Entering Mesoamerica (4): Exploring Oaxaca and Mexico City - La Casa Azul / The Blue House of Frida

By Shenzhan/申展

Cover photo: Viva la Vida (Live Life), Frida Kahlo, Frida Kahlo Museum, 1954.

该文有中文版本 “走进中美洲（四）：Oaxaca与墨西哥之旅——La Casa Azul和Frida的“蓝房子”

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) is perhaps the most famous Mexican artist that I know before this Mexico trip. I remember my first Christmas in New York, walking in the cold crisp air passing by a midtown gallery, my attention was caught by a large-sized oil painting of a brown-colored woman, short-haired with a rather serious look on her face, a light mustache above her upper lip, and two strikingly thick eyebrows touching each other. Not too long afterwards I got to know it was a portrait of Frida, THE Mexican artist who is internationally known for her tragic life accident, complicated romantic relationships with, among many others, Diego Rivera (1886 - 1957), and her passion for life and art, which was deeply rooted in the indigenous Mexican tradition. Two weeks before the trip, I tried to get into “Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Ben Deceiving”, a special exhibition on Frida’s life and work at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. The tickets were sold out until the end of the show. (WELL, I am going to Mexico City anyway !)

La Casa Azul (the Blue House), Frida Kahlo Museum, Coyoacan, Mexico City, May 2019.

At 3 pm on May 29, 2019, I was waiting outside of Frida Kahlo Museum, in Coyoacan, a historical town in southern Mexico City. The museum is where Frida was born, and where she breathed her last. It’s a charming two-story house with a large beautiful garden, surrounded by a wall painted electric cobalt blue. Some of Frida’s art works are displayed here, as well as her kitchen, the art studio Diego built for her with volcanic rocks, her daybed and night bedroom, and Diego’s room (the couple had separate bedrooms later in life). There is always a line getting into the museum. Mexicans adore Frida and affectionately call the museum “La Casa Azul” (the Blue House).

La Casa Azul does not collect Frida’s most famous art works, which would have been in the hands of private collectors and museums. Though standing in front of “Viva la Vida” (Live Life), I was overwhelmed by the strong, genuine longing for life Frida demonstrated in the painting - a still life of watermelons, some cut open with the red juicy meat exposed with black seeds. It is the last painting Frida did. A few days later, just moments before she passed away, Frida added the words “Viva la Vida” in one cut-open watermelon at the very front. Despite all she had to suffer -- her life had been subject to pain, medication, corsets, fragile health, and a constant longing for the freedom her body couldn’t allow ever since the devastating accident that fractured multiple parts of her body when she was 18; her complicated relationship with Diego Rivera, who’s 20 years in her senior and already an internationally famous muralist when they married in 1929. While both had love affairs throughout their marriage, Frida was more expressive in art of her frustrations about Diego’s affairs, one of them involving her own sister -- in the last moments of her life at the age of 47, despite all the pain, frustrations, heartbroken moments, life was still worth living. Viva la Vida!

Viva la Vida (Live Life), 1954, Frida Kahlo Museum, Mexico City

In spite of her love for Diego, Frida’s affairs with men and women certainly add color to her international fame. Her many lovers include Nickolas Muray (1892-1965), who photographed some of the best pictures of Frida during their 10-year on-and-off affair starting in 1931, shortly after her marriage to Diego. One of the photographs from 1939 is on display at La Casa Azul. In the photo, Frida radiates a beauty with a soft smile that carries a fading tenderness, which I rarely see from her most famous self-portraits or other photographs.

Frida Kahlo, photographed by Nickolas Muray, New York, 1939

Her brief affair with Leon Trotsky (1879 - 1940) has a dedicated section in the gallery of La Casa Azul. Trotsky, in exile from the Soviet Union, stayed with Diego and Frida for two years here from 1937 to 1939. He later moved to a house nearby after a quarrel with Diego ( I wonder why!) and was assassinated there, now the Leon Trotsky Museum (Needless to say, Coyoacan is a storied town because of Frida and Trotsky!). Their tumultuous relationship is demonstrated in a 1937 self-portrait Frida dedicated to her lover at the time.

My favorite discovery though was her yet another passionate affair with Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), a critically acclaimed Japanese-American sculptor. Every morning on weekends, I pass by the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, New York on a bike but have never thought there was a connection between these two artists. Their affair was brief, yet they remain friends until Frida’s death in 1954. Noguchi sent to Frida a collection of butterflies, still in a case hanging on the ceiling of her nightbed. On the blue wall around a corner in the garden printed the lyrics of a song left by Patti Smith in 2012, titled “Noguchi’s Butterflies”:

Noguchi’s butterflies above Frida’s nightbed, by Shenzhan/申展, May 29, 2019

A sculpture at Noguchi Museum, Long Island City, New York.

In the end, it’s her deepest love of native Mexican folk art that completes Frida Kahlo 's international fame. Through her art, she finally broke free from the corset that restrained her body, the relationships she had herself entangled, and made the native folk art from her beloved land stand out in the post-colonial Mexico and the world. In Paris, London, New York, she was celebrating her native culture, brilliantly, unapologetically, and rebelliously. Like her famed husband Diego, who’s known for making communist murals, Frida was deeply committed to the cause of communism (at the foot of her night-bed, there are portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao!). And yet, her self-portraits and other paintings, tell a much more personal story of her as an individual - perhaps, the struggle she endured between a fragile body and a mind longing for freedom, can be viewed as a symbolic one between a Mexico with thousands of years of pre-colonial tradition in heart and soul and a colonial history that still dominates every part of Mexican life today. That said, as the physical struggle is so essential as a human experience, it could be viewed as a symbol for almost any type of struggle. For better or worse, Frida made native Mexican folk art cool in the world -- if you happened to try to get a ticket to the Frida show at the Brooklyn Museum this May, you would know exactly what I mean.

After dawn that evening, I found myself walking with a group of 20 or so people in the garden following a middle-aged woman, who dressed up in traditional Tehuana fashion that Frida is known for, and a plump round-faced man in western suits playing violin. It was a dramatization of Frida’s life played in the garden every last Wednesday of the month. The show was entirely in Spanish, yet the actress deftly acted out scenes while taking the group through the garden, sometimes with a monologue when she stood on the steps of a pyramid Diego built for Frida; sometimes a dialogue she suddenly turned to the audience; and, sometimes a song as the violin played a melody in the background. I could only guess that the performance was quite engaging from the response of the audience, but nevertheless enjoyed the music, singing, and the fact that I was walking in Frida’s garden after sunset, when this unusual yet enchanting experience was unfolding. The green lush plants and the cobalt blue wall grew darker and softer in the twilight.