The Frida Cult

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) is now regarded as one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century.

I have had a crush on Frida for some time. She’s really big in the States – you can buy Frida cushions, Frida curtain material, Frida bags, even Frida crucifixes, you name it. It’s a cult. At times, I wish I was in the States, as Frida is almost unknown in the UK. But elsewhere in the world, she is huge. In fact her position as a globally recognised cult figure has become so powerful, that at times it threatens to overshadow her art.

If you’ve never heard of Frida or seen her art, then may I recommend the movie “Frida” where Salma Hayek plays her. So good I cried, and I really don’t cry easily in movies. If you don’t like movies, try her diaries or any number of her biographies.

Frida Kahlo was an amazing woman. Her life was filled with immense, unrelenting pain. She endured more in her short life than most people will ever have to face, but she never let this defeat her.

In 1928, when she was 21, Frida embarked on a relationship with Diego Rivera. Diego, then aged 41, was Mexico's most celebrated artist, famous for politically motivated murals. Ironically, she has become better known than him, practically an icon. Unlike Diego, Frida was a self taught painter, but a good one. She used personal symbolism mixed with Surrealism to express her suffering through her work. Although many folks thought she was a surrealist, she rejected this and considered her art to be “realistic not surrealist”. She painted herself and her life, no holds barred.

Henry Ford Hospital (1932)

Probably the most influential event in Frida's life was the most tragic one as well. When she was eighteen, she was in a bus accident that wrecked her life. Her body was almost destroyed. Both her spinal column and pelvis were broken in three places when she was impaled by a metal handrail that entered her hip and exited through her vagina. She was not expected to live. After the accident, bed-ridden for months, Frida began to paint. She painted to pass the time, but art also became an essential therapy for her emotionally and spiritually. Because of the accident, Frida was never able to have children. She had several miscarriages, which caused major depression, and the only outlet for her sorrow was her art. If you examine her work, her paintings were very passionate, albeit violent, bloody, and upsetting, but they simply represented her actual life and the truth of what was happening to her both physically and emotionally. Most of her paintings were self-portraits. She said, "I paint self-portraits because I am the person I know best. 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 without any other considerations."

Frida is my heroine – she was true to herself, her sexuality and her art, and to hell with what anyone else thought. An unashamed rebel, she was bisexual and had affairs with as many women as men. She drank like a fish, was wined and dined by the artist community (including Picasso), and appeared on the cover of Vogue. Her fashion was very Mexican, very unique, and a whole fashionista cult has built up in the States and Mexico, influenced by her personal style as well as her art. Even though life was against her, her spirit was indomitable – as illustrated at her one and only exhibition in Mexico in 1953. At this time, Frida's health was very bad and she should not have attended. But this didn’t stop her, and she insisted on being carried from home to her exhibition in her bed. She was placed in the middle of the gallery, and told jokes, entertained the crowd, sang, and drank the whole evening. The exhibition was an amazing success, and she had the best evening of her life. That night she really LIVED. She didn’t let her body beat her, she chose to live on HER terms.

I judge Frida to be a woman of strength, talent, humour, and endurance, a real feminist. Everyone finds something different in Frida’s work, but for myself, I personally really identify with her portrayals of pain, something with which I also live rather too much, and which also influences how I view and value art. No matter how much pain and how many operations she suffered, she still endured. Perhaps that’s why I admire her so very much. She is an example to me, and a personal inspiration.

My favourite quote from her writings is her final message before she died:

"I hope the leaving is joyful and I hope never to return".

Sums me up nicely too.

The Broken column by Frida Kahlo, 1944.