June 7, 2018 • 47 mins
Frida Kahlo was a painter who transcended her own work to became an icon. Learn all about her fascinating and inspiring life and work in today’s episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everyone, We're coming to Salt Lake City, Utah, and Phoenix,
Arizona this fall. Yeah, October, we're gonna be at Salt
Lake City's Grand Theater and then the next night October
will be in Phoenix. And we added a second show
to our Melbourne show, right, that's right, a second earlier
show in Melbourne. So you can get all the information
for all of these shows at s y s K
(00:22):
live dot com. Welcome to Stuff you should know from
how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
there's Jerry Rowland. This is going to be an interesting
(00:42):
one because I don't know how to say the ladies.
Last ning, Jerry's over there with her spider monkey on
her shoulder, a dead hummingbird hanging from her necklace, just
like any other day. We're here in Lakasa Azul, right,
and she's gotten ahold of some eyebrow pencil and filled
in between the two across the bridge of our nose.
So I'm excited about this. A because you said frieda
(01:06):
calo before we started recording freda Kalo, and B because
you know my family's fascination with this woman in her work. No,
we've talked about it before. That's okay. Though we've done
a thousand episodes. We have talked about it before. Yeah, okay,
well we'll get back into it. Yeah, we're way into Frieda.
(01:27):
Emily is borderline obsessed? Is she a freedom maniac? She is?
And my daughter loves her. You know, there's like Frieda
I hate to use the word, but kind of cults
devotional groups where um they basically dress up and and
are like Frieda. It's like channel Frieda Kalo. Yeah, because
(01:50):
as one of these articles that we sourced from points
out near the end um, not only does she draw
in people for her art, but she draws in uh
femineis and she draws in women who have suffered miscarriages
and and disabled people who have suffered great pain and
chronic pain in their life. So she through her life
(02:14):
she's able to um touch a lot of people because
of her life. And I'm sure with any artist where
if you know, the more you know about the artist,
the more you can appreciate their art. With freed to Klo,
it's almost like you gotta quit saying that Freda Calo Carlo. Carlo,
my whole life have been saying free to Kyla, and
(02:35):
I like it rules off the tongue. Yeah, but you know,
let's give her the due respect. Um the when did
we start doing that? I don't know. Okay, so um,
you almost you just almost can't fully appreciate any piece
of her work without knowing at least the basics of
her story. I think, well, yeah, and certainly once you
know the basics, you're like, oh right, that's where all
(02:59):
this comes from. It really makes sense. But she is
a great artist, for sure. I was going back and
looking at some of her art. You know, I'm familiar
with her, I know a little bit about her. Um,
but I definitely saw some pieces that I didn't realize before.
And just from researching this, I very much came to
appreciate her even more. Like she's a great artist. Just
the technique she used, the imagery she used, the symbolism,
(03:21):
I really dig it all. And it's like you can
appreciate it because it gives you a visceral reaction, but you,
the average person, can also get what she's feeling or
what she's saying without being like this means this, and
that means that she just kind of get it visually.
It's something that you can get and appreciate pretty easily. Yeah.
(03:43):
I mean we've we've seen her work in museums all
over the world. Basically every new city we go to,
we see, is there any free to color work there?
Have you been to Lakasa Zul? No, But that'll that's
that's gonna happen. Oh, I'm sure. I was gonna say
bucket list, but it's just on the list. I'm like,
I don't want to do it when I'm eighty, right
with with um Jack Nicholson or something. No, Morgan Freeman,
(04:06):
No, no no, No, we're gonna go down there for sure. Alright,
So let's let's start chronologically. Let's start at the beginning.
That makes sense. So Freeda kalo Um she was born
back in nineteen o seven, although she used to being
a revolutionary. She used to say that she was born
in nineteen ten, which was the year of the Mexican Revolution.
But she was born in a town which was very
freed to. Yeah, freed to call thing to do? Right. Um.
(04:30):
She was born in town called the Koyoa Khan which
is outside of Mexico City, and she was born in
that house Lacasa Zul the Blue House. Yeah, maybe maybe
not there. There's a lot of um parts of her
early life, like the year she was born where other
people say, like, man, she's actually born nearby, but she
says she was born there, so uh, like her birth
(04:52):
records indicated a different place, but it's we'll say she
was born there at the very least it was her
family's house, right, and she it was. It was in
her life for her whole life, so much so she
actually died in that house. Yeah. And it's a museum now,
yes it is. It's a national museum dedicated to free
to Carlo cret Cool. We can visit, right. So, um,
(05:15):
she was born in nineteen o seven they've figured out,
apparently you figured out. And her father was he German
or Hungarian? Because I saw both. Well, here's another little
thing where he was German. He was born in Germany,
but Freed always said that he was of Hungarian Jewish descent,
but that just doesn't appear to be true like ancestry
(05:37):
gen genealogy records. So was he like German Protestant or something?
Uh German? Um? Uh? What Lutheran? Lutheran? I think that's Protestant,
I think I think so, but I think I think
it was Lutheran. I can't remember. But his name, depending
on it was Carl Wilhelm. But when he traveled to
(05:59):
Mexico and the eight eighteen hundreds, he changed his name.
He took the translation. The Spanish translation was original German name,
which would have been Guillermo. Apparently it's a great name,
will though. Yeah, and then he became a Mexican citizen
and married her mother, Matilda Calderon, who was um American
(06:21):
Indian in Spanish. Yeah, and we should say Frieda. Frieda's
full name is Magdalena Carmen Frieda Calo. He called her
own great name. It is really there's a lot to
it there. Basically gives you everything you want, right, that's right.
So um, she was born in when someone else I
came to admire from researching her. As her father, he
(06:42):
seemed to have been a pretty cool cat. He was
a really good dad. Her mom was a little bit
religiously hysterical, I think, and very strict, But her dad
was a bit of a foil in that he raised Frieda.
He noticed something in freed To It seems that she
(07:02):
was different from her sisters, which she screamed, I mean
just like she dressed in men's suits and things like that.
She was definitely different than her sisters. But he saw
in her something very much different than her sisters, not
just in her outward behavior, and so he kind of
plucked her out of the path that his sisters were on,
which was, you know, go get married, or go being
(07:24):
educated into convent, Go get married, go be a wife,
and said, you you're going to go a different path.
Let's get you in a different school here. Yeah. He
was a photographer, so her first experiences with art were
accompanying him on photo shoots and being in the studio
with him. And like you said, he sent her to
the German College in Mexico City, where she was introduced
(07:48):
to European things, and um, very sadly she was sexually
abused there. Uh, and then ended up going to and
I think was one of the first, one of only
thirty five girls, young girls to go to the National
Preparatory School in Mexico because that was right around the
(08:08):
time in the Mexican Revolution. He said, maybe we should
start letting young women in here. Yeah. And then doctor, Yeah,
she excelled in in biology and some others and Moz
on a path to become a doctor actually. But one
of the other things that she discovered at the UM,
the Preparatory Academy of Mexico City was a real zeal
(08:29):
for the Mexican revolutionary spirit. Yeah. I mean, not only
did she learn about Europe, but she got really into
learning about her indigenous roots. Yeah. Um, that seems to
be something that fascinated her throughout her life, was her
her European and her Mexican roots and how they combined
in her and she explored them outwardly as well. She
(08:50):
even had a painting called roots. Oh yeah, kind of
on the nose, uh and roots were growing out of
her body even yeah, um we we kind of skipped
over one very important thing in her life. When she
was six, Um, she contracted polio and long recovery permanently
damaged one of her legs. She had a very one
(09:12):
of her legs was I think her right leg was
smaller and just very skinny, a little withered. Yeah, and
she had a permanent limp from that age, which was
a big deal. It was just the beginning of a
lifetime of pretty horrendous um physical disabilities. In pain. Yeah,
she was alive on the planet for forty seven years
(09:34):
and starting at age six. You say that's when polio,
She bet, that's when it began, at the at the
at the latest, it started at six and continued all
the way up to forty seven when she died. So
at the in this kind of revolutionary group that she joined, um,
the cachas, which means the caps are the hats, which
(09:56):
apparently today is Narco slang for cops. You know, kutchukas cachuchas.
It's hard to say, yeah, because of the two. Is
it's like Jason's coming or something. Um. She she fell
in love with kind of the leader of that group,
but really like she found herself as a revolutionary, right
(10:20):
and not just a Mexican revolutionary. She also became a
communist ideologist and was for life. That's one thing that
a lot of people don't realize is free to free
to Carlo, this pop culture icon, this patron saying of
of women, UM and feminists, was also very much a
fervent communist. Actually, she referred to her husband later Diego Rivera,
(10:43):
who you're about to mention um as nobody's husband. He
was a lousy husband, but he was a great comrade.
This is a great quote. Yeah. So that's when she
fell in love with Alejandro Gomez Eddias and uh they
were together for about five years. And we'll get to
kind of what happened toward the end of that relationship
(11:04):
in a sec but Ino and she was just fifteen.
She was at school, uh, at the preparatory school, and
Diego Rivera, who was very famous artist, a muralist at
the time, already this giant man, um like Alfred Molina's size,
that's who played him, Um, even bigger, I think. Yeah.
He was huge. Uh and you know, just tall and
(11:26):
rotund and just a big personality and everything. Sure. Yeah. Um.
He was painting a mural at her school called Creation
when she was just fifteen, and she would go out
there and just basically kind of stare at him and
while he was doing his work and sort of became
infatuated with him and the art. I get the picture
(11:50):
that it was all sort of intertwined, and uh, you know,
years later they would meet and marry and then remarry,
which we'll get into the ins and outs of their
relation chip, but it was it was an interesting love
story of sorts. Artists. You know, yeah, should we take
a break? All right, let's take a break, and we
will talk about the tragic events that befel her at
(12:14):
the age of eighteen. Okay, Chuck, So, like you said,
(12:37):
something really bad is about to happen to Frida. She's eighteen.
She's on a bus with a boyfriend who was the
leader of the Yeah, and um, the the bus was
struck by a trolley, or vice versa. She was on
a trolley struck by a bus, one of the two
in either way. It was a bad, bad scene for her. Yeah,
(12:59):
she was impaled by one of the handlebars. It went
through pelvis into her womb, That's how I saw it.
Put broke her spine. Um, she was in a bad way.
And supposedly her boyfriend walked away unharmed, which just makes
it even worse, you know, Yeah, I mean the way
I got it was that, you know, everyone was shaken
up pretty bad. But it was this sort of freak
(13:21):
thing that this rail impaled her hip that that she
got the worst of it. Now, this would go on
to be, in my opinion, the most significant event of
her entire life, because it would it changed everything. It
changed the course of everything. Remember, up to this point,
she's planning on becoming a doctor. Um, and she was
(13:44):
so laid up for so long and so immobilized that
she basically said, well, there goes my chance of being
a doctor. I'm not going to be able to catch up.
I'm not gonna be able to move. Who knows if
I'll be able to walk again. Um, And it just
shifted direction. Plus that whole womb thing is going to
come into play later on and that will definitely influence
(14:04):
her art for sure too. Yeah. So she's um, she's
bedridden for months. I think she had something like thirteen
or fifteen surgeries from that point on for the next
like thirty years. Um. And it turns out that she
was a great painter, which must have been something to
(14:25):
be like, well, I'm in this hospital bed that they're
equipping me with this special easel that I can use
in my full body cast lying down. They're gonna put
a mirror on on the ceiling above me so I
can be my own model. And she was very much
known for her self portraits. And she starts painting and
(14:47):
is amazingly talented. Yeah. And at first she she was saying, Okay,
well I can't be a doctor, and apparently I have
this knack for painting. Maybe I'll be a medical illustrator.
And once you hear that, when you see some of
her work, you're like, oh, yeah, she basically he was
a medical illustrator. Yeah, but in a exploring anatomy as
(15:07):
a metaphor for emotion. Yes, from what I understand, right, Yeah,
I mean, I don't know. I mean, this might be
hyperbolic to say this, but I don't know if any
artists that poured herself out on the canvas as much
as she did. Certainly not up to the point, especially
female artists. Yeah, absolutely, up to this point when when
(15:30):
Frieda Kello came along, like women were if you were emotional,
you were hysterical one. But you certainly weren't if you
were a woman artist, you certainly weren't expected to explore
emotions and grief and personhood and the self, and you
certainly weren't expected to do it in your paintings. And
(15:51):
she said her works showed that that was not the case.
It wasn't even like you shouldn't do this, it was
women can't do this. She him along and said, and
actually we can, because I'm living proof. Yeah. And if
you're a man, you're just a brooding artist. Yeah. If
you're a woman, you're hysterical. Um, you're depressed. And she
just man, she laid it out there as raw as
(16:15):
you can imagine, and especially for the time, it was
just off the charts, how radical it was so so
And she's able to do this because her family set
up a special easel in a mirror for her to
be her own model. Yes, right, yes, so this is that,
this is a big thing, like this is starting to
come along and she she um passes the time while
(16:36):
she's recuperating doing this, and she recovers enough that she
goes back to school and starts hanging out with her
old friends again. And from that re entry back into
the revolutionary slash communist world in Mexico at the time,
she ended up in the orbit of Diego Rivera again. Actually,
they ran across each other at a party. Yeah, and
(16:57):
this was it. Man. From that point forward, they would
be um. They would be tied to one another through
their work and through their multiple marriages to one another. Uh.
She was twenty two, he was twenty years older than her. Uh,
and he very much Um, he may he very much
encouraged her early on and champion her and was her
(17:20):
mentors and artists. Was She went up to him at
at this party and said, I want you to look
at my work and tell me should I pursue this?
To see this? Am I an artist? Or is this
just nothing? And he looked at her work and he said,
you were an artist. This is astounding, Like do you
have what it takes? And you should keep pursuing being
(17:41):
an artist in as a matter of fact, let's get married. Yeah.
I mean he was attracted to her, but um, I
haven't seen anything that that led me to believe that
any of his support of her work was not genuine
and because he wanted to like get her in the sack. No, no, no,
he wasn't that kind of guy. He would get anybody
in the sack. He certainly didn't have to marry you.
And he's said, we didn't have to tell you you
were a great artist. That is below him. I saw
(18:03):
a thing. Yeah, they both had multiple affairs. We'll talk
about that throughout their marriage. And you know, maybe or
maybe not so understanding of each other doing so. Um,
but I saw one point that he supposedly got his
doctor to write a note that said that he was
physically incapable of being faithful. Really, I don't know if
(18:26):
that's true or not. So he had I just want
to get this quote, and he had a great quote
about her um as an artist. He said that she
was a realist as far as her arts concerned. She
was quote the first woman in the history of art
to treat with absolute and uncompromising honesty. One might even
say cruelty those general and specific themes which exclusively affect women. Yeah,
(18:50):
like that's those are pretty strong words from a renowned
artist who I mean, Diego Rivera was well renowned by
this time already, So when he looked at her art
and had things like that to say about it, it
really meant something. She was. If she ever was an
outsider artist, she wasn't anymore. She was a genuine artist.
She'd been decreed as such by the cream of the crop. Yeah,
(19:10):
and she um. I think the article on her own
website down plays a little bit her successes during her life.
It's certainly nothing compared to what she got many many
years later, decades later after her death. Um. They weren't
freedom maniacs back then, but she wasn't she also was
not just completely unknown as an artist. I mean she
(19:33):
got some notoriety during her life. She got to know Picasso,
she got to know I mean, these were the circles
she traveled in, partially because of Diego Rivera. But um,
they started moving around, you know, starting in the nineteen thirties. Uh,
they didn't stay in Mexico. They lived in San Francisco
for a little while, Uh, depending on where the work was.
Because he was a muralist, right, so he had to
(19:54):
go to the place where he was doing that. Yeah, exactly.
He can't say I'm gonna send you a mural, just
tape tape it up. S me a wall. And he
had her in tow which I get the impression like
sometimes she was a willing accomplice and other times she
was very much homesick for Mexico. Yeah, she for sure
miss Mexico. I know she did enjoy her time in
(20:16):
like in New York and said, I don't know if
she loved Detroit. I don't know if he didn't. They
moved to Detroit while he worked for the Detroit Institute
for the Arts, but very famously in the nineteen thirties
they lived in New York City when Diego Rivero was
commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller, who in the movie The Great
Movie by Julie Taymore and Samahayak was played by Edward Norton.
(20:38):
Oh really, yeah, have you not seen that movie? Man?
It's good and once you hear the h especially with
the backstory now with the Weinstein stuff coming out. I mean,
this was her passion, Samahaiaks, passion project for her life,
and uh, he put her through a living hell. It's horrifying.
I think it was. It might have been in New
(20:58):
York or New York Times had a great iCal about it.
But um or that she wrote, I think, But um,
I think what got me on that was Edward Norton
was he rewrote the script for like for free because
basically one of the Harvey's pick things was like, I'm
not gonna give you any money for this, Like you
gotta do it for almost nothing. Everyone's gonna have to
work for free. So she got everyone to work for
(21:20):
free or you know scale Uh from Edward Norton to
Julie Taymore, the Great director, and um he he demanded
a lesbian sex scene like literally was like, I'm not
doing this unless you do that. And uh, she was bisexual,
so it wasn't like he created this out of thin air.
But he's like, I want to see this on screen. Um.
(21:42):
She supposedly had affairs with George O'Keefe and Josephine Baker
and all these famous female performers and artists, but she
did not do that. I think she. I think she
had a kissing scene with Ashley Judd at a party.
Who is actually Judd supposed to be? I can't remember.
I wou'd see it in a minute. Emily's mad that
she's not here right now. I told her about this
(22:04):
last night. She's like, why am I not on? It's
like we don't have guests. She's like, I'm a guest
on Movie Crush. I was like, well that's a different
podcast altogether. Yeah. Um, she will pick this apart, trust me.
But anyway, she had a devil of a time getting
that movie made. Uh, and it went on to great
success and I think still is the highest grossing art
based movie of all time. Yeah, that's what I saw.
(22:27):
So anyway, they were in New York City because Nelson
Rockefeller displayed Byward. Norton had commissioned Diego Rivera to paint
a mural at Rockefeller Center called Man at the Crossroads,
and in it it was one of these big um
almost looked like a Sergeant Pepper's cover, you know, people
all over the place. And Um, he snuck in Vladimir
(22:50):
Lenin in the painting. So I have a question about that.
Did he sneak it in and was caught or was
he like And also, by the way, I've included this
great man Lenin, he snuck it in um as a response. Uh,
it's a very pointed response to something. And I can't
remember exactly what it was, but it wasn't originally in
the plan and I don't know if it was in
(23:11):
the original sketch. I might be getting this slightly wrong,
but at any rate, he got linen in there, and
um Rockefeller was not happy. I mean, I think it
was more of his family, like he he stayed, his
friend wasn't like. He was like, I hate you your
big poopy bands go back to Mexico. But he stopped
the work. That painting was mural was removed and destroyed,
(23:35):
but eventually was it destroyed. Yeah, man, pretty sad, but
eventually um Rivera recreated that a little smaller in Mexico
City and changed the title to Man Controller of the Universe.
And then in parenthes he's up yours. Rockefeller maybe so,
(23:56):
but that just sort of puts a button on them.
Moving kind of all around the United States for a while.
And this is when she was being introduced to high
society and and uh everyone from like I said, Josephine
Baker too, to Trotsky and she was she was working
at the time to write It's what. It wasn't like
she was just hanging out. She was still And one
(24:17):
of the paintings she um did was UM the Suicide
of Dorothy Hale. Yeah, that was interesting. So she was
commissioned by Claire loose Booth little Deuce Coope. She was
the she was from the publishing family of Time. I
think she published Vanity Fair something like that. She's a
great publishing magnate. Um And this was back in the thirties,
(24:40):
and she was friends with Dorothy Hale, who was a
an actress, a well known actress who had hit on
hard times financially and was having to live on the
um generosity of her friends. And she climbed up to
the highest point of the high rise that she lived
off of inn jumped to her death and devastated Claire
(25:00):
booth Loose and I hope I get that right at
least somewhere, and who was her friend? And she commissioned
fred To Calo to Um to do a painting, which
she thought this would be a portrait to commemorate my
friend Dorothy. That's not at all what free to Callo did. Yeah,
I don't know she realized who she was commissioning, fully,
like have you seen her work? Right? So what freed
(25:24):
to Calo did was she took this assignment and and
commemorated not Dorothy Hale necessarily, but Dorothy Hail's death by suicide.
It's it's almost like a step by step diagram. It
shows her at the top of the building in mid air,
and then in the foreground. Largest of all is her broken,
bloody body on the ground. But it has this very
(25:46):
somber um text caption basically across the bottom in a
scroll that explains what this is and that's how sad
this is um and that it was the suicide of
Dorothy Hale, and so um. Apparently when Claire uh booth
Loose got got this, she unwrapped it and was like
(26:07):
what is this gag? And she was going to destroy
it and friends talked her out of it. So it's
still in existence today. From what I understand, I think
the booth or loose family has has the uh the
painting in their possession now. Yeah, and that's uh just
emblematic of Frieda's outlook, which was like she was no bs,
(26:30):
She's like, I'm gonna show you what's real. So let
me ask you this. You're the Frieda expert here between
the two of us. Was she doing that like like
I'm all in your face, Claire, this is the reality
of your friend's suicide? Or was it she this is
this was her expression of emotion that she thought Claire,
(26:51):
I'm not saying her last two names, would would would
kind of vibe on and like this would be the
greatest commemoration of her friend. Which one. Well, I don't
think it was all in your face. I think she
thought that was the honesty. I think she thought that
was the most honest work. But I'm not sure whether
or not she considered like, wait a minute, is she
(27:11):
gonna hate this? Okay, so she wasn't like it doesn't
matter she hates it. This is the This is the
most honest work. So even if this psychologically destroys her,
Claire needs it tough enough. I'm very curious. That's a
good question. I don't know. I understand a lot of
the symbolism and her paintings now, but I don't necessarily
I haven't hit upon her motivation or personality quite yet.
(27:31):
Family is gonna be so mad because she read her
eight page biography and she's probably like, oh, we'll read
page six, jerks, and that will explain at all. Sorry again, Emily,
that's right. You want to take a break, Yeah, let's
do okay, alright, Chuck. So one other thing, very big
(28:07):
thing happened to her in Detroit, actually, um, and she
has a painting that commemorates it, called henry Ford Hospital.
She had her second miscarriage, and this her miscarriages. I
believe she just head the two. Um. But that's all right. Um.
(28:28):
She those would affect and influence her work for the
rest of her life. They deeply impacted her, and not
just emotionally impacted her. But they were themed, she explored,
you know, like, can you still be a mother to
other things even if you don't bear your own children?
Can you, um, you know, like like how does it
(28:49):
affect your femininity? That's it's it's a theme that really
affected her and she explored and it really is just
right there in broad bold colors in henry Ford Hospital. Yeah.
I mean she she very famously had was a mother
too many animals. She had spider monkeys, she had dogs, cats, birds,
(29:10):
she had a pet deer um all at her at
her house. We have a great children's book called that
I recommend called Free to Calla and her animalitos. Uh
that's really really fun for kids, but um, and adults actually,
But yeah, she really wanted to be a mother and
it was devastating to her that she couldn't be. Uh.
And like you said, like with all her work so
(29:32):
raw and laid bare. Um and and I assume most
people have seen her work. Like we'll talk about some
of it a little bit. It wouldn't hurt to kind
of brush up on these if you have a couple
of tabs handy while we're talking. Yeah, but lots of blood,
lots of um exposed organs, blood vessels connecting her to things. Yeah,
it's just um, it's like you said, you don't have
(29:55):
to work hard to understand what she's getting at when
there's a painting of her with her like body cavity
split open and like a baby bunny where her womb is. Actually,
I think I just made that part. If that's a
great idea. I like that imagery. It wouldn't surprise me
if that was one of her paintings, you know. Um,
there was a lot of pain, physical pain depicted in
(30:18):
her paintings. And this is another huge theme or motif
or whatever you want to call it, um to where
her the physical pain depicted. And again, remember she's painting
herself almost exclusively here. Um. Her emotional pain is depicted
as physical pain, so like nails all over her body,
or she has a huge terror going uh vertically up
(30:40):
the middle of her body, and her spine is a
doric column that's crumbling. Just just physical imagery that it
did depict her physical pain too. She was always in
a lot of pain throughout her life physically, but she
also suffered a lot of emotional and psychic pain as well,
and all of it was combined as physical pain an
(31:00):
evisceration and being laid open in her paintings. Yeah, and uh,
eventually she would meet Andre U bet is it? Is
it Beton or Breton, the father of surrealism. Yeah, and
he is the one. Uh. She actually um in a
funny way, kind of said she never considered herself as
(31:20):
surrealist until Andre Breton came to Mexico and told me
I was one. Really, I do not know whether my
paintings are surrealist or not, but I do know that
they are the Frankist expression of myself. But she is.
If you want to classify or art wise, surrealism or
magic surrealism is uh, definitely categories that her. A lot
of her work fits under. So I saw a m
(31:42):
I mean, we used a lot of sites for this.
I can't remember which when it came from. But I
saw a description of her work as um that she
was an individualist, which means like she was her own thing.
She may have had influences, and she definitely had Mexican
indigenous art in fluence. It was a huge thing that
really drives like the visual um impact of her paintings.
(32:05):
But as far as like schools of art go or
movements she was, she tapped into primitivism, indigenism, magic realism, surrealism,
and um again, all of it combined to make her
an individualist artist. Well, yeah, you mentioned the her indigenous
(32:26):
roots and and she very much and and I think
Diego Rivera's one who really encouraged her to embrace that,
and she started she kind of I mean, she wore
suits and stuff sometimes since she was a kid, but
she wore more European style of clothing when she was younger,
and then really started wearing more Mexican indigenous stuff. Yeah,
(32:47):
really colorful stuff. And uh, most famously captured in maybe
her most famous painting, The Two Fridas in N. Nine.
It's the double self portrait that on one side shows
or in the more modern European clothing um and then
on the other side it's her in her more indigenous
(33:07):
Mexican clothing, and both of them have their hearts exposed.
I think on the European side, the arteries are severed
in things. On the Mexican side, it's intact, the heart
is intact. Really really pretty, it is very pretty. A
lot of her work was pretty. Some of it sometimes
it's like it looks very primitive, and then other times
(33:28):
they're in some details like the eyes of a cat
or something like that, you're like, wow, that's really it's
very like almost photo realistic. Yeah, so it's it's very
weird to me how her Um, I don't want to
say her talent, but her Yeah, her visual talents kind
of we're applied in some places and not not as
(33:50):
much in others. And I'm wondering what the details were
that that made her make those decisions. Yeah, she included
her pets and a lot of her paintings. I think
fifty five of her paintings featured her pets. Um some
very famous ones with her her spider monkeys and birds
on her shoulder. My favorite one is called What the
Water Gave Me, Um. It's a it's a oh, I guess.
(34:12):
This is a self portrait in a way of her
in a bathtub from her vantage point, so you just
see her her feet and toes sticking out at the
end of the tub, and then the water is just
full of all kinds of other stuff, Like it's really nice,
like there's a volcano with the Empire State building coming
out of the center of it, with like gangrenous lava
flowing over the sides. Because she would get gang green
(34:35):
later in life, just another physical malady and had one
of her legs amputated below the knee. Uh. There was
a dead bird, a one legged bird, um being pierced
by a tree. There's a nude woman floating next to
her dress looks like her parents on their wedding day.
And it's it's all like in the bathtub water um
(34:56):
with her feet and toes sticking out. One toe of course,
is is mangled and cracked and bloody. Um. There was
so much gruesome, so many grewesome aspects to so much
of her work. But um, it kind of punches you
in the gut very much like it's. To see these
things in person is like, especially if you're a fan
of her work, to actually stand in front of one
(35:18):
of them and put your nose six inches from it
is is really pretty pretty astounding. Do not sneeze, um,
do not sneeze on the art. They have signs everywhere
this This article our hows to works article points out
the Wounded Deer and My Birth both in the same paragraph. Here.
Those are two of my favorites. Actually, My birth is
(35:40):
so just just twisted, but it's also really simple and straightforward.
It's her mother, but you assume it's her mother. The
sheets actually placed over her mother's head, so you never
see her face, and you also kind of get the
impression that it could be freed to as well. Um,
but it's Frieda's head, grown up, freeda like coming out
(36:02):
of the birth canal, the womb as it were. I
feel like such like a nineteenth century like white guy
calling it a womb, you know, but um, yeah, it
is graphic, but it's also it looks it kind of
I don't know. I don't want to armchair critique it
or anything like that. I just like that one. Um,
(36:23):
and then uh, the wounded Deer I think is awesome too. Yeah,
we should probably apologize to every art historian and critic,
Like when it comes to art I love and I
know you do too, love going to museums, and you're
probably where I am, which is I just like what
I like, Like, you know, if it looks nice to me,
(36:43):
and nice doesn't mean oh that's pretty, but you know,
if if it touches me in some way, I'm like,
I like that. Sure, I don't supposed to do. I
enjoy reading the placards and then understanding a bit more
behind it. But I'm definitely not some art historian or
critic all I do appreciate being having art explained to
(37:03):
me by our historians and by people who know, like
Sister Wendy that whole series from the eighties or nineties.
Oh Man, I've told you about before. She's this nun
who understands art better than anybody in the world. And
she had like a little PBS series for a while
where she could just explain art and you just wanted
to watch the next episode so bad. But I think
the level that you and I are at that you
(37:25):
were characterizing is um. It was best captured on a
Simpsons where there was a museum audio tour that was
narrated by Melanie Griffith, and when they put it on
press play, She's like, Oh, let's see what's in this room. Oh,
this one's nice. I like this one. Oh look at
that one. What's in the next room. That's the level
(37:46):
we're at of understanding and appreciating art. Uh we We
briefly mentioned Leon Trotsky earlier, the exile communists and rival
to stalin Um. They were friends and and they host
did him. She and Diego Rivera at the Blue House
and supposedly had a brief affair Um. Although other people
(38:08):
have questioned whether or not was whether or not she
really did because of I think last year a lot
of her love letters to Diego were published. Yeah, and
it's really interesting their relationship. You know, they divorced in
nineteen thirty nine, um remarried the next year in nty
lived in separate houses. They both had their infidelities, but
(38:31):
UM a really interesting complex relationship um mentor student lovers, friends,
rivals as well in some cases. Uh, but it's hard
to obviously as an outsider encapsulated on a podcast, but
(38:51):
a very complex relationship full of respect and admiration on
some levels. But also uh, he was also that you know,
sort of of the time in Mexico and America, just
that male macho thing going on. I mean, for goodness sakes,
he tried to have his doctor write a note at
the city, was physically capable of being faithful. So let's
(39:15):
just say male dominant complex marriage and relationship. Well, I
also saw she could kind of, you know, put up
with his affairs and and she definitely had her own.
But supposedly he his affair with her younger sister like
really crushed her. Yeah, that that was I think led
directly to their divorce. Yeah, I could see that. Yeah,
(39:35):
that was uncool. Yeah, diego, Yeah, even with the doctor's note. Diego. Yeah.
And he died just a few years after her, I
believe right. I don't know when he died, actually, yeah,
I think he died three years after her. Um. By
the nineteen fifties, her health was really declining. She kept
having these surgeries, kept painting. Nineteen fifty three, she had
(39:59):
a so exhibition and man, she couldn't get around and
this is so great in the movie. They she wasn't
gonna go at all. And then they brought her in
by ambulance, brought in a four poster bed and that's
where she was in the gallery. She was laying in
bed like greeting people. Yeah, she received everyone while she
was in bed, bedridden. Pretty amazing. And she died a
(40:23):
couple of weeks later. I think, actually, I think the
last time she was seen in public she showed up
for a protest against the US back coup that overthrow
overthrew our bends in Guatemala. Yeah, Edward Burne's coming back
in right into the picture every time. Um. And she
she died again at age forty seven. Man, after a
life of pain, but a very very productive life of
(40:46):
pain too changed things quite a bit. Yeah, and with
her death, she um it's listed as pulmonary embolism, but
they never did an autopsy, and there it's generally believed
that she committed suicide by how pills her. Her personal
nurse said that she took twelve I think pain killers
(41:08):
when she knew that her max was seven, and earlier
that evening she had given Diego an anniversary present a
month early, which it all kind of adds up in
the chronic pain. And just you know, this was after polio,
after gang Green, after amputation, after pneumonia, after the bus accident,
after the bus accident, so um, yeah, she may have
(41:31):
just ended it understandably. So her when she died, like
you said, she was you know, fairly well known in
certain circles in the art world. But when she died,
her work kind of entered into obscurity. For a few decades,
it was dormant, and then yeah, it's well put and
then in the late seventies it was rediscovered. Um bye bye.
(41:54):
I guess nationalists you could call them art nationalists in
Mexico and she has been basically a pop icon ever since.
Once her story was really um established and built and
her work came back out. She's just never really left
the art scene. Since it's is pretty cool, very cool. Uh,
(42:16):
if she is in a museum near you go check
it out. Do you want to do you want to
talk about her famous eyebrow because I think this this
article did a really good job of addressing it. Yeah,
so she has she painted herself. She very famously had
what you would call a unibrow right, and she would
paint it a lot. But the article on how Stuff
(42:38):
Works quotes a um a book by Desmond Morris called
The Naked Woman a Study of the female body, and
he basically says Desmond Morris says that like women will
will pluck the their unibrow into nothingness like religiously, and
then it takes a woman who is above fashion too
(43:00):
to flaunt her unit brow. And that that perfectly that
that term above fashion perfectly encapsulates free to call o,
which I thought was a pretty cool thing because Desmond
Morris wasn't talking about free to callo. This article went
out of its way to go find that and bring
it in, and I think it analyzes her appreciation of
herself inside and out pretty well. Yeah, I mean, if
(43:22):
that was one thing that she did on her canvas
was say this is me in every single way, inside
and out and her her legacy in the art world,
especially among among women female artists, is like the the
one article we read City just can't overstate the importance
(43:43):
nice anything else. No, I apologize for all the mistakes. Yeah, sorry,
let's do Andy Warhol one. Next. I tried to do
right by this one. Okay, yeah, I was apologizing to
Emily specifically, right. Sorry. I'm uh. If you you want,
if you're not Emily and you want to know more
about free to call up. You can search her on
(44:07):
our website. There's actually a pretty decent little article, and
then there's tons of stuff. Go look at our art
all over the web and in person. And since I
said that's time for the listener mail, I'm gonna call
this mistakes in defense of us. Hey, guys, I'm sure
you get annoyed at the influx of emails you get
every time you make a mistake on your podcast. At
least that's what I gleaned from a few recent episodes,
(44:29):
where you anticipate people writing in and correcting you in
a fact how ironic. Um, I'm writing the counterbalance that
you guys do a fantastic job. I'm amazed that you
were able to cover topics in such detail, with such
high turnover rate, with how quickly produce episodes. I would
expect so many more mistakes or sloppy work. But not
not with you. Excuse me, no, not with you. I
(44:52):
like not not. UM. I'm starting my own podcast and
it's made me deeply appreciative how talented and gifted you
guys are as hosts. One day, I hope I'll be
as smooth and easy going as you are as always.
Please keep going with your work. You're my favorite podcast.
I also want to give a shout out, especially to
your Trail of Tears episodes. I recently went into the
archives and listened to those two. Uh. You told that
(45:13):
story beautifully. I think you really did it justice and
I would recommend that anyone who hasn't listened and go
back and listen anyway. Seriously, thank you for adding something
fun to my life. And that great name is from
uh Shelina Bathala or maybe Batala depending on how you
pronounce it. Uh. And she is the host, and I
(45:33):
asked her well you're a bad plugger of your own
work because I don't even know what your podcast is
going to be about. But it's coming soon. It's called
worth It. Yeah, good title. Yeah, everyone. That is how
you get your podcast plugged on stuff that's right. Whoa
whoa whoa breaking news. Yeah, came back to life. No.
(45:55):
I just got an email reply from Shelina and she said,
my podcast is about helping will create a life that
they're happy with. Nice. I think a lot of people
feel lost, don't feel connected to themselves, or feel scared
to do what they actually want to do, like pursue
a creative career or do something that makes far less money.
So I talked to people who have been there, who
are still there, and about their journey and what they
(46:17):
have done to create happiness in their life. It's gonna
be good. Yeah, good job. That sounds great. Yeah. Hurry up, Shelina. Yeah, okay,
best of luck. We're worth It coming soon to a
podcast distributors near gu wherever you find your podcast. All right, uh,
and if you want to get in touch with us,
you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
I'm at josh um Clark on Twitter and chuck that
(46:38):
movie crush on Twitter um. You can also hang out
with us on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash stuff
you Should Know or Facebook dot com slash Charles W.
Chok Bryant. You can send us all an email The
Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and there's
always joining Sutter home on the web Stuff you Should
Know dot com. For more miss and thousands of other topics,
(47:01):
visit how stuff Works dot com. M hm hm
Hey, everyone, We're coming to Salt Lake City, Utah, and Phoenix,
Arizona this fall. Yeah, October, we're gonna be at Salt
Lake City's Grand Theater and then the next night October
will be in Phoenix. And we added a second show
to our Melbourne show, right, that's right, a second earlier
show in Melbourne. So you can get all the information
for all of these shows at s y s K
(00:22):
live dot com. Welcome to Stuff you should know from
how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
there's Jerry Rowland. This is going to be an interesting
(00:42):
one because I don't know how to say the ladies.
Last ning, Jerry's over there with her spider monkey on
her shoulder, a dead hummingbird hanging from her necklace, just
like any other day. We're here in Lakasa Azul, right,
and she's gotten ahold of some eyebrow pencil and filled
in between the two across the bridge of our nose.
So I'm excited about this. A because you said frieda
(01:06):
calo before we started recording freda Kalo, and B because
you know my family's fascination with this woman in her work. No,
we've talked about it before. That's okay. Though we've done
a thousand episodes. We have talked about it before. Yeah, okay,
well we'll get back into it. Yeah, we're way into Frieda.
(01:27):
Emily is borderline obsessed? Is she a freedom maniac? She is?
And my daughter loves her. You know, there's like Frieda
I hate to use the word, but kind of cults
devotional groups where um they basically dress up and and
are like Frieda. It's like channel Frieda Kalo. Yeah, because
(01:50):
as one of these articles that we sourced from points
out near the end um, not only does she draw
in people for her art, but she draws in uh
femineis and she draws in women who have suffered miscarriages
and and disabled people who have suffered great pain and
chronic pain in their life. So she through her life
(02:14):
she's able to um touch a lot of people because
of her life. And I'm sure with any artist where
if you know, the more you know about the artist,
the more you can appreciate their art. With freed to Klo,
it's almost like you gotta quit saying that Freda Calo Carlo. Carlo,
my whole life have been saying free to Kyla, and
(02:35):
I like it rules off the tongue. Yeah, but you know,
let's give her the due respect. Um the when did
we start doing that? I don't know. Okay, so um,
you almost you just almost can't fully appreciate any piece
of her work without knowing at least the basics of
her story. I think, well, yeah, and certainly once you
know the basics, you're like, oh right, that's where all
(02:59):
this comes from. It really makes sense. But she is
a great artist, for sure. I was going back and
looking at some of her art. You know, I'm familiar
with her, I know a little bit about her. Um,
but I definitely saw some pieces that I didn't realize before.
And just from researching this, I very much came to
appreciate her even more. Like she's a great artist. Just
the technique she used, the imagery she used, the symbolism,
(03:21):
I really dig it all. And it's like you can
appreciate it because it gives you a visceral reaction, but you,
the average person, can also get what she's feeling or
what she's saying without being like this means this, and
that means that she just kind of get it visually.
It's something that you can get and appreciate pretty easily. Yeah.
(03:43):
I mean we've we've seen her work in museums all
over the world. Basically every new city we go to,
we see, is there any free to color work there?
Have you been to Lakasa Zul? No, But that'll that's
that's gonna happen. Oh, I'm sure. I was gonna say
bucket list, but it's just on the list. I'm like,
I don't want to do it when I'm eighty, right
with with um Jack Nicholson or something. No, Morgan Freeman,
(04:06):
No, no no, No, we're gonna go down there for sure. Alright,
So let's let's start chronologically. Let's start at the beginning.
That makes sense. So Freeda kalo Um she was born
back in nineteen o seven, although she used to being
a revolutionary. She used to say that she was born
in nineteen ten, which was the year of the Mexican Revolution.
But she was born in a town which was very
freed to. Yeah, freed to call thing to do? Right. Um.
(04:30):
She was born in town called the Koyoa Khan which
is outside of Mexico City, and she was born in
that house Lacasa Zul the Blue House. Yeah, maybe maybe
not there. There's a lot of um parts of her
early life, like the year she was born where other
people say, like, man, she's actually born nearby, but she
says she was born there, so uh, like her birth
(04:52):
records indicated a different place, but it's we'll say she
was born there at the very least it was her
family's house, right, and she it was. It was in
her life for her whole life, so much so she
actually died in that house. Yeah. And it's a museum now,
yes it is. It's a national museum dedicated to free
to Carlo cret Cool. We can visit, right. So, um,
(05:15):
she was born in nineteen o seven they've figured out,
apparently you figured out. And her father was he German
or Hungarian? Because I saw both. Well, here's another little
thing where he was German. He was born in Germany,
but Freed always said that he was of Hungarian Jewish descent,
but that just doesn't appear to be true like ancestry
(05:37):
gen genealogy records. So was he like German Protestant or something?
Uh German? Um? Uh? What Lutheran? Lutheran? I think that's Protestant,
I think I think so, but I think I think
it was Lutheran. I can't remember. But his name, depending
on it was Carl Wilhelm. But when he traveled to
(05:59):
Mexico and the eight eighteen hundreds, he changed his name.
He took the translation. The Spanish translation was original German name,
which would have been Guillermo. Apparently it's a great name,
will though. Yeah, and then he became a Mexican citizen
and married her mother, Matilda Calderon, who was um American
(06:21):
Indian in Spanish. Yeah, and we should say Frieda. Frieda's
full name is Magdalena Carmen Frieda Calo. He called her
own great name. It is really there's a lot to
it there. Basically gives you everything you want, right, that's right.
So um, she was born in when someone else I
came to admire from researching her. As her father, he
(06:42):
seemed to have been a pretty cool cat. He was
a really good dad. Her mom was a little bit
religiously hysterical, I think, and very strict, But her dad
was a bit of a foil in that he raised Frieda.
He noticed something in freed To It seems that she
(07:02):
was different from her sisters, which she screamed, I mean
just like she dressed in men's suits and things like that.
She was definitely different than her sisters. But he saw
in her something very much different than her sisters, not
just in her outward behavior, and so he kind of
plucked her out of the path that his sisters were on,
which was, you know, go get married, or go being
(07:24):
educated into convent, Go get married, go be a wife,
and said, you you're going to go a different path.
Let's get you in a different school here. Yeah. He
was a photographer, so her first experiences with art were
accompanying him on photo shoots and being in the studio
with him. And like you said, he sent her to
the German College in Mexico City, where she was introduced
(07:48):
to European things, and um, very sadly she was sexually
abused there. Uh, and then ended up going to and
I think was one of the first, one of only
thirty five girls, young girls to go to the National
Preparatory School in Mexico because that was right around the
(08:08):
time in the Mexican Revolution. He said, maybe we should
start letting young women in here. Yeah. And then doctor, Yeah,
she excelled in in biology and some others and Moz
on a path to become a doctor actually. But one
of the other things that she discovered at the UM,
the Preparatory Academy of Mexico City was a real zeal
(08:29):
for the Mexican revolutionary spirit. Yeah. I mean, not only
did she learn about Europe, but she got really into
learning about her indigenous roots. Yeah. Um, that seems to
be something that fascinated her throughout her life, was her
her European and her Mexican roots and how they combined
in her and she explored them outwardly as well. She
(08:50):
even had a painting called roots. Oh yeah, kind of
on the nose, uh and roots were growing out of
her body even yeah, um we we kind of skipped
over one very important thing in her life. When she
was six, Um, she contracted polio and long recovery permanently
damaged one of her legs. She had a very one
(09:12):
of her legs was I think her right leg was
smaller and just very skinny, a little withered. Yeah, and
she had a permanent limp from that age, which was
a big deal. It was just the beginning of a
lifetime of pretty horrendous um physical disabilities. In pain. Yeah,
she was alive on the planet for forty seven years
(09:34):
and starting at age six. You say that's when polio,
She bet, that's when it began, at the at the
at the latest, it started at six and continued all
the way up to forty seven when she died. So
at the in this kind of revolutionary group that she joined, um,
the cachas, which means the caps are the hats, which
(09:56):
apparently today is Narco slang for cops. You know, kutchukas cachuchas.
It's hard to say, yeah, because of the two. Is
it's like Jason's coming or something. Um. She she fell
in love with kind of the leader of that group,
but really like she found herself as a revolutionary, right
(10:20):
and not just a Mexican revolutionary. She also became a
communist ideologist and was for life. That's one thing that
a lot of people don't realize is free to free
to Carlo, this pop culture icon, this patron saying of
of women, UM and feminists, was also very much a
fervent communist. Actually, she referred to her husband later Diego Rivera,
(10:43):
who you're about to mention um as nobody's husband. He
was a lousy husband, but he was a great comrade.
This is a great quote. Yeah. So that's when she
fell in love with Alejandro Gomez Eddias and uh they
were together for about five years. And we'll get to
kind of what happened toward the end of that relationship
(11:04):
in a sec but Ino and she was just fifteen.
She was at school, uh, at the preparatory school, and
Diego Rivera, who was very famous artist, a muralist at
the time, already this giant man, um like Alfred Molina's size,
that's who played him, Um, even bigger, I think. Yeah.
He was huge. Uh and you know, just tall and
(11:26):
rotund and just a big personality and everything. Sure. Yeah. Um.
He was painting a mural at her school called Creation
when she was just fifteen, and she would go out
there and just basically kind of stare at him and
while he was doing his work and sort of became
infatuated with him and the art. I get the picture
(11:50):
that it was all sort of intertwined, and uh, you know,
years later they would meet and marry and then remarry,
which we'll get into the ins and outs of their
relation chip, but it was it was an interesting love
story of sorts. Artists. You know, yeah, should we take
a break? All right, let's take a break, and we
will talk about the tragic events that befel her at
(12:14):
the age of eighteen. Okay, Chuck, So, like you said,
(12:37):
something really bad is about to happen to Frida. She's eighteen.
She's on a bus with a boyfriend who was the
leader of the Yeah, and um, the the bus was
struck by a trolley, or vice versa. She was on
a trolley struck by a bus, one of the two
in either way. It was a bad, bad scene for her. Yeah,
(12:59):
she was impaled by one of the handlebars. It went
through pelvis into her womb, That's how I saw it.
Put broke her spine. Um, she was in a bad way.
And supposedly her boyfriend walked away unharmed, which just makes
it even worse, you know, Yeah, I mean the way
I got it was that, you know, everyone was shaken
up pretty bad. But it was this sort of freak
(13:21):
thing that this rail impaled her hip that that she
got the worst of it. Now, this would go on
to be, in my opinion, the most significant event of
her entire life, because it would it changed everything. It
changed the course of everything. Remember, up to this point,
she's planning on becoming a doctor. Um, and she was
(13:44):
so laid up for so long and so immobilized that
she basically said, well, there goes my chance of being
a doctor. I'm not going to be able to catch up.
I'm not gonna be able to move. Who knows if
I'll be able to walk again. Um, And it just
shifted direction. Plus that whole womb thing is going to
come into play later on and that will definitely influence
(14:04):
her art for sure too. Yeah. So she's um, she's
bedridden for months. I think she had something like thirteen
or fifteen surgeries from that point on for the next
like thirty years. Um. And it turns out that she
was a great painter, which must have been something to
(14:25):
be like, well, I'm in this hospital bed that they're
equipping me with this special easel that I can use
in my full body cast lying down. They're gonna put
a mirror on on the ceiling above me so I
can be my own model. And she was very much
known for her self portraits. And she starts painting and
(14:47):
is amazingly talented. Yeah. And at first she she was saying, Okay,
well I can't be a doctor, and apparently I have
this knack for painting. Maybe I'll be a medical illustrator.
And once you hear that, when you see some of
her work, you're like, oh, yeah, she basically he was
a medical illustrator. Yeah, but in a exploring anatomy as
(15:07):
a metaphor for emotion. Yes, from what I understand, right, Yeah,
I mean, I don't know. I mean, this might be
hyperbolic to say this, but I don't know if any
artists that poured herself out on the canvas as much
as she did. Certainly not up to the point, especially
female artists. Yeah, absolutely, up to this point when when
(15:30):
Frieda Kello came along, like women were if you were emotional,
you were hysterical one. But you certainly weren't if you
were a woman artist, you certainly weren't expected to explore
emotions and grief and personhood and the self, and you
certainly weren't expected to do it in your paintings. And
(15:51):
she said her works showed that that was not the case.
It wasn't even like you shouldn't do this, it was
women can't do this. She him along and said, and
actually we can, because I'm living proof. Yeah. And if
you're a man, you're just a brooding artist. Yeah. If
you're a woman, you're hysterical. Um, you're depressed. And she
just man, she laid it out there as raw as
(16:15):
you can imagine, and especially for the time, it was
just off the charts, how radical it was so so
And she's able to do this because her family set
up a special easel in a mirror for her to
be her own model. Yes, right, yes, so this is that,
this is a big thing, like this is starting to
come along and she she um passes the time while
(16:36):
she's recuperating doing this, and she recovers enough that she
goes back to school and starts hanging out with her
old friends again. And from that re entry back into
the revolutionary slash communist world in Mexico at the time,
she ended up in the orbit of Diego Rivera again. Actually,
they ran across each other at a party. Yeah, and
(16:57):
this was it. Man. From that point forward, they would
be um. They would be tied to one another through
their work and through their multiple marriages to one another. Uh.
She was twenty two, he was twenty years older than her. Uh,
and he very much Um, he may he very much
encouraged her early on and champion her and was her
(17:20):
mentors and artists. Was She went up to him at
at this party and said, I want you to look
at my work and tell me should I pursue this?
To see this? Am I an artist? Or is this
just nothing? And he looked at her work and he said,
you were an artist. This is astounding, Like do you
have what it takes? And you should keep pursuing being
(17:41):
an artist in as a matter of fact, let's get married. Yeah.
I mean he was attracted to her, but um, I
haven't seen anything that that led me to believe that
any of his support of her work was not genuine
and because he wanted to like get her in the sack. No, no, no,
he wasn't that kind of guy. He would get anybody
in the sack. He certainly didn't have to marry you.
And he's said, we didn't have to tell you you
were a great artist. That is below him. I saw
(18:03):
a thing. Yeah, they both had multiple affairs. We'll talk
about that throughout their marriage. And you know, maybe or
maybe not so understanding of each other doing so. Um,
but I saw one point that he supposedly got his
doctor to write a note that said that he was
physically incapable of being faithful. Really, I don't know if
(18:26):
that's true or not. So he had I just want
to get this quote, and he had a great quote
about her um as an artist. He said that she
was a realist as far as her arts concerned. She
was quote the first woman in the history of art
to treat with absolute and uncompromising honesty. One might even
say cruelty those general and specific themes which exclusively affect women. Yeah,
(18:50):
like that's those are pretty strong words from a renowned
artist who I mean, Diego Rivera was well renowned by
this time already, So when he looked at her art
and had things like that to say about it, it
really meant something. She was. If she ever was an
outsider artist, she wasn't anymore. She was a genuine artist.
She'd been decreed as such by the cream of the crop. Yeah,
(19:10):
and she um. I think the article on her own
website down plays a little bit her successes during her life.
It's certainly nothing compared to what she got many many
years later, decades later after her death. Um. They weren't
freedom maniacs back then, but she wasn't she also was
not just completely unknown as an artist. I mean she
(19:33):
got some notoriety during her life. She got to know Picasso,
she got to know I mean, these were the circles
she traveled in, partially because of Diego Rivera. But um,
they started moving around, you know, starting in the nineteen thirties. Uh,
they didn't stay in Mexico. They lived in San Francisco
for a little while, Uh, depending on where the work was.
Because he was a muralist, right, so he had to
(19:54):
go to the place where he was doing that. Yeah, exactly.
He can't say I'm gonna send you a mural, just
tape tape it up. S me a wall. And he
had her in tow which I get the impression like
sometimes she was a willing accomplice and other times she
was very much homesick for Mexico. Yeah, she for sure
miss Mexico. I know she did enjoy her time in
(20:16):
like in New York and said, I don't know if
she loved Detroit. I don't know if he didn't. They
moved to Detroit while he worked for the Detroit Institute
for the Arts, but very famously in the nineteen thirties
they lived in New York City when Diego Rivero was
commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller, who in the movie The Great
Movie by Julie Taymore and Samahayak was played by Edward Norton.
(20:38):
Oh really, yeah, have you not seen that movie? Man?
It's good and once you hear the h especially with
the backstory now with the Weinstein stuff coming out. I mean,
this was her passion, Samahaiaks, passion project for her life,
and uh, he put her through a living hell. It's horrifying.
I think it was. It might have been in New
(20:58):
York or New York Times had a great iCal about it.
But um or that she wrote, I think, But um,
I think what got me on that was Edward Norton
was he rewrote the script for like for free because
basically one of the Harvey's pick things was like, I'm
not gonna give you any money for this, Like you
gotta do it for almost nothing. Everyone's gonna have to
work for free. So she got everyone to work for
(21:20):
free or you know scale Uh from Edward Norton to
Julie Taymore, the Great director, and um he he demanded
a lesbian sex scene like literally was like, I'm not
doing this unless you do that. And uh, she was bisexual,
so it wasn't like he created this out of thin air.
But he's like, I want to see this on screen. Um.
(21:42):
She supposedly had affairs with George O'Keefe and Josephine Baker
and all these famous female performers and artists, but she
did not do that. I think she. I think she
had a kissing scene with Ashley Judd at a party.
Who is actually Judd supposed to be? I can't remember.
I wou'd see it in a minute. Emily's mad that
she's not here right now. I told her about this
(22:04):
last night. She's like, why am I not on? It's
like we don't have guests. She's like, I'm a guest
on Movie Crush. I was like, well that's a different
podcast altogether. Yeah. Um, she will pick this apart, trust me.
But anyway, she had a devil of a time getting
that movie made. Uh, and it went on to great
success and I think still is the highest grossing art
based movie of all time. Yeah, that's what I saw.
(22:27):
So anyway, they were in New York City because Nelson
Rockefeller displayed Byward. Norton had commissioned Diego Rivera to paint
a mural at Rockefeller Center called Man at the Crossroads,
and in it it was one of these big um
almost looked like a Sergeant Pepper's cover, you know, people
all over the place. And Um, he snuck in Vladimir
(22:50):
Lenin in the painting. So I have a question about that.
Did he sneak it in and was caught or was
he like And also, by the way, I've included this
great man Lenin, he snuck it in um as a response. Uh,
it's a very pointed response to something. And I can't
remember exactly what it was, but it wasn't originally in
the plan and I don't know if it was in
(23:11):
the original sketch. I might be getting this slightly wrong,
but at any rate, he got linen in there, and
um Rockefeller was not happy. I mean, I think it
was more of his family, like he he stayed, his
friend wasn't like. He was like, I hate you your
big poopy bands go back to Mexico. But he stopped
the work. That painting was mural was removed and destroyed,
(23:35):
but eventually was it destroyed. Yeah, man, pretty sad, but
eventually um Rivera recreated that a little smaller in Mexico
City and changed the title to Man Controller of the Universe.
And then in parenthes he's up yours. Rockefeller maybe so,
(23:56):
but that just sort of puts a button on them.
Moving kind of all around the United States for a while.
And this is when she was being introduced to high
society and and uh everyone from like I said, Josephine
Baker too, to Trotsky and she was she was working
at the time to write It's what. It wasn't like
she was just hanging out. She was still And one
(24:17):
of the paintings she um did was UM the Suicide
of Dorothy Hale. Yeah, that was interesting. So she was
commissioned by Claire loose Booth little Deuce Coope. She was
the she was from the publishing family of Time. I
think she published Vanity Fair something like that. She's a
great publishing magnate. Um And this was back in the thirties,
(24:40):
and she was friends with Dorothy Hale, who was a
an actress, a well known actress who had hit on
hard times financially and was having to live on the
um generosity of her friends. And she climbed up to
the highest point of the high rise that she lived
off of inn jumped to her death and devastated Claire
(25:00):
booth Loose and I hope I get that right at
least somewhere, and who was her friend? And she commissioned
fred To Calo to Um to do a painting, which
she thought this would be a portrait to commemorate my
friend Dorothy. That's not at all what free to Callo did. Yeah,
I don't know she realized who she was commissioning, fully,
like have you seen her work? Right? So what freed
(25:24):
to Calo did was she took this assignment and and
commemorated not Dorothy Hale necessarily, but Dorothy Hail's death by suicide.
It's it's almost like a step by step diagram. It
shows her at the top of the building in mid air,
and then in the foreground. Largest of all is her broken,
bloody body on the ground. But it has this very
(25:46):
somber um text caption basically across the bottom in a
scroll that explains what this is and that's how sad
this is um and that it was the suicide of
Dorothy Hale, and so um. Apparently when Claire uh booth
Loose got got this, she unwrapped it and was like
(26:07):
what is this gag? And she was going to destroy
it and friends talked her out of it. So it's
still in existence today. From what I understand, I think
the booth or loose family has has the uh the
painting in their possession now. Yeah, and that's uh just
emblematic of Frieda's outlook, which was like she was no bs,
(26:30):
She's like, I'm gonna show you what's real. So let
me ask you this. You're the Frieda expert here between
the two of us. Was she doing that like like
I'm all in your face, Claire, this is the reality
of your friend's suicide? Or was it she this is
this was her expression of emotion that she thought Claire,
(26:51):
I'm not saying her last two names, would would would
kind of vibe on and like this would be the
greatest commemoration of her friend. Which one. Well, I don't
think it was all in your face. I think she
thought that was the honesty. I think she thought that
was the most honest work. But I'm not sure whether
or not she considered like, wait a minute, is she
(27:11):
gonna hate this? Okay, so she wasn't like it doesn't
matter she hates it. This is the This is the
most honest work. So even if this psychologically destroys her,
Claire needs it tough enough. I'm very curious. That's a
good question. I don't know. I understand a lot of
the symbolism and her paintings now, but I don't necessarily
I haven't hit upon her motivation or personality quite yet.
(27:31):
Family is gonna be so mad because she read her
eight page biography and she's probably like, oh, we'll read
page six, jerks, and that will explain at all. Sorry again, Emily,
that's right. You want to take a break, Yeah, let's
do okay, alright, Chuck. So one other thing, very big
(28:07):
thing happened to her in Detroit, actually, um, and she
has a painting that commemorates it, called henry Ford Hospital.
She had her second miscarriage, and this her miscarriages. I
believe she just head the two. Um. But that's all right. Um.
(28:28):
She those would affect and influence her work for the
rest of her life. They deeply impacted her, and not
just emotionally impacted her. But they were themed, she explored,
you know, like, can you still be a mother to
other things even if you don't bear your own children?
Can you, um, you know, like like how does it
(28:49):
affect your femininity? That's it's it's a theme that really
affected her and she explored and it really is just
right there in broad bold colors in henry Ford Hospital. Yeah.
I mean she she very famously had was a mother
too many animals. She had spider monkeys, she had dogs, cats, birds,
(29:10):
she had a pet deer um all at her at
her house. We have a great children's book called that
I recommend called Free to Calla and her animalitos. Uh
that's really really fun for kids, but um, and adults actually,
But yeah, she really wanted to be a mother and
it was devastating to her that she couldn't be. Uh.
And like you said, like with all her work so
(29:32):
raw and laid bare. Um and and I assume most
people have seen her work. Like we'll talk about some
of it a little bit. It wouldn't hurt to kind
of brush up on these if you have a couple
of tabs handy while we're talking. Yeah, but lots of blood,
lots of um exposed organs, blood vessels connecting her to things. Yeah,
it's just um, it's like you said, you don't have
(29:55):
to work hard to understand what she's getting at when
there's a painting of her with her like body cavity
split open and like a baby bunny where her womb is. Actually,
I think I just made that part. If that's a
great idea. I like that imagery. It wouldn't surprise me
if that was one of her paintings, you know. Um,
there was a lot of pain, physical pain depicted in
(30:18):
her paintings. And this is another huge theme or motif
or whatever you want to call it, um to where
her the physical pain depicted. And again, remember she's painting
herself almost exclusively here. Um. Her emotional pain is depicted
as physical pain, so like nails all over her body,
or she has a huge terror going uh vertically up
(30:40):
the middle of her body, and her spine is a
doric column that's crumbling. Just just physical imagery that it
did depict her physical pain too. She was always in
a lot of pain throughout her life physically, but she
also suffered a lot of emotional and psychic pain as well,
and all of it was combined as physical pain an
(31:00):
evisceration and being laid open in her paintings. Yeah, and uh,
eventually she would meet Andre U bet is it? Is
it Beton or Breton, the father of surrealism. Yeah, and
he is the one. Uh. She actually um in a
funny way, kind of said she never considered herself as
(31:20):
surrealist until Andre Breton came to Mexico and told me
I was one. Really, I do not know whether my
paintings are surrealist or not, but I do know that
they are the Frankist expression of myself. But she is.
If you want to classify or art wise, surrealism or
magic surrealism is uh, definitely categories that her. A lot
of her work fits under. So I saw a m
(31:42):
I mean, we used a lot of sites for this.
I can't remember which when it came from. But I
saw a description of her work as um that she
was an individualist, which means like she was her own thing.
She may have had influences, and she definitely had Mexican
indigenous art in fluence. It was a huge thing that
really drives like the visual um impact of her paintings.
(32:05):
But as far as like schools of art go or
movements she was, she tapped into primitivism, indigenism, magic realism, surrealism,
and um again, all of it combined to make her
an individualist artist. Well, yeah, you mentioned the her indigenous
(32:26):
roots and and she very much and and I think
Diego Rivera's one who really encouraged her to embrace that,
and she started she kind of I mean, she wore
suits and stuff sometimes since she was a kid, but
she wore more European style of clothing when she was younger,
and then really started wearing more Mexican indigenous stuff. Yeah,
(32:47):
really colorful stuff. And uh, most famously captured in maybe
her most famous painting, The Two Fridas in N. Nine.
It's the double self portrait that on one side shows
or in the more modern European clothing um and then
on the other side it's her in her more indigenous
(33:07):
Mexican clothing, and both of them have their hearts exposed.
I think on the European side, the arteries are severed
in things. On the Mexican side, it's intact, the heart
is intact. Really really pretty, it is very pretty. A
lot of her work was pretty. Some of it sometimes
it's like it looks very primitive, and then other times
(33:28):
they're in some details like the eyes of a cat
or something like that, you're like, wow, that's really it's
very like almost photo realistic. Yeah, so it's it's very
weird to me how her Um, I don't want to
say her talent, but her Yeah, her visual talents kind
of we're applied in some places and not not as
(33:50):
much in others. And I'm wondering what the details were
that that made her make those decisions. Yeah, she included
her pets and a lot of her paintings. I think
fifty five of her paintings featured her pets. Um some
very famous ones with her her spider monkeys and birds
on her shoulder. My favorite one is called What the
Water Gave Me, Um. It's a it's a oh, I guess.
(34:12):
This is a self portrait in a way of her
in a bathtub from her vantage point, so you just
see her her feet and toes sticking out at the
end of the tub, and then the water is just
full of all kinds of other stuff, Like it's really nice,
like there's a volcano with the Empire State building coming
out of the center of it, with like gangrenous lava
flowing over the sides. Because she would get gang green
(34:35):
later in life, just another physical malady and had one
of her legs amputated below the knee. Uh. There was
a dead bird, a one legged bird, um being pierced
by a tree. There's a nude woman floating next to
her dress looks like her parents on their wedding day.
And it's it's all like in the bathtub water um
(34:56):
with her feet and toes sticking out. One toe of course,
is is mangled and cracked and bloody. Um. There was
so much gruesome, so many grewesome aspects to so much
of her work. But um, it kind of punches you
in the gut very much like it's. To see these
things in person is like, especially if you're a fan
of her work, to actually stand in front of one
(35:18):
of them and put your nose six inches from it
is is really pretty pretty astounding. Do not sneeze, um,
do not sneeze on the art. They have signs everywhere
this This article our hows to works article points out
the Wounded Deer and My Birth both in the same paragraph. Here.
Those are two of my favorites. Actually, My birth is
(35:40):
so just just twisted, but it's also really simple and straightforward.
It's her mother, but you assume it's her mother. The
sheets actually placed over her mother's head, so you never
see her face, and you also kind of get the
impression that it could be freed to as well. Um,
but it's Frieda's head, grown up, freeda like coming out
(36:02):
of the birth canal, the womb as it were. I
feel like such like a nineteenth century like white guy
calling it a womb, you know, but um, yeah, it
is graphic, but it's also it looks it kind of
I don't know. I don't want to armchair critique it
or anything like that. I just like that one. Um,
(36:23):
and then uh, the wounded Deer I think is awesome too. Yeah,
we should probably apologize to every art historian and critic,
Like when it comes to art I love and I
know you do too, love going to museums, and you're
probably where I am, which is I just like what
I like, Like, you know, if it looks nice to me,
(36:43):
and nice doesn't mean oh that's pretty, but you know,
if if it touches me in some way, I'm like,
I like that. Sure, I don't supposed to do. I
enjoy reading the placards and then understanding a bit more
behind it. But I'm definitely not some art historian or
critic all I do appreciate being having art explained to
(37:03):
me by our historians and by people who know, like
Sister Wendy that whole series from the eighties or nineties.
Oh Man, I've told you about before. She's this nun
who understands art better than anybody in the world. And
she had like a little PBS series for a while
where she could just explain art and you just wanted
to watch the next episode so bad. But I think
the level that you and I are at that you
(37:25):
were characterizing is um. It was best captured on a
Simpsons where there was a museum audio tour that was
narrated by Melanie Griffith, and when they put it on
press play, She's like, Oh, let's see what's in this room. Oh,
this one's nice. I like this one. Oh look at
that one. What's in the next room. That's the level
(37:46):
we're at of understanding and appreciating art. Uh we We
briefly mentioned Leon Trotsky earlier, the exile communists and rival
to stalin Um. They were friends and and they host
did him. She and Diego Rivera at the Blue House
and supposedly had a brief affair Um. Although other people
(38:08):
have questioned whether or not was whether or not she
really did because of I think last year a lot
of her love letters to Diego were published. Yeah, and
it's really interesting their relationship. You know, they divorced in
nineteen thirty nine, um remarried the next year in nty
lived in separate houses. They both had their infidelities, but
(38:31):
UM a really interesting complex relationship um mentor student lovers, friends,
rivals as well in some cases. Uh, but it's hard
to obviously as an outsider encapsulated on a podcast, but
(38:51):
a very complex relationship full of respect and admiration on
some levels. But also uh, he was also that you know,
sort of of the time in Mexico and America, just
that male macho thing going on. I mean, for goodness sakes,
he tried to have his doctor write a note at
the city, was physically capable of being faithful. So let's
(39:15):
just say male dominant complex marriage and relationship. Well, I
also saw she could kind of, you know, put up
with his affairs and and she definitely had her own.
But supposedly he his affair with her younger sister like
really crushed her. Yeah, that that was I think led
directly to their divorce. Yeah, I could see that. Yeah,
(39:35):
that was uncool. Yeah, diego, Yeah, even with the doctor's note. Diego. Yeah.
And he died just a few years after her, I
believe right. I don't know when he died, actually, yeah,
I think he died three years after her. Um. By
the nineteen fifties, her health was really declining. She kept
having these surgeries, kept painting. Nineteen fifty three, she had
(39:59):
a so exhibition and man, she couldn't get around and
this is so great in the movie. They she wasn't
gonna go at all. And then they brought her in
by ambulance, brought in a four poster bed and that's
where she was in the gallery. She was laying in
bed like greeting people. Yeah, she received everyone while she
was in bed, bedridden. Pretty amazing. And she died a
(40:23):
couple of weeks later. I think, actually, I think the
last time she was seen in public she showed up
for a protest against the US back coup that overthrow
overthrew our bends in Guatemala. Yeah, Edward Burne's coming back
in right into the picture every time. Um. And she
she died again at age forty seven. Man, after a
life of pain, but a very very productive life of
(40:46):
pain too changed things quite a bit. Yeah, and with
her death, she um it's listed as pulmonary embolism, but
they never did an autopsy, and there it's generally believed
that she committed suicide by how pills her. Her personal
nurse said that she took twelve I think pain killers
(41:08):
when she knew that her max was seven, and earlier
that evening she had given Diego an anniversary present a
month early, which it all kind of adds up in
the chronic pain. And just you know, this was after polio,
after gang Green, after amputation, after pneumonia, after the bus accident,
after the bus accident, so um, yeah, she may have
(41:31):
just ended it understandably. So her when she died, like
you said, she was you know, fairly well known in
certain circles in the art world. But when she died,
her work kind of entered into obscurity. For a few decades,
it was dormant, and then yeah, it's well put and
then in the late seventies it was rediscovered. Um bye bye.
(41:54):
I guess nationalists you could call them art nationalists in
Mexico and she has been basically a pop icon ever since.
Once her story was really um established and built and
her work came back out. She's just never really left
the art scene. Since it's is pretty cool, very cool. Uh,
(42:16):
if she is in a museum near you go check
it out. Do you want to do you want to
talk about her famous eyebrow because I think this this
article did a really good job of addressing it. Yeah,
so she has she painted herself. She very famously had
what you would call a unibrow right, and she would
paint it a lot. But the article on how Stuff
(42:38):
Works quotes a um a book by Desmond Morris called
The Naked Woman a Study of the female body, and
he basically says Desmond Morris says that like women will
will pluck the their unibrow into nothingness like religiously, and
then it takes a woman who is above fashion too
(43:00):
to flaunt her unit brow. And that that perfectly that
that term above fashion perfectly encapsulates free to call o,
which I thought was a pretty cool thing because Desmond
Morris wasn't talking about free to callo. This article went
out of its way to go find that and bring
it in, and I think it analyzes her appreciation of
herself inside and out pretty well. Yeah, I mean, if
(43:22):
that was one thing that she did on her canvas
was say this is me in every single way, inside
and out and her her legacy in the art world,
especially among among women female artists, is like the the
one article we read City just can't overstate the importance
(43:43):
nice anything else. No, I apologize for all the mistakes. Yeah, sorry,
let's do Andy Warhol one. Next. I tried to do
right by this one. Okay, yeah, I was apologizing to
Emily specifically, right. Sorry. I'm uh. If you you want,
if you're not Emily and you want to know more
about free to call up. You can search her on
(44:07):
our website. There's actually a pretty decent little article, and
then there's tons of stuff. Go look at our art
all over the web and in person. And since I
said that's time for the listener mail, I'm gonna call
this mistakes in defense of us. Hey, guys, I'm sure
you get annoyed at the influx of emails you get
every time you make a mistake on your podcast. At
least that's what I gleaned from a few recent episodes,
(44:29):
where you anticipate people writing in and correcting you in
a fact how ironic. Um, I'm writing the counterbalance that
you guys do a fantastic job. I'm amazed that you
were able to cover topics in such detail, with such
high turnover rate, with how quickly produce episodes. I would
expect so many more mistakes or sloppy work. But not
not with you. Excuse me, no, not with you. I
(44:52):
like not not. UM. I'm starting my own podcast and
it's made me deeply appreciative how talented and gifted you
guys are as hosts. One day, I hope I'll be
as smooth and easy going as you are as always.
Please keep going with your work. You're my favorite podcast.
I also want to give a shout out, especially to
your Trail of Tears episodes. I recently went into the
archives and listened to those two. Uh. You told that
(45:13):
story beautifully. I think you really did it justice and
I would recommend that anyone who hasn't listened and go
back and listen anyway. Seriously, thank you for adding something
fun to my life. And that great name is from
uh Shelina Bathala or maybe Batala depending on how you
pronounce it. Uh. And she is the host, and I
(45:33):
asked her well you're a bad plugger of your own
work because I don't even know what your podcast is
going to be about. But it's coming soon. It's called
worth It. Yeah, good title. Yeah, everyone. That is how
you get your podcast plugged on stuff that's right. Whoa
whoa whoa breaking news. Yeah, came back to life. No.
(45:55):
I just got an email reply from Shelina and she said,
my podcast is about helping will create a life that
they're happy with. Nice. I think a lot of people
feel lost, don't feel connected to themselves, or feel scared
to do what they actually want to do, like pursue
a creative career or do something that makes far less money.
So I talked to people who have been there, who
are still there, and about their journey and what they
(46:17):
have done to create happiness in their life. It's gonna
be good. Yeah, good job. That sounds great. Yeah. Hurry up, Shelina. Yeah, okay,
best of luck. We're worth It coming soon to a
podcast distributors near gu wherever you find your podcast. All right, uh,
and if you want to get in touch with us,
you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
I'm at josh um Clark on Twitter and chuck that
(46:38):
movie crush on Twitter um. You can also hang out
with us on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash stuff
you Should Know or Facebook dot com slash Charles W.
Chok Bryant. You can send us all an email The
Stuff podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and there's
always joining Sutter home on the web Stuff you Should
Know dot com. For more miss and thousands of other topics,
(47:01):
visit how stuff Works dot com. M hm hm
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