cineSOURCE magazine

Frida and Diego in Love
by Doniphan Blair

'Frida and Diego with Gas Mask' was taken in 1938 by Nickolas Muray, a very handsome Hungarian photographer who soon became Frida's lover. photo: N. Muray

First published by cineSOURCE in December 2018, this updated article has important new info.

SAN FRANCISCO LOOMS LARGE IN THE
serpentine saga of Mexican artists Diego Rivera (1886-1957) and Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), due to the gorgeous murals he painted here in the 1930s, her accompaniment on all three, including the one after their divorce, and their embodiment of titanic creatives in love. Indeed, they remarried here in 1940 and the city renamed the avenue leading to City College, site of Rivera's biggest Bay Area mural, Frida Kahlo Way.

Amidst our monumental MeToo realignment, it may be instructive to note that the petite Frida, shrunken further by childhood polio and a terrible street car accident, was obsessed with the 20-years older, 200-pounds fatter and extremely macho—he used to carry a pistol and once shot the record player at a party because he didn't like the song it was playing—as well as brilliant Diego.

This generated Frida's observation, “There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.” But also her recommendation to: “Make love, take a shower, make love again.”

Frida became infatuated with Diego at fifteen, watching him paint a mural at her high school. While he noticed her and her fiery demeanor, he thought she was eleven. Undeterred, Frida returned a few years later with a sheaf of paintings under her arm and proceeded to conquer the already-married and notorious womanizer’s mind as well as heart, suggesting that an empowered male needs an equally intense female—AND vice versa.

Mexico City was scandalized. Frida’s family rejected Diego, even though he was from a wealthy, old crypto-Jewish family and her father, Guillermo, was a German immigrant who should have been cool with that (her mother was "mestizo"). They called Frida and Diego "la ballena y la paloma," which means the whale and the dove or, alternatively, "el elefante y la paloma." Recent research indicates that Frida's father was, in fact, a Lutheran, not Jewish, but her proclivity for claiming he was of Hungarian-Jewish descent through the entire Nazi era makes her Jewish, as far as I am concerned.

'Frida and Diego' by Frida from 1937. image: F. Kahlo

Frida persevered, drawing on Diego’s ideas, encouragement and artistic friends not only to become his flamboyant very-Mexican wife but to excel at painting. Indeed, she almost single handedly invented aggressive self-examination through painting, a distinctly female aspect of the art form, and became the undisputed master of the self-portrait, ultimately eclipsing Rivera in art history.

Some paint snobs reject Frida for “unpainterly” brushstrokes, some Mexican nationalists for being half Jewish, or so they thought, and some feminists for sleeping with the enemy—not just Diego but quite a few powerful men, starting with Leon Trotsky, the Jewish communist from Ukraine who led the revolution until he was double-crossed by Stalin.

Regardless, Frida’s spirit, images and ideas of what it was to be a woman or an obsessively-honest artist or a dedicated Mexican were immensely innovative and powerful, which is why Diego adored her and probably would not be upset by her star-is-born turn.

Deigo was a man of many talents as well as appetites. Despite his communist convictions, he convinced capitalists across the United States to let him paint large murals in their buildings. He balanced fine art, illustration, politics and a respect for both working people and, to a degree, the businessmen that hired them.

His first triumph was the San Francisco Stock Exchange in 1930. Although now the City Club and not open to the public, the mural is well worth the effort of signing up for the informative, short and once-a-week tour (go here).

Diego's 'Allegory of California', at the SF Stock Exchange, was his first US commission, 1931—note the pressure gauge on lower left edge, behind the tree stump. image: D. Rivera

Called “The Allegory of California”, the smallish mural features lush colors and a floor-to-ceiling goddess, modeled on tennis star Helen Wills Moody and derived from Diego's re-imagining of the matriarchal Califia, the mythical Muslim queen, who also provided California its name. The overall theme is Californian industry, although he snuck in a couple of contrarian messages, like a sequoia tree stump or the pressure gauge, with its arrow in the red, in typical Rivera fashion (Frida was also a prankster). With its hills full of oil derricks, "Allegory of California" shows little of California's wondrous beaches, mountains and deserts, but Diego was probably too busy chasing California girls, like tennis-star Moody or film goddess Paulette Goddard, to go on scenic road trips.

If “The Allegory of California” is matriarchal, Diego's companion piece two miles away at the San Francisco Art Institute is patriarchal. Tragically, the venerable old institute went bankrupt in 2021, and the future of the mural or at least being able to see it is in jeopardy.

Around midnight last week, I visited the old campus at 800 Chestnut Street, which consists of an ancient monastery with bell tower in front and a modern, angular cement building in back. There was no status update on the door but when I pushed it open I could see, in the middle of the arch-lined Moorish courtyard, the pool, once full of gold fish and lilies, was empty. It was sad, spooky and devoid of life until I was accosted by a stereotypical guard barking "This is private property," although he did give me a contact person's name.

Aside from the incredibly stupid tragedy of San Francisco's monied elite, one of the richest communities in the world and supposedly art minded, letting its century-and-a-half old art institute perish, there is the problem of seeing Diego's mural, considered the lessor of San Francisco's famous three but still fantastic.

Called “The Making of a Fresco, Showing the Building of a City,” and completed in 1931, it is a bit larger than than "Allegory" and fully male metaphorically. Not only is the mural filled with a giant, white male laborer in blue overalls, it includes Diego himself, abiding an interest in self-portraiture obviously inspired by Frida. Instead of painting himself planting a magical tree with the Hollywood sex goddess Paulette Goddard, as in the four-times-as-big City College mural, symbolic Diego is hard at work, sitting on the scaffold in front of the painting, his enormous butt facing the viewer.

Alas, that was as self-reflective as Diego got, even as Frida was getting known for her tell-all canvases, one third of which are self-portraits, often full frontal nudes. Indeed, she garnered a New York show in 1938, where actor Edward G. Robinson bought four paintings, and she received great acclaim in Paris, where Andre Breton hailed her as a brilliant surrealist, a laurel she rejected.

Frida's 'The Broken Column', 1944, exposes her pain, body and vision, in equal measure. image: F. Kahlo

“They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.”

Her first Mexico show was only in 1954, just before she died, although she was able to attend in her hospital bed, receiving art lovers, regular lovers and courtiers, an experience she enjoyed immensely, in part due to her infatuation with doctors, disease and death.

“I hope the leaving is joyful,” she remarked, “and I hope never to return.” Diego passed three years later.

And so it was that Frida Kahlo, a slight slip of a half-Jewess—albeit in her mind only—was crowned queen of Mexican art, if not culture. And she remained a solely local treasure until, about the mid-1970s when, ka-boom: international Frida-mania.

It started in San Francisco, among art professors like the Art Institute’s brilliant Raymond Mondini, painters like the Mission District's dedicated René Yañez and the few collectors of Frida canvases, as well as an art-viewing public already familiar with the city's three Rivera murals and the romantic story of his remarrying Frida here in 1940.

Finally, after the Mexican Museum opened by the Bay in Fort Mason in 1975, it mounted a massive show, famous for its striking poster featuring a life-size photo of Frida in a blood-red scarf, taken by her lover, the extremely handsome Hungarian photographer Nickolas Muray.

Fridamania continued to expand inexorably in the ‘80s and ‘90s, mostly among women and Latinos, but also gays, the disabled and other oppressed groups. It culminated with the excellent 2002 film “Frida” by Julie Taymor and starring Selma Hyack (who is hardly a small-chested waif embodying Frida's body type but great otherwise). The massive San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art retrospective was organized here in 2008, and went on international tour.

A Frida nude, photographer unknown but undoubtedly her lover Nickolas Muray, around 1939. photo: unknown

A force of nature, like the artist herself, Fridamania continues apace today.

While Diego's City Club and Art Institute murals show nothing of Frida or their tumultuous marriages, the interested viewer will be pleasantly surprised by San Francisco’s third mural. At City College’s Diego Rivera Theater (50 Phelan Ave—now Frida Khalo Way) and properly open to the public, “Pan American Unity” (1940) is arguably Rivera's most spectacular project outside of Mexico, both in size, 22-feet tall and 75-feet wide, and its cast of characters, including a regally-attired Frida.

Unfortunately, right behind Frida, Diego painted himself planting a magical white tree with the actress Paulette Goddard. While Diego may have compared sex to urination and relieved himself with Frida’s sister, which precipitated their divorce in 1939, he was also extremely compelling to many alpha women. Goddard moved for a period to Mexico City, settling in a hotel across the street from Diego's studio.

By that time, Frida had already taken up with Trotsky, who arrived in Mexico in 1936, making the "Pan American Unity" mural another chapter in the Riveras' favorite parlor game: psycho-sexual brinksmanship. As for their community's political brinksmanship, Trotsy was attacked in May, 1940, by Frida and Diego's friend, the Mexican painter, muralist and Stalinist David Siqueiros, and killed three months later by a less effeminate assassin (Siqueiros was gay).

In 2021, City College loaned the 30-ton "Pan American Unity" mural to San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art, where it went on display on June 28th. The project took millions of dollars and all sorts of experts, from fresco folks to art handlers and truckers, who designed and implemented special cases with shock absorbers on trucks going five miles an hour for the seven miles to the museum.

A Frida nude by Diego, 1930, note the high heels. image: D. Rivera

Exhibited in a free gallery on the museum's first floor, the mural will be on view until January 2024. It is a unique opportunity to see a great and enormous work of art, and also fantastic curatorial work, but most importantly a testament to the massive psycho-sexual and artistic relationship of Frida and Diego. I just saw it myself the other day, and the "Pan American Unity" is magnificent, in a massive room with 60 foot ceilings, much more spacious than in City College. On one side of the room is a seven-tier, wooden amphitheater perfect for lectures, like the one I would be happy to give about the Frida-Diego romantic philosophy.

I would start by pointing to the middle of the painting, Diego's tryptic self-portrait of himself and Paulette behind the regally-attired Frida, alone at her easel and discussing how Frida and Diego mastered modern, fully liberated love, which embraces matriarchy-patriarchy, female-male, mind-body. In other words, they accepted each others' elevated gender characteristics of macho and femme as fascinating, beautiful and lovable.

Then I would turn to the even more important theme of the "Pan American Unity": radical multiculturalism. In point of fact, right next to his tryptic self-portrait, Diego has a young, innocent indigenous girl, one of his favorite figures and probably a stand-in for Frida, and a slightly older, blond-haired white boy. He probably symbolized Nikolas Muray to their in-crowd, but to us more average viewers simply a bold continuation of his cultural-interconnection theme, which is integrated throughout the piece. Indeed, the centerpiece is a hybrid of a Toltec god and a machine, very much a futuristic "transformer," for the kids of today.

Getting back to Frida and Diego's bedroom, as some might prefer over highfalutin' art criticism, she liked to torture him with tales about her many affairs with men, while he liked to brag to his buddies about her conquests of women. Those notches in her belt even included the other great woman painter of the day, Georgia O’Keefe, a seemingly-modest Midwesterner, who was also Frida’s artistic rival, since they were the first women to have fully articulated a uniquely female art. Georgia was also a great multiculturalist—her longtime boyfriend was the New York photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who loved to argue, happened to be Jewish and had an overweening mother—and a great lover. Indeed, in her 90s, living in Taos, New Mexico, she was allegedly intimate with the 30-something Juan Hamilton.

SF City College's mural features a glorious Frida (center) but also Diego and film star Paulette Goddard and a cute native girl and white boy, suggesting radical openness and multiculturalism. photo: D. Blair

For her part, Frida was said to have enjoyed Diego's "bedtime stories" about his many sexual romantic escapades. Aside from the subterfuge and sneaking around, there was the obvious overwhelming honesty portrayed in both artists' imagery and symbolism, especially their use of the naked female body, which stands in stark contrast to today's new Puritanism. Their self-portraiture however is right in line with today's selfie obsessed. How did this happen in Mexico?

Despite a conservative Catholic culture, Mexico rates very high on international surveys of male and female sexual excitement and satisfaction (notably the Durex Sexual Wellbeing Survey, 2006). Frida, for example, had her first lover at sixteen. Moreover, of course, Mexico City in the 1920s was a place of revolutionaries, of both the political and artistic kind. It was the perfect stage for Frida and Diego’s self-invention, sexuality and fantasy as well as disciplined creativity and dedicated love.

Here’s how Amy Fine Collins summed up Fridamania in Vanity Fair, after the publication of her very revealing diaries in 2013:

Frida enjoying a last laugh with her pet hawk at her home, the Blue House, Mexico City, circa 1941. photo: N. Muray

“Most pertinent to the diaries is an understanding of how the daughter of a lower-middle-class German-Jewish photographer and a hysterically Catholic Spanish-Indian mother became a celebrated painter, Communist, promiscuous temptress, and, later (during the diary years), a narcotic-addicted, dykish, suicidal amputee afflicted with a bizarre pathology known as Munchausen syndrome—the compulsion to be hospitalized and, in extreme cases, mutilated unnecessarily by surgery.”

Who said love, obsession and great art would be simple? When you consider how much Frida suffered through her injuries and dozens of surgeries, you multiply that by her rampant imagination and the experimentalism of the ‘30s, and lean the whole "mishigas" (Yiddish for craziness) against the gargantuan Diego, Frida, as one of the first truly feminist artists, never ceases to astound.

For more indepth analysis, see "Frida" (1983) by Hayden Herrera, or "The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera" (1963) by Bertram Wolfe. And be sure and catch “Pan American Unity” at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art before January 2024, at which point it goes back to City College.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .

Posted on Feb 21, 2023 - 03:02 PM