Frida Kahlo's Mexico City

OVERCOME BY FRIDAMANIA
This summer in Mexico City, Frida Kahlo will be more popular than the Virgin of Guadalupe

DEANNA MACDONALD
Special to The Globe and Mail, July 7, 2007
Link:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070707.FRIDA07/TPStory//?pageRequested=all

MEXICO CITY -- Say "Frida" in Mexico City and people know who you mean. As with many well-known artists - Dali, Picasso - one name is enough. Frida Kahlo, however, is often referred to by her first name, a bit more like a saint than a revolutionary artist. In fact, images of Kahlo - on everything from bus stops to tequila bottles to credit cards - are giving the adored Virgin of Guadalupe a bit of competition as the most-pictured woman in Mexico City. And indeed if Kahlo, who was an ardent communist and atheist, was ever going to be beatified, 2007 would be the year.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of her July 6 birth and, as a result, "Fridamania" has taken hold of her native Mexico City. Numerous events and exhibitions will celebrate one of the country's most admired painters, including the biggest exhibit of her art ever displayed. Presented in the exquisite art-deco interior of the Palace of Fine Arts, the show features almost a third of her total output - 65 oil paintings, 45 drawings, 11 watercolours - including many privately owned works rarely shown in public.

As I wandered through the exhibition, it was evident that the crowds - mostly locals of all ages - were enthralled as they filed past some of her most famous paintings, such as The Two Fridas and Self Portrait with Monkeys .In the rooms filled with her personal photos and letters (each of the letters hung from the ceiling in glass frames), people talked animatedly about her preference for traditional Mexican dress, her politics and, of course, her eyebrows (which family photos reveal to be inherited from both her Hungarian Jewish father and Spanish-Mexican mother).

My primary thought after touring the exhibit was that Frida Kahlo was cool. She had style, chutzpah and extraordinary talent; all this despite a lifetime of physical pain and a husband, artist Diego Rivera, who considered himself "unfit for monogamy."
"I suffered two grave accidents in my life," Kahlo once said. "One in which a streetcar knocked me down ... the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worse."

Kahlo began to paint at 18 while recovering from a horrific streetcar accident that shattered her pelvis and spine and then married Rivera - a renowned painter, 22 years her senior and a self-confessed philander - three years later. It was a tumultuous marriage, filled with infidelities. Kahlo herself took numerous lovers of both sexes.

These "accidents" became the focus of much of Kahlo's art. She hid nothing, frankly depicting her own life, sorrows and indignities in intense, often disturbingly surreal images of bright colour and flattened forms, a style inspired by the folk art and history of her beloved Mexico. Her work is refreshingly individual and of its place.

And unlike much in pop culture, there is enormous substance behind all the Frida hype. She is big business in Mexico City; there is even a Frida Kahlo Corporation (http://www.fkahlo.com), created by Kahlo's niece in an attempt to control the Frida "brand." This, however, has not seemed to limit the abundance of Frida-themed T-shirts, handbags, ashtrays, etc., that sell like hot tamales in shops and markets around the city. Not bad for an artist who during her lifetime had just three exhibits (only one in Mexico) and was mostly considered the wife of Diego Rivera.

Well, not any more.

"Mexico is a very macho culture and Diego has always taken the limelight," explained Georgina, a university student from Mexico City I met on my flight to Mexico. "But Frida was a big promoter of women's rights and now it's her everyone talks about. Diego is now Frida's husband." Regardless of who is more prominent, as I explored Mexico City, it was evident that Frida and Diego were intertwined in both life and in art. (In an interesting contemporary link, the Palace of Fine Art's Kahlo exhibit is co-curated by Rivera's grandson, Juan Coronel Rivera.)

Frida appears in many of Diego's works around the city. She is a young Socialist revolutionary in Rivera's mural of the history of Mexico at the National Palace. In Rivera's Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in The Almeda Park (1947) at the Diego River Mural Museum, near the Palace of Fine Arts, Frida is portrayed as his ideal wife, standing between Calavera Catrina, the Mexican symbol of death, and a young, already chubby Rivera (he was called the elephant to Kahlo's dove). At the exquisite Dolores Olmedo Patino Museum, which has 157 works by Rivera and 30 by Kahlo and is set in huge landscaped grounds scattered with peacocks and xoloitzcuintle (regal-looking, hairless dogs that date to the Aztecs), visitors can see two nude portraits, both dated 1930: one of Frida and one of Dolores Almedo, Diego's patroness and lover.

From 1934, Kahlo lived in San Angel, a village that was once the summer residence of Mexican aristocracy on the southern outskirts of Mexico City and today is a picturesque suburb known for its Saturday arts and crafts bazaar. She and Diego lived in the unique Casa Doble, which was the first functionalist building in Latin America designed by modernist architect Juan O'Gorman. It is now a fascinating museum about both artists. Composed of two houses - the smaller blue one is Frida's and the larger is Diego's - connected by an above-ground passage, it stands out in this neighbourhood of handsome colonial haciendas. Kahlo didn't live here long. In 1939, after discovering that Rivera was having an affair with her sister, Kahlo returned to the house where she was born, the Casa Azul in nearby Coyoacan.

Today, this lively, middle-class suburb is a popular tourist destination with most visitors making a beeline for the beautiful Casa Azul, now the Museo Frida Kahlo. A single -storey, royal blue house arranged around a large, leafy courtyard and fountains, its interior remains much as Kahlo left it at her death in 1954. Rooms of bright yellows, blues and greens are filled with Mexican folk art. Hanging in Kahlo's bedroom, where she spent much time recovering from endless operations, are pictures of her favourite subjects: herself and Diego, whom she remarried in 1940.

There are also images of her political heroes, including Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, with whom Kahlo had an affair. The heart of the house, however, is her studio. The wheelchair she used in her last years still sits before her easel surrounded by bookshelves that reflect her eclectic interests: the Manifesto del Partido Comunista, Walt Whitman's Poemas, a biography of Rembrandt and reproductions of Aztec codices.

More of Frida's treasures were discovered just two years ago in, of all places, the bathroom. A new exhibit (which opens today), entitled Treasures of the Blue House: Frida and Diego, will display 280 items that were found in hidden storage spaces, including photos, drawings and Frida's famous traditional Mexican clothes, complete with stains and cigarette burns.

Pack your bags

Finding Frida
Palace of Fine Arts Avenida Juarez, Centro Historico; 52 (55) 5130-0900; http://www.museobellasartes.artte.com. The exhibit "Frida Kahlo, 1907-2007: A National Tribute" is on until Aug 19.

Museo Mural Diego Rivera Calle Baldaras, Centro Historico; 52 (55) 5521-5318; www.cnca.gob.mx/cnca/buena/inba/subbellas/museos/mural.html. The exhibit "Diego and Frida: Between Charcoal and Desire," featuring drawings by both artists, will run from Nov. 22 to March 9, 2008.

Museo Dolores Olmedo Patiño Avenida Mexico 5843, Xochimilio; 52 (55) 5555-1221; http://www.museodoloresolmedo.org.

Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo (Casa Doble) Calle Diego Rivera and Avenida Altavista, San Angel; 52 (55) 5550-1518. The exhibit "Frida Kahlo in Print" features all that has been written about the artist and runs from July 31 to Sept. 23.

Museo Leon Trotsky Calle Viena 45, Coyoacan; 52 (55) 5554-0687.

Museo Frida Kahlo (Casa Azul) Calle de Londres 247, Coyoacan; 52 (55) 5554-5999; http://www.museofridakahlocasaazul.org. The exhibit "Treasures of the Blue House: Frida and Diego" is on from July 7 to Sept. 30.

All museums are closed on Mondays.

Where to stay
Camino Real Mariano Escobedo 700, Col. Anzures; 52 (55) 5263-888; http://www.caminoreal.com/mexico. Doubles from $137. Cool, modernist hotel designed by Ricardo Legoretta and dotted with artwork.

Holiday Inn Express Reforma Paseo de la Reforma 208; 52 (55) 9150-5900; http://www.ichotelsgroup.com. Doubles from $120. Brand-new, well-designed hotel, centrally located in Paseo de la Reforma.

Where to eat
La Tecla Durango 186A, Col. Roma; 52 (55) 5525-4920. Delicious, upscale Mexican cuisine in the hip Zona Roma.

Mercado Coyoacán Corner of Calle Allende and Malintzin, Coyoacan. Snack on fresh tacos and tostadas at several informal restaurants in the local Market.

San Angel Inn Calle Diego Rivera 50, San Angel; 52 (55) 5616-0973. A 17th-century Carmelite monastery now a popular Mexican restaurant across the street from Casa Doble.

More information
Contact Mexico Tourism at 1-800-446-3942 or visit http://www.visitmexico.com.
The author stayed in Mexico City as a guest of Mexico Tourism.