Frida Kahlo's indestructible spirit
PUSSSYKATT
Entertainment Editor/U ENTERTAINMENT
If ever life and art imitated one another, it was with Frida Kahlo.
Every moment of the famed Mexican painter's life was carried out with
unscripted, yet perfectly executed, dramatic flair.
During most of her 47 years, Kahlo danced the line between loving life and
longing for death. She was born into a loving family in Coyoacan, Mexico,
excelled in school and dreamed of becoming a doctor. But a near-fatal bus
accident in 1925 left Kahlo's body broken and her outlook on life forever
changed.
Kahlo began to paint while immobilized in a hospital bed. These paintings and
here other works offer a visual diary of her life. They depict her greatest
joys -- her homeland, friends, family and husband, muralist Diego Rivera -- and
sorrows -- painful operations, near-fatal miscarriages, drug-induced
hallucinations and heartbreak causedby her notoriously promiscuous husband.
A perfect drama, you might say, for a Hollywood biopic.
"This is such an incredible woman. And so full of life," says actress Salma
Hayek, who, after 10 years of fighting to bring Kahlo's life to the big screen,
is starring in "Frida," opening Oct. 25.
"Frida Kahlo was not a fragile woman," says Hayek. "She was dramatic. She
enjoyed it. She got up from every hit that life gave her. And she kept going.
Her body may have been fragile, but her spirit was indestructible."
The actress talks about Kahlo with such passion, one thinks she would have
fought another 10 years if necessary.
It wasn't. Miramax films snatched up the project (with Hayek attached) and
enlisted visual mastermind Julie Taymor to direct. The director, known for
bringing Shakespeare's "Titus" to film and giving Broadway's "The Lion King"
its magical imagery, was also convinced Kahlo's was a story that had to be
told.
"It's the story of a woman who endured a lot of physical and emotional pain,"
says Taymor. "There are politics, folk art and this incredible love story."
Kahlo found a mentor, a lover and a soul mate in Rivera (played by Alfred
Molina in the film). On the surface, however, the two couldn't be more
different. Rivera was older (by 20 years), larger (in both status and girth)
and incredibly egocentric. Kahlo was petite, humble and remained largely
unnoticed for most of her career. He painted grand-scale murals that examined
global political issues. She painted self-portraits that were often in a very
small format.
But the two shared a passion for each other and, of course, for art.
"They really made quite a couple," says Kahlo biographer Hayden Herrera, whose
"Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo" is the basis for the Miramax film. "I call
her the charming amateur. She never took herself too seriously as a painter,
but (Rivera) continuously regarded her work as superior."
Kahlo's work may have been regarded as visually stunning, but it is a bit hard
to digest. For years, exhibits of Kahlo's work often came with warnings; even
protests. Surrealist poet and essayist Andre Brenton famously called her art "a
ribbon around a bomb."
"Her art isn't necessarily appealing. It's not there to make you feel good
about yourself," says Taymor. "But it draws you in because of that wicked gaze
that stares out at you. (Her paintings are) beguiling and grotesque, but
they're also incredibly evocative."
All it takes is one look at a Kahlo self-portrait to catch a glimpse of the
artist herself. Her physical characteristics are prominent the joined eyebrows,
faint mustache, jet black hair and blood-red lips but it's her piercing stare
and slight smirk that hint at something dark and mysterious.
"It's that look that commands you to pay attention to her, to have some kind of
empathy for what's happening to her," says Herrera. "If she added anything to
art history it is the ability to be that personal. I don't think anyone had
done anything quite like that before."
Detailed paintings of miscarriages, murders and lesbian eroticism certainly
weren't prominent in the 1930s and '40s, when Kahlo rose to relative fame in
the art world. Nor are they today, for that matter. Many of her paintings
cannot be reprinted in this family newspaper. But the common reaction to
Kahlo's work is that of both horror and wonder.
"I was 14 years old when I first saw Frida's work," says Hayek. "At the
beginning, I couldn't understand what was going on with those paintings. But I
couldn't get them out of my head."
Encountering Kahlo's work is like witnessing the aftermath of a car accident
you feel as if you shouldn't stare, but you can't help it.
Consider a painting like "My Birth," which shows a woman, covered in a shroud,
giving birth to a dead baby (that resembles Kahlo), while a cryptic painting of
a skeletal figure looms overhead. It is shocking and fascinating all at once.
"She is very revealing of what's happening in her life," says Herrera. "She
gets away with painting herself having a miscarriage and yet it's not
revolting, though it certainly could be. I think it has something to do with
her reserve and all the things she doesn't tell you."
Kahlo undoubtedly took many secrets to her grave with her, but the confessions
she left behind in her paintings offer a type of honesty rarely seen in the
visual arts.
"Her paintings are almost a continuation of her own expression," says Gregorio
Luke, director of the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach and a Kahlo
scholar. "Her art has a function of not only artistic, but of a communication
and a personal need that she often uses to exorcise her problems, her demons.
"When she has her miscarriages, she paints them. When she has her problems with
Diego Rivera, she paints them. In other words, painting is a way of living for
her."
Kahlo once explained her work this way: "I paint my own reality. The only thing
I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through
my head."
While eerie and emotional images were what often passed through Kahlo's head,
the artist had an ability to find humor in the strangest places.
Kahlo often drank and took numerous prescription drugs to dull the pain of her
many operations. Not surprisingly, the habit turned addictive. When asked why
she drank, Kahlo gave this response: "I drink to drown my sorrows, but the
things have learned to swim."
"One of my favorite (paintings) is 'A Few Small Nips,'" says Hayek. "It
definitely reflects her dark sense of humor."
The painting depicts a man holding a knife, standing over a naked woman
sprawled on a bed, bleeding from dozens of stab wounds (as if that weren't
graphic enough, Kahlo speckled the frame with red paint as well). The work was
inspired by a news account Kahlo read of a domestic argument turned deadly.
When questioned about the murder, the assailant replied, "It was just a few
small nips."
"She's saying men do horrible things and they don't even acknowledge what
they've done," says Hayek, citing Kahlo's unintentional feminism.
In theory, all art is subjective. But one of the goals of "Frida," the film, is
to get inside the head of Frida, the artist. Director Taymor does this by using
the film as a canvas to paint the context of Kahlo's artwork, sometimes
bringing the two-dimensional pieces to life.
A scene in which Hayek is being strapped into one of the 23 corsets Kahlo
endured in her lifetime is transformed into "The Broken Column," a painting
that depicts a teary-eyed Frida restrained in a plaster-and-metal cast, with a
fractured steel rod running through her body.
During a depressing stay in New York, Hayek's Frida gazes out a window, which
morphs into "My Dress Hangs There," a painting that hints at Kahlo's
homesickness.
After an emotionally charged scene in which Hayek drinks, curses and cuts off
all her hair, the actress steps into the painting, "The Two Fridas," a
schizophrenic self-portrait if ever there was one.
"When you see her being strapped into that metal corset -- you understand what
moment in her life would have spurred that vision," says Taymor. "This is my
interpretation, but it allows you to experience through her imagination, her
surreal imagination, what she saw. It's a way to get behind those eyes."
Today, Kahlo's artwork hangs in museums from Munich to Mexico. Her life is
studied and celebrated in both art history and women's studies courses in
colleges worldwide. But like many famous artists, Kahlo never lived to see her
star rise.
"While she did gain recognition during her lifetime, the position that she now
has was very much accomplished after her death," says MoLAA's Luke. "During her
life, Frida Kahlo did not have the place that she is given now, by no means.
She was well-regarded. Diego Rivera respected her very much. But she did not
have this kind of iconic status that she has now."
Kahlo's first major exhibit in her home country came just a year before her
death. In spite of doctor's orders to stay in bed, Kahlo put on her best dress,
made up her hair and face and was carried into the gallery, perched on her bed
like royalty.
For a woman whose life was steeped in drama, it was a grand finale indeed.
Note: With only around 200 paintings to her name (many of which are owned
privately or on display in the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico), finding a place
to view Kahlo's work is a bit difficult. In Los Angeles, only the Los Angeles
County Museum of art has selected works in its permanent collection. When
called, the museum said none is currently on display.
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