt was bound to disappear with the coming industrial age. Diego Rivera adored that past and sometimes painted it as an idyllic epoch, even though he devoutly believed that mankind’s hope for the future lay in industrialization and communism. He and Frida surrounded themselves with Mexican popular art, and his collection of pre-Columbian sculpture is one of the best in Mexico.

  In 1928, when Frida met him, Rivera was on the loose. He had gone to Russia in September 1927 as a member of the Mexican delegation of “workers and peasants” to attend the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution and to paint a fresco in the Red Army Club. He never completed the project, for there always seemed to be some bureaucratic obstruction or other, and in May 1928 he was precipitately called home by the Mexican Communist party, ostensibly to work in Vasconcelos’s presidential campaign. (He later claimed he had been asked to run for president!)

  By the time he reached Mexico in August, his marriage to the beautiful Lupe Marín had disintegrated. It had been a tumultuous marriage, passionately physical and physically violent: Rivera described Lupe as a spirited animal—“green eyes so transparent she seemed to be blind”; “animal teeth”; “tiger mouth”; hands like “eagle talons.” The cause of the separation, according to Lupe, was Diego’s affair with Tina Modotti. Tina had posed, along with Lupe, as a model for the splendid nudes in Rivera’s mural at the National Agricultural School in Chapingo, and that had started the liaison. It was not Lupe’s first encounter with Rivera’s philandering. She had learned forbearance and occasionally vengeance: before an astonished group of guests, she once tore a rival’s hair, ripped up a number of Rivera’s drawings, and thrashed her husband with her fists; on another occasion she smashed some of Diego’s pre-Columbian idols and served him a soup made of the shards. But Lupe could not tolerate the fact that she shared the spotlight in his Chapingo mural with another woman. Though Rivera’s affair with Tina had ended before he left for Russia, the damage had been done.

  As if he needed to fill the void in his life left by the departure of Lupe and their two small daughters, Diego had more love affairs during the period following his return from Russia than ever before or after. He had no trouble making conquests. Although he was undeniably ugly, he drew women to him with the natural ease of a magnet attracting iron filings. Indeed, part of his appeal was his monstrous appearance—his ugliness made a perfect foil for the type of woman who likes to play beauty to a beast—but the greater attraction was his personality. He was a frog prince, an extraordinary man full of brilliant humor, vitality, and charm. He could be tender and was deeply sensuous. Most important, he was famous, and fame seems to be an irresistible lure for some women. It is said that women chased Rivera more than he chased them. He was pursued especially by certain young Americans who felt that a tryst with Diego Rivera was as much of a “must” as a trip to the pyramids of Teotihuacán.

  Women, whether from Mexico or elsewhere, also liked to be with Diego simply because he liked to be with them. From his point of view, women were in many ways superior to men—more sensitive, more peace-loving, more civilized. In 1931, his voice dreamy, his eyes twinkling, his broad lips expanding into a languorous, Buddha-like smile, Rivera spoke to a New York reporter about his admiration for women: “Men are savages by nature. They still are savages today. History shows that the first progress was made by women. Men preferred to remain brutes who fought and hunted. Women remained at home and cultivated the arts. They founded industry. They were the first to contemplate the stars and to evolve poetry and art. . . . Show me any invention that did not originate in the desire [on the part of men] to serve women.” Perhaps it was Rivera’s years in Europe that made his approach to the opposite sex so different from that of the average macho. In any case, he enjoyed talking with women; he valued their minds, and such an attitude was, in those days in Mexico, or anywhere else, a rare delight for most women.

  Rivera did, of course, appreciate their bodies too. He had a passion for beauty, a mammoth appetite for visual pleasure, and it is said that to model for Diego meant offering one’s body to his flesh as well as to his eyes. What Frida thought of his reputation as a womanizer when she first met him is not recorded. Perhaps it attracted her; maybe she fell into that age-old, self-deceiving hope: I will be the one to capture and hold his love; he will love me in a different way. And of course she did and he did, but not without a struggle.

  It is almost certain that Frida and Diego met for the first time at a party at Tina Modotti’s home. First held in 1923 under Weston’s aegis, the weekly gatherings Tina organized had done much to create in Mexico an artistic milieu, a bohemian ambience in which the latest ideas about art and revolution could be exchanged; they were, to put it mildly, lively affairs, with singing, dancing, spirited conversations, and whatever food and drink the hostess and her guests could afford. “The meeting [with Diego],” Frida said in 1954, “took place in the period when people carried pistols and went around shooting the street lamps on Madero Avenue and getting into mischief. During the night, they broke them all and went about spraying bullets, just for fun. Once at a party, given by Tina, Diego shot a phonograph and I began to be very interested in him in spite of the fear I had of him.”

  The probable truth of Frida and Diego’s meeting at Tina Modotti’s party—not a bad story in itself—has given way to a better tale. Indeed, there seem to be as many different versions as there are tellers, and Frida herself remembered the meeting in different ways at different times. The “official” version is that when she recuperated from her accident, she began to show her paintings to friends and a
cquaintances. One person who saw them was Orozco, and he liked them enormously. “He gave me an abrazo [a hug],” said Frida. She also took some canvases to a man she knew only by “sight.” Frida remembered:

  As soon as they gave me permission to walk and to go out in the street, I went, carrying my paintings, to see Diego Rivera, who at that time was painting the frescoes in the corridors of the Ministry of Education. I did not know him except by sight, but I admired him enormously. I was bold enough to call him so that he would come down from the scaffolding to see my paintings and to tell me sincerely whether or not they were worth anything. . . . Without more ado I said: “Diego, come down.” And just the way he is, so humble, so amiable, he came down. “Look, I have not come to flirt or anything even if you are a woman-chaser. I have come to show you my painting. If you are interested in it, tell me so, if not, likewise, so that I will go to work at something else to help my parents.” Then he said to me: “Look, in the first place, I am very interested in your painting, above all in this portrait of you, which is the most original. The other three seem to me to be influenced by what you have seen. Go home, paint a painting, and next Sunday I will come and see it and tell you what I think.” This he did and he said: “You have talent.”

  Diego’s version of the meeting, as told in My Art, My Life, is an example of his phenomenal memory and of his no less phenomenal imagination. He was a great storyteller, and if some of what he tells is embroidery on the facts, it also gives a largely accurate picture of his abiding fascination with Frida.

  Just before I went to Cuernavaca, there occurred one of the happiest events in my life. I was at work on one of the uppermost frescoes of the Ministry of Education building one day, when I heard a girl shouting up to me, “Diego, please come down from there! I have something important to discuss with you!”

  I turned my head and looked down from my scaffold. On the ground beneath me stood a girl of about eighteen. She had a fine nervous body, topped by a delicate face. Her hair was long; dark and thick eyebrows met above her nose. They seemed like the wings of a blackbird, their black arches framing two extraordinary brown eyes.

  When I climbed down, she said, “I didn’t come here for fun. I have to work to earn my livelihood. I have done some paintings which I want you to look over professionally. I want an absolutely straightforward opinion, because I cannot afford to go on just to appease my vanity. I want you to tell me whether you think I can become a good enough artist to make it worth my while to go on. I’ve brought three of my paintings here. Will you come and look at them?”

  “Yes,” I said, and followed her to a cubicle under a stairway where she had left her paintings. She turned each of them, leaning against the wall, to face me. They were all three portraits of women. As I looked at them, one by one, I was immediately impressed. The canvases revealed an unusual energy of expression, precise delineation of character, and true severity. They showed none of the tricks in the name of originality that usually mark the work of ambitious beginners. They had a fundamental plastic honesty, and an artistic personality of their own. They communicated a vital sensuality, complemented by a merciless yet sensitive power of observation. It was obvious to me that this girl was an authentic artist.

  She undoubtedly noticed the enthusiasm in my face, for before I could say anything, she admonished me in a harshly defensive tone, “I have not come to you looking for compliments. I want the criticism of a serious man. I’m neither an art lover nor an amateur. I’m simply a girl who must work for her living.”

  I felt deeply moved by admiration for this girl. I had to restrain myself from praising her as much as I wanted to. Yet I could not be completely insincere. I was puzzled by her attitude. Why, I asked her, didn’t she trust my judgment? Hadn’t she come herself to ask for it?

  “The trouble is,” she replied, “that some of your good friends have advised me not to put too much stock in what you say. They say that if it’s a girl who asks your opinion and she’s not an absolute horror, you are ready to gush all over her. Well, I want you to tell me only one thing. Do you actually believe that I should continue to paint, or should I turn to some other sort of work?”

  “In my opinion, no matter how difficult it is for you, you must continue to paint,” I answered at once.

  “Then I’ll follow your advice. Now I’d like to ask you one more favor. I’ve done other paintings which I’d like you to see. Since you don’t work on Sundays, could you come to my place next Sunday to see them? I live in Coyoacán, Avenida Londres, 126. My name is Frida Kahlo.”

  The moment I heard her name, I remembered that my friend, Lombardo Toledano, while Director of the National Preparatory School, had complained to me about the intractability of a girl of that name. She was the leader, he said, of a band of juvenile delinquents who raised such uproars in the school that Toledano had considered quitting his job on account of them. I recalled him once pointing her out to me after depositing her in the principal’s office for a reprimand. Then another image popped into my mind, that of the twelve-year-old girl who had defied Lupe, seven years before, in the auditorium of the school where I had been painting murals.

  I said, “But you are . . .”

  She stopped me quickly, almost putting her hand on my mouth in her anxiety. Her eyes acquired a devilish brilliancy.

  Threateningly, she said, “Yes, so what? I was the girl in the auditorium, but that has absolutely nothing to do with now. You still want to come Sunday?”

  I had great difficulty not answering, “More than ever!” But if I showed my excitement she might not let me come at all. So I only answered, “Yes.”

  Then, after refusing my help in carrying her paintings, Frida departed, the big canvases jiggling under her arms.

  Next Sunday found me in Coyoacán looking for Avenida Londres, 126. When I knocked on the door, I heard someone over my head, whistling “The Internationale.” In the top of a high tree, I saw Frida in overalls, starting to climb down. Laughing gaily, she took my hand and ushered me through the house, which seemed to be empty, and into her room. Then she paraded all her paintings before me. These, her room, her sparkling presence, filled me with a wonderful joy.

  I did not know it then, but Frida had already become the most important fact in my life. And she would continue to be, up to the moment she died, twenty-seven [twenty-six] years later.

  A few days after this visit to Frida’s home I kissed her for the first time. When I had completed my work in the Education building, I began courting her in earnest. Although she was but eighteen [twenty or twenty-one] and I more than twice her age, neither of us felt the least bit awkward. Her family, too, seemed to accept what was happening.

  One day her father, Don Guillermo Kahlo, who was an excellent photographer, took me aside.

  “I see you’re interested in my daughter, eh?” he said.

  “Yes,” I replied. “Otherwise I would not be coming all the way out to Coyoacán to see her.”

  “She is a devil,” he said.

  “I know it.”

  “Well, I’ve warned you,” he said, and he left.

  Chapter 7

  The Elephant and the Dove

  AFTER THEIR MEETING, however it occurred, Frida and Diego’s courtship proceeded apace. Rivera visited Frida in Coyoacán on Sunday afternoons, and Frida spent more and more time beside Diego on the scaffold, watching him paint. Lupe, though separated from Diego, was jealous:

  When I went to the Secretary of Education to leave his lunch—he was painting the murals in the Education Building—I was shocked to see the familiarity with which an impudent girl treated him. . . . She called him "mi cuatacho" [my big pal]. . . . This was Frida Kahlo. . . . Frankly I was jealous, but I didn’t give it importance because Diego was susceptible to love like a weather vane. . . . But one day he said, “Let’s go to Frida’s house.”. . . it struck me as very disagreeable to see this so-called youngster drink tequila like a real mariachi.

  However disagreeable Frida ma
y have seemed to Lupe, Diego’s attachment to her grew. Her candor disarmed him. Her odd mixture of freshness and unmasked sexuality tempted him. That her spunk and mischief appealed to his own boyish prankishness can be seen in his fond recollection of a moment of mirth when, during a stroll in Coyoacán, they paused under a street lamp and were startled to see all the street lights in the neighborhood turn on. “On a sudden impulse, I stooped to kiss her. As our lips touched, the light nearest us went off and came on again when our lips parted.” They kissed again and again under other street lamps with the same electrifying results.

  Another attraction for Diego was Frida’s quick, unconventional mind. Like Diego, she was easily bored. “He is irritated by only two things,” Frida once wrote, “loss of time from work—and stupidity. He has said many times that he would rather have many intelligent enemies than one stupid friend.” Frida and Diego did not bore each other. Each was delighted to have a companion who saw life with a similar mixture of irony, hilarity, and black humor. Both rejected bourgeois morality. Both talked about dialectical materialism and “social realism,” yet for both realism was riddled with fantasy; as much as they admired a no-nonsense approach to life, they boosted the banal into the marvelous, and worshiped nonsense and imagination. Rivera used to complain: “The trouble with Frida is that she is too realistic. She has no illusions.” And Frida used to bewail Rivera’s lack of sentimentality; had he been more sentimental, however, she probably would have treated him as salt treats an oyster—one of Frida’s sardonic, withering looks would have been enough to make a sentimental man shrivel.