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- [00:01]
Progressive Insurance Narrator
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- [00:55]
Narrator
it is late afternoon of September 17, 1925, and and a light rain is falling on the San Juan market in Mexico City. An 18 year old couple are making the journey home from La Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, or National Preparatory School, the most prestigious in all of Mexico. The young woman is dressed boyishly, proudly, sporting thick eyebrows that meet in the middle beneath a baker boy cap that matches her boyfriend's. The couple carry their books under one arm so they can hold hands. They weave through the city streets, dodging traders heading to where they usually catch their bus. The air is laced with spices and the woman pauses to taste a piece of elotes char, grilled corn on the cob smothered in chili sauce. As she eats, their bus rumbles past. Her boyfriend grabs her sleeve and drags her away. But though it's too late to catch it now, another one parts the crowds on the street ahead. With a grin, they agree to chase it down. They race each other, laughing. It takes a sprint, but soon they have caught up and swing themselves onto the moving vehicle. Breathlessly, they make their way to the back bench and slide into a space barely big enough for the two of them. As the bus swerves around a corner, the passengers are squashed together, chickens clucking in wicker cages at their feet. The young woman watches the streets outside. An electric tram with two coaches, one of the old streetcars or trolleys, is heading towards the junction ahead, traveling at a right angle to the bus. She's not concerned, though close calls between vehicles are absolutely the norm on the chaotic streets of Mexico City. But now the bus starts rattling in acceleration, failing to gather enough speed to pass the junction ahead of the tram. The girl holds tight, thinking that this is going to be a nearer miss than usual. She's barely finished the thought before the world erupts around her. There is the screaming of metal against metal, the crunch of wood. But despite colliding with the bus, the heavy steel tram is unable to stop. It shunts the bus along sideways, concertining it under the pressure. Its terrified occupants are compressed into the decreasing space until the flimsy wooden exterior can flex no more. When it's forced into a wall on the other side of the street, the bus explodes into splinters. The streetcar plows over the bus passengers buried in the wreckage. The young man blinks. It takes him a moment to understand he's underneath the tram. He scrambles out from beneath the metal chassis, bruised but barely injured, and starts frantically searching for his girlfriend. He quickly finds her groaning in pain, sprawled in the smashed remains of the bus. Her clothes have somehow been blasted off by the impact, and she's covered in not just blood, but also wisps of gold leaf that must have belonged to an artist traveling on board. Crouching beside her, he realizes with horror that a large piece of metal has impaled her through the pelvis. As the smoke clears, other people rush in and help him lift her onto a billiard table in a nearby shop window, while another shouts that medics are needed fast. The young man doesn't know what to do. He kisses her hand, looking around desperately for the ambulance. By the time it arrives, he will later say her cries are louder than the sirens. There's a slam of doors, and a man with a red cross on his sleeve races over. He asks the young woman her name, but she can barely speak, so her boyfriend answers for her. Frida, he says. Her name is Frida Kahlo. Three people die at the scene of this accident, and more succumb to their injuries. Later, in hospital, Frieda is fully expected to be one of them. Her spinal column is broken in three places, along with her collarbone and two ribs. Her right leg is shattered, her foot crushed, her pelvis fragmented, her internal injuries catastrophic. Yet it is during her recovery from this devastating accident that Frida Kahlo truly immerses herself in art for the first time. She paints her first self portrait from her sickbed and begins the journey to become possibly the most celebrated female artist of the 20th century. Frida Kahlo is as much a modern icon for her personal flair as she is for her paintings. But how did her style develop, and what did she intend it to communicate what was so subversive about her work and the subject she chose to portray? And why is she such an enduring figurehead for feminists, women with fertility issues, the queer community and those living with disabilities and chronic pain? I'm John Hopkins and this is a short history of Frida Kahler. One summer's day in 1907 in the Cuyahuacan suburb on the outskirts of Mexico City, a midwife closes the door of a house called Akasa Azul, the Blue House. Inside, two little girls tentatively enter the room where their mother has just given birth. Their new baby sister, Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo e Calderon has a shock of black hair and a determined expression. Today is July 6, 1907. At least that's what it will say on her birth certificate. Later she will claim she was actually born in 1910 to coincide with the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution. The father of the family, Guillermo Carlo, is a successful photographer and an immigrant from Germany. The son of Hungarian Jews, his wife Matilda is of Spanish and indigenous Mexican descent. By the time little Frida starts school, she also has a younger sister, Cristina, with whom she is close. Frida's relationship with her devoutly Catholic mother is affectionate but formal. Matilda doesn't always understand her complex, highly intelligent and questioning child. But it is a different story with her father, who sees something special in her, something that starts to develop into a deep interest in his work. Though Guillermo encourages her to study and read, the young Frida spends as much time as she can in his studio. A photo of the sisters shows them all in their best frocks, except Frida in the center, who is dressed in a man's suit. She is her father's protege. Cisse Hanastrosa is co author of Frida Making Herself up and curator of the exhibition Appearances Can Be the Dresses of Frida Kahlo. At London's Victoria and Albert Museum.
- [08:01]
Cisse Hanastrosa
He would take photographs of the family and he would take photographs of Frida. I would say photography and not painting was her first mode of creative expression. The fascination with her evolving self image and the influence of photography in her art continued through all her life. So what I mean is that she would like to pose in front of the camera since she was a little girl and she would pose for her dad. She was very, very conscious of her self image.
- [08:34]
Narrator
Disaster strikes in the Kahlo family when in 1913, six year old Frida contracts polio. She's confined to her bed for nine months. Though she recovers, she emerges with a permanent physical disability. And with it a new awareness of how she is perceived by the outside world.
- [08:52]
Cisse Hanastrosa
The polio left her with the right leg shorter than the left leg. And she describes as she started wearing long skirts to deal with her body differences. And she also started wearing, for example, three to four socks to level her legs. So that means that she established she was very conscious about her body and she established a relationship between her body and her breast. From a very early age, Frieda is
- [09:27]
Narrator
cruelly taunted by her classmates about her appearance. But worse than that is the decreased circulation in her affected leg, leading to chronic pain that will plague her for the rest of her life. Ignoring doctor's advice, Guillermo encourages her to take up sports such as wrestling and boxing, unusual pastimes for women and girls in the early 1900s. Now father and daughter spend more time together than ever, as she learns how to develop color and retouch his photographs. Although known for her argumentative nature, at her first school, Frieda is a superb student. By her teens, she has an aspiration to become a doctor. In 1922, aged 15, she passes the rigorous entrance examinations for Mexico's top school. She is one of a tiny percentage of girls in a college of 2000.
- [10:20]
Cisse Hanastrosa
She was part of the body of 32 female students to be accepted in the school. And of course, she was incredibly intelligent and outspoken and she was politically very active. During her time at the preparatoria,
- [10:39]
Narrator
Frieda joins a gang notorious for their brains and mischief who call themselves the Cachuchas, named for the red hats they wear to distinguish themselves from the other students. She falls in love with the leader, Alejandro Gomez Arias. Though she continues to study hard, the teenage Frida is also a committed prankster. But the gang push their luck when they dabble with pyrotechnics. Deeming one particular professor, an overly conservative thinker for their tastes, she decides that something must be done. The group set a 6 inch firecracker with a 20 minute fuse to go off outside an assembly hall during a lecture. When it explodes, it shatters a window, showering the lecturer with glass, stones and gravel. The targeted professor may not be dynamic enough for Frieda's liking, but he is certainly stoic. He smooths his hair and continues the lecture. And the gang, who are nothing if not well prepared, deploy their alibis and narrowly avoid expulsion. It's at the preparatoria that she first meets the Mexican artist Diego Rivera. Almost 20 years her senior and strikingly robust and bulky, Rivera is on the road to fame for his mural painting.
- [11:51]
Cisse Hanastrosa
Rivera's first commission was a mural called the Creation for the National Preparatory School that Frida attended. So Frida, it would spy on him and come around and scream at him. And she must have been around. Yeah, she was 15 years old then.
- [12:09]
Narrator
Though their lives may converge later, for now their paths cross only briefly. Art as a career isn't something that she seriously considered. Though the teenage Frieda likes to draw and even earns money outside of her lessons as an engraver's apprentice, her true ambition is still to forge a career in medicine. But those plans are about to change. Frida is with her college boyfriend Alejandro when she's involved in the bus crash that changes the trajectory of her life. At just 18 years old, the bus
- [12:43]
Cisse Hanastrosa
she was traveling in collided with a tramway and a metal bar pierced her pelvic bone and basically pierced her body. So this is the beginning of the career of the amazing artist we know today. But it's also the beginning of the deterioration of her body.
- [13:05]
Narrator
For the first month after the accident, it is touch and go, her survival hanging by a fine thread. When she finally makes it home, she does so in traction. With plaster casts enclosing her broken body, she is unable to roll over or sit, let alone continue her studies. She is in continuous pain and her boredom and isolation threaten to tip her into despair. Her mother, Matilda, nurses her fiercely independent daughter who now needs round the clock care. She sees the frantic letters she writes to her boyfriend who is now studying abroad. In her correspondence, Frieda begs for Alejandro to entertain her with anecdotes of his life. Bed bound and lonely, she is desperate for visitors who never seem to come. Understanding that Frida's recovery is dependent on her mind as much as her body, her devoted parents hit on an ingenious solution.
- [14:03]
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- [14:40]
Progressive Insurance Narrator
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- [14:41]
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- [15:28]
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- [15:59]
Narrator
Guillermo Carlo is in his study, but today it's not photographic film he's working with, but wood. He leans into the grain, drawing the sandpaper across it again and again until it's as smooth as metal. Between strokes, he listens to the parakeets outside the window, the chatter of a monkey, the yip of their dog behind him. He hears the door opening, but Guillermo doesn't need to turn to know it is his wife. The only other person who enters his workroom without knocking is his Frida, and she never entered a room quietly in her life. He sighs, imagining her upstairs in her room, staring at the ceiling, locked in her broken body that may as well be chained to her bed. But at least now he has something to offer that might ease the monotony. As Matilda crosses the room, he sands away the last rough corner on the new wooden contraption that has dominated his studio for the last week. It was his wife who commissioned it from a local carpenter, but needing to feel helpful, Guillermo took it upon himself to add the finishing touches. Now he steps back to admire it, and Matilda puts a hand on his shoulder. They share a glance. It is ready. They take a deep breath and together begin maneuvering the unwieldy frame out into the hall. Soon they've shifted it until it rests by Frieda's bedroom door that stands open to allow a breeze to pass through. Guillermo pauses, watching his daughter struggling to reach the water on her nightstand. Shaking from the effort, Frida fumbles the glass, which tips, rolls and crashes to the stone floor. Mathilde quickly sweeps up the broken shards. Then, intrigued, Frida watches as her parents shift the wooden frame into the room. As she recognizes what it is an easel specially made to fit across her mattress. The frown that Frieda has worn for weeks on end lifts. Soon the contraption is straddling her bed at waist level, the slope of its wooden work surface rising before her. All three of them are smiling now. Matilda places a fresh canvas on the easel, and Guillermo produces the box of oil paints that Frida has already used to paint her plaster cast corset. He places a jar of paint brushes within easy reach on her side table and helps her dab blobs of paint onto a fresh palette. She touches a brush into the oils, and this time, when she reaches with the brush towards the canvas, her hand doesn't shake. Frida Kahlo's first artworks are portraits. She paints friends and her sister. She is often supremely critical of her own work, sometimes tearing it up entirely when it doesn't turn out the way she hoped. On the days she doesn't have a sitter, she reads avidly, focusing on anything related to art. But when she becomes tired of waiting for people to pose for her, her mother comes up with another innovative solution.
- [19:11]
Cisse Hanastrosa
It was because of this accident, and because she was bed bound for almost nine months, she was unable to continue her studies and began to paint. So her mother installed a mirror on the canopy of her bed so she could see herself. And this is why she worked on so many self portraits, because, as she describes, she spent a lot of time alone, so she was the subject she knew best.
- [19:39]
Narrator
Along with the adapted easel, the developing artist has the means to practice. Whenever she has the strength, she soon discovers that she has some skill, one influenced by the photographic work she did with her father and the anatomical knowledge from her previous career choice. One year after her accident, she completes her first serious painting, called Self Portrait in a red velvet dress. It depicts the artist staring piercingly ahead, unsmiling, reaching forward with a beseeching hand into the foreground. Behind her, a moody blue black sky hangs above an unquiet ocean. Right from the beginning, she combines realism with the elements of Mexican folk art. Here she demonstrates the importance of her Mexicanness, referred to as Mexicanidad, through motifs of nature and her use of bold color. The rolling waves behind her and the embroidery of the dress's plunging neckline echo the traditional art styles that will become her hallmark. The painting is sent to her now ex boyfriend. She mourns their breakup and wants Alejandro to feel she is in the room with him. But it's not too long before her heart is drawn in a different direction. When Carlo is back on her feet, she walks with the aid of a stick and returns to college. Having abandoned her hope of working in medicine, she now needs to know if the painting that has consumed her during her convalescence shows any genuine promise. In a typically bold move in 1928, she seeks out the now world renowned Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, the very same man who painted at her school seven years previously. He is working on a fresco on the walls of the Ministry of Education when she finds him, but she's not concerned with the niceties of letting him finish before calling up to him. Carlo demands Rivera should come down from where he's balancing on the high scaffold. She points out unequivocally that she is not flirting with him, having already heard of his reputation as a woman chaser, but simply wants him to look at her paintings. Intrigued and charmed by this diminutive, forthright young woman, Rivera agrees, But once he's on the ground, he's even more impressed by her art. He particularly praises her self portrait, telling her she has talent. Rivera agrees to meet and see more of her work. He becomes her mentor, her biggest supporter, and soon a lover. Though they are admittedly an unusual couple to look at, being of physically opposite builds, they are kindred spirits in their political idealism and as well as their art. Frida soon joins the Mexican communist faction of which Rivera is a member. Though he is almost double her age, not to mention twice married and known philanderer, they fall passionately in love and quickly marry. Her mother calls this marriage that of an elephant and a dove. Carlo is blissfully happy to be Rivera's wife and becomes pregnant on their honeymoon trip around Mexico. But the pregnancy is deemed too dangerous because of her multiple spinal and pelvic injuries. At three months on finding the fetus in the wrong position, she reluctantly undergoes a medical termination. Devastated, she is given conflicting opinions on whether she will ever carry a child to term. She is desperate for a family of her own and remains hopeful. Now at her new husband's side, she travels to the US For Rivera to complete a number of prestigious commissions for murals. Carlo's signature clothing style develops here when she is for the first time outside of her beloved Mexico. She paints during her time in what she calls Gringo land. But not everyone takes her seriously.
- [23:37]
Cisse Hanastrosa
She was initially patronized as Rivera's exotic third wife, who gleefully dabbles in Art, you know. And I think Kahlo's encounters in the United States were complex and really impactful. For example, in San Francisco she fashioned her singular tehuana style and built great relationships with friends, was photographed by many photographers and began painting seriously then.
- [24:12]
Narrator
It's now, as a foreigner abroad, that Kahlo's Mexican roots become more prominent. In her personal style, she's always favored long skirts that cover the leg affected by polio. She now builds on this image, adopting traditional tehuana Mexican dress. The distinctive costume is made up of three the long cotton or lace skirt, the elaborately woven and embroidered square necked blouse, and the headdress of flowers and ribbons intertwined with braided hair. The colors are vibrant scarlet, cobalt blue, emerald green. For Kahlo, these clothes are practical. The blouses tuck comfortably into voluminous skirts, even when wearing the medical corsets that she will use intermittently for the rest of her life. The decoration and headpieces draw the eye away from the areas affected by her accident and up towards her face and shoulders. But for her, it's more than simply aesthetics. The outfits celebrate her own indigenous heritage. On her mother's side, they also represent those of Mexico from before the Spanish colonization. Her style is particular to the Zapotec women of the Tehuantepec area, whose communities are traditionally matriarchal. It's characteristic of Kahlo that rather than try to fit in in America, she becomes even more flamboyant, accentuating her identity as distinctly Mexican. Still, some critics wrongly assumed that she dresses this way for her husband's approval.
- [25:42]
Cisse Hanastrosa
And many, many scholars say that she adopted that specific dress to please Diego Rivera. But of course, when this archive I was telling you was discovered, a photograph of her maternal mother appeared where they were all dressed in the tehuana attire, you know, from this Isthmus of Tehuantepec, from this matriarchal society. So this proved that she had that legacy way before meeting Rivera. So her decision to adopt that indigenous dress had to do more with her maternal roots and also to reaffirm herself as a female artist in a very male dominated environment at the time in Mexico, as well as adopting a dress that symbolizes a powerful woman that came from this matriarchal society.
- [26:33]
Narrator
Rivera's work is now hugely popular. His fame is aided by controversy when he paints Communist icon Vladimir Lenin into a giant mural in the lobby of New York City's Rockefeller Center. Though he was commissioned to depict the contrast of capitalism and communism, he was asked for balance and when he refuses to change it, the work is plastered over. The ensuing row is reported worldwide, and the work continues to roll in. There's no such thing as bad publicity. Their revolutionary ideals apply to their personal lives too. Rivera and Carlo's marriage is unconventional from the start, with both engaging in multiple affairs. Carlo with both men and women. Neither spouse is immune to jealousy, however, and though passionate rows become part of everyday life, for now, the relationship weathers the storms. Now in her mid-20s, Kahlo's longing for a child has not abated. Far from home in Detroit, she is three months into another pregnancy when she begins to bleed. Soon she is hemorrhaging. She is rushed by ambulance to hospital, where she once again miscarries. On her second day as an inpatient, she demands doctors provide her with medical books, with illustrations of miscarriage, the better to draw a lost child. They initially refuse, until Rivera tells them, you are not dealing with an average person. Frida will do something with it. She will do an artwork.
- [28:08]
Cisse Hanastrosa
She had a traumatic miscarriage that radically transformed her art. It is really in Detroit where she became the taboo breaking painter we know today, because this is the time where she for the first time painted a miscarriage. And as long as I know there were no miscarriages painted in the history of art as at such extent to show a blood, I mean, fluids coming out of her vagina. And this was very, very ahead for her time in 1932.
- [28:46]
Narrator
The painting known as Henry Ford Hospital is a unique representation of women's experience, harking back to her study of anatomical drawings and her initial ambition to be a doctor. It depicts her naked and bleeding with the symbolism of different elements tied to her body by umbilical cords, including the fetus. At a time of huge murals painted by men, Carlo is depicting the everyday tragedy of a woman's body and the heartbreak of infertility. Slowly she recovers, and in 1932, Carlo and Rivera return to Mexico. But if she hoped for comfort, is greatly disappointed. In September, her beloved mother dies. Kahlo's grief is seen in her iconic painting entitled My Birth, in which she paints herself fully formed, emerging from her mother. This is a time of increased turbulence in the Rivera marriage. The couple moved to a newly built house made for them in Mexico City that is actually two separate houses joined by a bridge. The two no longer live together, but still see each other every day. Now the circulation problems that Kahlo has had in her right leg since her childhood polio worsen. Her toes are removed to prevent gangrene. Spreading. But though her general health is deteriorating, this is a hugely productive time for her art. And although she can't control her body's struggles, she continues to carefully curate her personal style.
- [30:19]
Cisse Hanastrosa
When I went through her personal belongings, I can tell you I met her for the first time, and I encounter an incredibly sophisticated woman that love makeup, that love perfume, that love to dress up, and that use dressing up as a healing practice. Also, some of her friends described that the more she would adorn herself, it was because it was probably a bad day for her health. So you see how she's constantly finding ways of healing through creativity, through that creative process, whether it was dressing up or whether it was painting, it's always that resilience to overcome adversity.
- [31:02]
Narrator
Kahlo is particularly close to her younger sister, Cristina, and her two children, who frequently stay with her, becoming almost substitutes for children of her own. But now, though extramarital affairs have long been the norm, Rivera crosses a line when he sleeps with Cristina. Although devastated, Carlo refuses to be a victim of their betrayal, though their friendship endures and he continues to support her financially. She officially separates from Rivera in 1935 and travels to New York alone. But she's never lonely. During her lifetime, she will be romantically associated with a famous Olympic fencer and photographer, the artist Georgia o', Keeffe, various Hollywood stars, singers, sculptors, and the Parisian nightclub sensation Josephine Baker. Back in the usa, as a single woman, she continues to paint in earnest, though critical acclaim is still a way off. Striking self portraits form the bulk of her work. She depicts herself with thick eyebrows joining in the middle and a dark moustache on her upper lip, accentuating aspects considered to be traditionally masculine.
- [32:14]
Cisse Hanastrosa
She has a mustache and, in general, the face of the opposite sex. And you see that she emphasizes these features also in her portraits. You see this kind of play in her self portrait, with her gender fluidity she was experiencing what gender fluidity meant, that she was experiencing it lively with different sexual relationships. In today's terminology, we would say that Kahlo rejected binary categories and embraced gender fluidity. But the language and the choices of identity available to her regarding gender and sexuality during her lifetime were vastly different from what we have today. You see?
- [32:58]
Narrator
Returning to Mexico, she spends more time with Rivera, and in January 1937, the couple offer asylum to Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. At her father's house, Casa Azul, Carlo embarks on an affair with the Marxist that infuriates Rivera. Despite their separation and his own almost continuous infidelity until now, Carlo has professionally Speaking been in her husband's shadow. But in October 1938, at the age of 31, she holds her debut solo exhibition in New York and achieves her first significant sales. She travels to Paris, meeting Surrealist painters. Although she never views her own work as part of that movement, her art is now being given more credence, although her graphic, physical depictions of the female body's suffering aren't appreciated by all. At her Paris exhibition, at least one painting is censored, being considered too distasteful to include.
- [33:57]
Cisse Hanastrosa
They want to take the one that is called A few small nips. Unos cuantos piquetitos that where is this woman who has been stabbed by her husband? From a news article she. She read then, she wanted to depict that scene. So that painting, for example, was problematic in. In Paris. So it's interesting to see, yeah, how her work was so ahead of its time and it was controversial then and it continues to be controversial today, you know, for some people. People.
- [34:28]
Narrator
Carlo finally no longer needs Rivera for money, having achieved financial independence through her own art sales. But they remained devoted to each other, sharing a deep emotional connection and appreciation of one another's art.
- [34:42]
Cisse Hanastrosa
Well, she said that she had two accidents. One was the accident she had at the age of 18, and the second accident was Diego. In spite of numerous affairs on both sides, Kahlor remained committed to the relationship. He loved her very much, and they loved each other in a very particular way. They respected each other professionally very much. He supported her career. He believed in her art deeply. So it was a complex relationship, you know, as any relationship is, but I think a magical one as well. I think what they had was truly special. Very passionate, with a lot of pain, with a lot of love, with a lot of respect and complicity. I think before anything, they were really good friends.
- [35:41]
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- [36:12]
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- [36:38]
Narrator
Despite their official separation, they never truly separate emotionally. So it is no surprise to friends and family when, during a trip to San Francisco for medical treatment in 1940, they remarry. Soon, though, they are called back to Mexico, where Carlo's aging father, Guillermo, is unwell. The two return to Casa Azul, the Blue House, where she was born. Now an established name in the art world, Carlo is appointed as a professor at La Esmeralda School of Art, but holds her classes at home. Embracing her love of animals, she surrounds herself with monkeys, parrots and hairless dogs. She is frequently depicted with them as renowned photographers travel from all over the world to capture her image. Animals also take a symbolic role in her paintings.
- [37:29]
Cisse Hanastrosa
I think they became like a surrogate family, with the monkeys doubling as children, you know, children she could never have. You know, in her paintings, they often attain symbolic significance or they act as alter egos. So, yeah, her relationship with her pets was really interesting. And the way she paints them, the Changuitos, the monkeys, and she had a little deer, then she paints self, represents herself as a little deer. She then even hybridizes herself with animal and human.
- [38:03]
Narrator
But this settled period at the Blue House cannot last for long as, once again, Carlo's physical health deteriorates. Between 1944 and 1949, she travels to Paris for seven operations on her spine. She is rarely out of her bed or wheelchair, and her chronic pain leads to an addiction to opiates and alcohol. In 1951, she paints her last signed self portrait of the 55 she has painted. It depicts her in a wheelchair with an easel painting of her surgeon next to her.
- [38:35]
Cisse Hanastrosa
The evolution goes from self portraiture, but it's always about the self, about that female experience. She did a lot of portraits of other people, but it's more where you see all these different selves in the paintings. It's where you see her experiences, how she portrays herself through the disabled Frida, through the Mexican Frida, through the androgynous Frida. So she's always. She's constantly expressing herself through the canvas.
- [39:09]
Narrator
Kahlo now wears a permanent plaster cast over her chest. While the plaster is being applied, ropes and pulleys are secured to the rafters of the Blue House, suspending her upright, pulling her disintegrating spine into line so the corset can hold her in place. Despite the pain, she welcomes visitors while she remains hanging. As the plaster dries, sharing drinks, songs and laughter, the casts themselves become works of art. All her Corsets are decorated with tigers, monkeys, plumed birds. She paints herself with blood red hammers and sickles, the symbols of communism and even a depiction of the streetcar that injured her. As her health worsens, it becomes more important than ever for Kahlo to own her image and her spirit and zest for life is indomitable.
- [40:04]
Cisse Hanastrosa
She also was a woman who had a lot of fun, who loved tequila, who loved to dance, who enjoyed life. And you see it through the intensity of her work and how she will use her plaster corsets and paint on them almost as if it was an act of rebellion, as if she was doing it, like on purpose. So, for example, when she was wearing her corsets and if she wanted to take her her blouse off, then the corset act as a blouse because it was already all decorated and she was incredibly ahead of her time. So really, I'm usually very against of just putting her as a victim, because everything around the work I do around Frida is precisely to celebrate her as a woman who didn't allow her disabilities define her, but she defined who she was in her own terms, the same way she did as an artist.
- [41:04]
Narrator
In 1953, Kahlo achieves a lifelong ambition of a solo exhibition in Mexico. But she's still recovering from a failed transplant in which a slice of her pelvic bone is grafted onto her spine with a metal plate. It's pioneering surgery, but her body rejects it, and by the opening day of the show, her condition has deteriorated so much that her doctors forbid her to leave her bed. It is April 1953. A waitress smooths down her crisp white apron, glancing nervously at the huge wooden doors of the Galleria Art Contemporaneo in Mexico City. Tonight she is helping prepare for the opening of Frida Kahlo's exhibition. Outside, the crowds have been gathering for hours. As she heaves another case of champagne onto the bar, the phone rings again. As it has done all day, she hears the gallery owner explain yet again to a guest or reporter that yes, they still hope Ms. Carlo will be attending and no, they have no further update on her health. The waitress lifts the bottles of wine and crunches them down into the waiting buckets of ice. All around the room, glasses glisten on the tables and silver tureens reflect the vibrant paintings that line the white walls. But tonight, the gallery's centerpiece is Frida Kahlo's canopied wooden bed. It is decorated with ribbons, flowers and photographs and draped in traditional Mexican fabrics, a work of art in itself. There are thumps at the door, the hinges creaking, voices raised, as if this is a rally rather than an art gallery. But though the artist was scheduled to arrive before the guests, she is not yet here, and there have been rumors that she is too weak to attend. Now the crowd outside are becoming angry. Engines are revving, accompanied by what soon becomes an almost continuous blast of horns. Another waiter hurries past, reporting that the street outside is completely blocked. People are going to get hurt. A decision is made, and the waiting staff are directed to their positions. When the doors open, the crowd floods in. They clutch invitations designed by the artist, little booklets decorated with colorful strings. The waitress pours glasses of champagne as the guests chatter excitedly, swarming around the room, looking for the woman herself. But when they see the empty bed, grave looks pass between them. Then, from outside, a siren sounds. Everyone looks around as an ambulance appears beyond the open doors, accompanied by a motorcycle. The gallery crowd falls quiet as the back of the ambulance swings open. After a moment, a stretcher is carefully carried out. On it, instantly recognizable by the flash of a vibrant crimson headpiece, is Frida Kahlo herself. The crowd parts as she is brought into the gallery and gently laid upon the bed, still as a doll. Cameras click and flash, taking in the red boots that poke from beneath a full embroidered skirt, the sumptuous traditional shawl, the way her dark hair glistens in its coils between loops of bright ribbons. Though her eyes are sunken, her painted carmine lips break into a wide smile. The waitress finds her happiness infectious as the artist calls out for music. The wine flows now, and the waitress can barely keep up, opening bottle after bottle, pouring glass after glass, the guests crowd Frieda's bed until they are directed into something resembling a queue to greet her by individually shuffling past. It's more party than exhibition, and the atmosphere thickens with the smoke of cigarettes and cigars. Windows are flung open to let in the evening air, cooled by the spring rain. Frida calls from her bed for her guests to sing with her. And the eyes and the self portraits that line the wall around her, watch on as she soaks this up, one of the proudest nights of her life. Kahlo is now a celebrity artist in her own right and in her native country. Time magazine reports on the opening night of her exhibition. I'm not sick, she tells them. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint. But the gangrene in her leg is getting worse, and shortly after the exhibition, it is decided the leg must be amputated. The operation sends her into a suicidal depression. She commissions a prosthetic leg encased in a bright red leather boot decorated with braiding in her signature tehuana style. Whenever she can manage it, she sits up, held upright by a sash tied around the back of her wheelchair and her plaster corset. From here, she can see the plants outside, the birds and her pets. Carlo talks with friends about the future of her wish to travel to Russia Poland Poland. As 1954 begins, she starts planning a fiesta to celebrate her and Rivera's 25th wedding anniversary later in the year. Now surviving on a powerful cocktail of drugs, her mood becomes erratic. She often flies into furious rages with Rivera, while seconds later pleading for his company. She's weakening by the month and becomes susceptible to illness and infection. A friend visiting the couple writes later of Rivera's desperation. If I were brave, rivera tells him, I would kill her. I cannot stand to see her suffer so. But Kahlo continues to paint, sometimes back in her bed with an easel like the one her parents brought her. And still a revolutionary spirit persists.
- [47:02]
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- [47:32]
Marvel Television Promoter
Where is Gared Alpha? I'm right here. Don't miss the return of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again.
- [47:40]
Bloomberg Narrator
So what's next?
- [47:41]
Narrator
I feel liberated. We're going to take this city back
- [47:44]
Marvel Television Promoter
over medicated in an all new season, now streaming only on Disney plus.
- [47:49]
Bloomberg Narrator
They're hunting us.
- [47:51]
Narrator
It's time we started hunting them.
- [47:53]
Marvel Television Promoter
I can work with them.
- [47:56]
Cisse Hanastrosa
This should be tons of fun.
- [47:58]
Marvel Television Promoter
Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again, now streaming only on Disney plus.
- [48:03]
Narrator
It is a gloomy day in the Mexican rainy season. Frida has been convalescing from bronchial pneumonia. But despite the insistence of doctors that she rest, she is outside protesting against the American CIA's interference in the leadership of Guatemala. In what will be her last public appearance, Diego bounces Frida slowly in her wheelchair along the rutted streets. Friends and prominent Mexican figures follow proudly in her wake. In her right hand, she holds a placard emblazoned with a dove symbolizing peace. Her left hand is held aloft in a fist, her fingers sparkling with traditional Mexican gold rings. Too unwell to dress, her hair in its usual braids and ribboned headpiece, her head is wrapped in a simple headscarf. To onlookers at the rally, Frida seems decades older than she is. But her eyes are alive with revolutionary zeal as she joins the cry of the crowd. This, though, will be her last public appearance. Her pneumonia worsens after the grueling four hours in her wheelchair at the rally, and she is confined to bed yet again. Now she battles a consuming fever, her body too weak to fight infection. Less than two weeks later, on June 13, 1954, Brida Kahlo dies at La Casa Azul, the Blue House where she was born. She's just 47 years old. Her family find her final words in her diary, written days before her death. I hope the exit is joyful, and I hope never to come back. Her last painting is a departure from her ubiquitous self portraits. It is a vibrant depiction of watermelons, both cut and whole, scattered with seeds. Carved into the flesh are the words Viva la vida, which is translated as Long live life. Carlo's funeral takes place in the palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City. It is a major event, a work of performance art attended by 600 mourners, from her students to a former president of Mexico. She is laid out in her full tehuana costume during her funeral procession. Her open casket is draped with a communist flag by Rivera, who never leaves her side. Traditional Mexican funeral songs are sung throughout. Kahlo is cremated as per her request. She had spent enough of her life lying down, she said. Despite the exhibitions and her popularity in her lifetime, Kahlo's work fades into relative obscurity in the years following her death. It's not until the 1970s and the emergence of second wave feminism that her work becomes intensively studied and celebrated. But during the intervening years, her perception in the public eye has evolved from stoic victimhood to a beacon of strength and vitality.
- [50:58]
Cisse Hanastrosa
I personally don't like her being portrayed as a victim, because if you see, I think Kahlo's image endures because she was able to break a lot of taboos about women's experiences, about challenges to overcome illness, physical injury, both exposing them and working through this trauma in creative ways. So I feel that this resilience and her fighting attitude and determination to enjoy life despite of the difficulties she encountered makes her a powerful symbol as she continues to speak to many different groups and. And her iconic image that you know that iconic image that we know today communicates strength and possibility for change.
- [51:54]
Narrator
The Museo de Freda Kahlo in La Casa Azul, the Blue House, where she started and ended her life, opens a year after Rivera's death in 1957. It is now one of the most popular museums worldwide.
- [52:08]
Cisse Hanastrosa
She passed away in 1954 and he passed away in 1957. So before he died, he created the Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera Trust because he wanted to give the Blue House, which today is the Frida Kahlo Museum, to the people of Mexico. So he donated the house and all its content to the people of Mexico in 2021.
- [52:32]
Narrator
Carlo's 1949 self portrait Diego yo or Diego and I, breaks records as the most expensive work by a Latin American artist ever sold at auction, fetching $34.9 million. But no value can be placed on her legacy. Frida Kahlo dressed every day as if preparing for a fiesta. She knew her life would be short, so she made it shine bright. She was her own work of art.
- [53:02]
Cisse Hanastrosa
Speaking of the legacy, not only the amazing body of work she left us, but it's how we as human beings can become more resilient and how through creativity, we can overcome adversity. And I think that's kind of like studying her, what I have learned and the messages that she has been conveyed to me through her work and also the messages I would like to convey to younger women and people, that she's probably the most important female artist of the 20th century. A dark skinned woman of color, disabled and queer.
- [53:45]
Narrator
Next week on Short HISTORY of bring you a short history of the great dinosaur Rush.
- [53:51]
Dinosaur History Narrator
At one point, Marsh visited Cope in Philadelphia and Cope took him around and showed him to some of these places where he was getting specimens. And the story is, according to Cope, at least, that Marsh serendipitously paid off some of these mine operators to send him the first news of new discoveries rather than Cope. So they were already starting to compete with another.
- [54:14]
Marvel Television Promoter
Right?
- [54:14]
Dinosaur History Narrator
And they were already starting to use their both of their financial resources to try to out compete their rivals.
- [54:21]
Narrator
That's next time on Short History of.
- [54:33]
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- [55:05]
Bloomberg Narrator
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