Frida Kahlo: A Star is Born (Part 3)

What led to Frida Kahlo's early death? And with Frida mania in full swing, have we now reached peak Frida? Join Alastair and James in the final episode on the life and work of the great Mexican artist, as they explore her difficult final years and her extraordinary afterlife. Frida: The Making of an Icon is on at Tate Modern, London until 3rd January 2027. If you want to see the artworks discussed in this episode you can switch on video in your podcast app at any time. Artworks in this episode: Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair, 1940, The Museum of Modern Art, New York Frida Kahlo, The Broken Column, 1944, Museo Dolores Olmedo, Xochimilco, Mexico City Frida Kahlo, The Wounded Deer, 1946, Private collection For more great art content visit www.heni.com or visit the Heni Talks YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@HENITalks Hosts: Alastair Sooke and Dr James Fox Additional Research: Catherine Ingram and Laura Spada Producer and Editor: Ben Harding Executive Producer: Emma Cahusac

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01James Fox?

  Welcome to Stories of Art, I'm James Fox.

• 0:04Alastair Sooke?

  And I'm Alastair Sook.

• 0:09James Fox?

  A mono-browed woman sits on a yellow chair in an empty room, wearing a man's suit that looks several sizes too big for her. In her right hand she holds a pair of scissors, which she has just used to give herself a striking masculine haircut. She is surrounded by what were once her own flowing locks, which writhe and crawl like a sea of snakes. Now that, Alastair, is Frida Kahlo's stunning self-portrait with cropped hair, which she made at a major turning point in her life in 1940. Can you give us a sense of what has happened to her to lead into this picture?

• 0:45Alastair Sooke?

  Yes, I think what has happened to her in terms of her biography is crucial when you're looking at, thinking about, interpreting this work of art, which, as you say, I mean, it is stunning, it's an extraordinary thing. So she, as listeners may recall from our previous episodes on Frida Kahlo, she had been married to Diego Rivera, the big love in every sense of her life, major Mexican artist, muralist. And they had a very tempestuous relationship, didn't they, through the 30s? They'd spent a lot of time in America, they came back to Mexico, and Frida discovers that her husband Diego was having an affair, one of many affairs that he had, with her sister.

• 1:30James Fox?

  Christina.

• 1:30Alastair Sooke?

  And I think we got to, if memory serves, at the end of the last episode, we'd reached the point where, having married in the late 20s...

• 1:40James Fox?

  1929.

• 1:41Alastair Sooke?

  29, it's the best part, I think, is it a full decade that they're married?

• 1:44James Fox?

  Yeah, miraculously, they do survive 10 years or so.

• 1:47Alastair Sooke?

  And then they get divorced. And people inevitably look at this particular painting in light of that fact, don't they? Because it feels like, possibly she's mourning, her lost husband, or it feels like this great image of independence, and it has this sense of power and autonomy and agency. But the crucial thing for me is that we've spent a lot of time thinking about Frida's self portraits already in this series. And typically, the ones that we've spoken about, she has very long hair. She's often in that sort of indigenous Mexican dress, the Tejana dress. There's a lot of the natural world around. This is totally different.

• 2:29James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 2:29Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, she's in a man's suit. She's wearing this burgundy man's shirt, possibly Diego shirt.

• 2:35James Fox?

  Could be Diego's shirt, yeah.

• 2:36Alastair Sooke?

  Buttoned up to the collar. And there's no sense of nature at all. All of those animals you often find in her self portraits, they're sort of replaced by, did you compare them to snakes? That writhing sense of her chopped locks, which are now just strewn around her. And I suppose one of the ideas is that Diego loved her long hair. And almost as like revenge.

• 2:57James Fox?

  Revenge, yeah.

• 2:58Alastair Sooke?

  She's cut that hair off and is sort of staring very calmly at the viewer. It's a kind of F you, isn't it?

• 3:05James Fox?

  I think so. Do you know, I really empathize with this picture. Did you know, I haven't told you this, I cut my own hair.

• 3:11Alastair Sooke?

  That is quite odd, isn't it?

• 3:13James Fox?

  I have cut my own hair for 30 years.

• 3:15Alastair Sooke?

  Right, you could never tell, Jones.

• 3:16James Fox?

  I think anyone who watches this podcast will be able to tell. But if ever I have a bad day, if ever I feel bad, had a bad day at work, whatever it is, I just go upstairs to the bathroom, I cut my own hair. And it always makes me feel much better.

• 3:28Alastair Sooke?

  Right.

• 3:29James Fox?

  So I can sort of, I can sort of empathize with that sense of catharsis that you get from cutting off your hair. But I think you're completely right. It's also revenge on Diego, I'm sure it is. She does that in the mid 1930s, when he has an affair with her sister. She's done it again. He loved her hair. He loved her long hair. He thought it was sexy. He thought it was feminine. So I guess by cutting off her hair, she's refusing to be his object of desire. She's refusing to be the feminine woman he wants her to be.

• 3:56Alastair Sooke?

  She's also signaling a sense of possibly her own bisexuality. Because she appears so androgynous, she's dressing up as a man. And do you remember, I mean, we spoke about this before, but there's that famous family photograph from much earlier in her life, where she appears in the family setup. And she's wearing a man's suit and no one seems to be batting an eyelid. But it was an early sign that she's very well aware of dress and fashion. As a way of self fashioning and also a sign of hybrid, multiple, a fluidity when it comes to her sense of gender.

• 4:29James Fox?

  Which is what makes her so relevant today, as we will discuss later on. It's part of her genius in a way.

• 4:34Alastair Sooke?

  Can I run one theory by you? Because I, when we were, I sort of, you tipped me off that you wanted to begin with this, although I didn't know it was because of your self, self fashioning in the bathroom, cutting your own hair. But I was looking at it and I suddenly saw she sitting on this very distinctive, yellow, ordinary, quite rustic wooden chair with a, with a sort of straw seat.

• 4:57James Fox?

  Oh, I think I know where you're going with this.

• 4:59Alastair Sooke?

  And there is a very famous picture, which is a kind of self portrait by one Vincent Van Gogh, in which he depicts a very similar chair against a red ground. Now, I've never read, I'm sure other people have observed this, but I suddenly was thinking, could this painting be an art historical reference? Because if you think Van Gogh, he himself is an artist associated with self mutilation.

• 5:24James Fox?

  He was busy with some scissors in the bathroom.

• 5:25Alastair Sooke?

  He was busy with some scissors. And there's actually separately, there's a self portrait where he has a completely, do you remember, sort of shaved head? And he looks like a Buddhist monk, he's sort of play acting, being a Buddhist monk. And I just wonder whether in amongst everything here, there could be a sense of Van Gogh being a sort of symbol of an artist martyr, she's play acting lots of things and possibly alluding to that too.

• 5:48James Fox?

  I think that's a brilliant observation. This is why they pay you the big bucks at The Telegraph, Alistair.

• 5:52Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 5:52James Fox?

  I think that's a really.

• 5:53Alastair Sooke?

  The very modest part.

• 5:53James Fox?

  I think that's a really interesting observation. I had not noticed that. I've never read that, haven't heard that before. I think it really, it, I think it's very persuasive, actually. But anyway, we are going to be, in this episode, telling the final part of Frida Kahlo's story. We're going to be talking about her emergence, if you like, as a, as a properly independent artist, the final years of her life, her death, and her astonishing legacy, because it is really astonishing. But first, I think, a little recap. Frida Kahlo was born in Mexico in 1907 and seemed to be leading a pretty straightforward, middle-class life, I guess, until the age of 18, when a catastrophic bus crash left

• 6:36James Fox?

  her seriously injured. And during her long convalescence at home, she started painting. She demonstrated quite a lot of talent for it. And one day, I think it was 1927, she shows the great artist, the famous artist, Diego Rivera, her paintings. And they fall in love, they get married, as you say, in 1929. But by the end of the 1930s, a succession of affairs on both sides, actually, leads to divorce, with Frida having to go it alone. So this, then, is the final part of our three-part series on the life and work of Frida Kahlo.

• 7:20James Fox?

  Alistair, it is January 1940.

• 7:23Alastair Sooke?

  Right.

• 7:23James Fox?

  Frida and Diego have just divorced. And she has promised, I think quite bravely for a woman of that period, that she wants to be completely financially independent.

• 7:34Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 7:35James Fox?

  She doesn't want to accept a penny or a peso from her shagger of an ex-husband. And I think this must be really the first time in her life, the first time in her career, when she actually has to make a living from her painting. And I think that may be one of the reasons why, in my view, I don't know if you disagree, 1940 is perhaps the greatest year in her career as an artist.

• 8:00Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 8:00James Fox?

  So we talked in the previous episode how from really 1937 onwards, you begin to see a massive uptick in quality in terms of her work. But 1940, it's the annus merabilis. It really is. You've got, if you think what she painted in 1940, you've got the self-portrait with thorn necklace and hummingbird.

• 8:17Alastair Sooke?

  Which we began this whole series with.

• 8:19James Fox?

  Began the whole series with. We've got the cropped hair self-portrait, which we discussed a few moments ago. There are a couple of other really great self-portraits. There's also a very important painting called The Dream.

• 8:30Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 8:30James Fox?

  Which I think last year was sort of, I've written it down here. Was sold for fifty four million dollars.

• 8:35Alastair Sooke?

  So this is a world record for a female artist.

• 8:38James Fox?

  Yeah, this is all in nineteen forty.

• 8:40Alastair Sooke?

  I didn't realise that was a nineteen forty picture. Interesting.

• 8:42James Fox?

  And lots of other pictures as well. My question for you is, do you think that the separation from Diego, the trauma, I suppose, associated with that? Do you think that might have catalyzed her progress as an artist? Can you imagine this kind of quality of work without that, without that separation?

• 8:59Alastair Sooke?

  I think that she had been quite subsumed by Diego and his aura and success and larger than life sort of talent and reputation, all of these things. And do you remember the beginning of the thirties? She painted that double portrait soon after they'd been married and she appears so slight. And there was a period where she was in his shadow. And I think the big story we told in the last part was this sense of her emerging independence as, as an artist. And, you know, she'd been in Paris, she'd had some international recognition, success towards the end of the thirties. And she'd had that show in New York where she'd sold work. That was really key.

• 9:36Alastair Sooke?

  And yeah, in a, when she could reject Diego, I think that totally, this is a moment where you suddenly see she's in her pomp. I think that's what that picture, the self-portrait with cropped hair, is all about. It's a sense of total power, agency, autonomy. But there is this other kind of idea that I've come across. There's a really wonderful, very short biography of Frida Kahlo's life. I mean, I know you've been, you've read the really big one by, remind me of the name.

• 10:05James Fox?

  Hayden Herrera.

• 10:06Alastair Sooke?

  Hayden Herrera, that, you know, we'll come on to that later, I'm sure. But I, I was looking at one by a woman called Claudia Schaefer and it's very good. And I think what she sort of says, and this is a slight big picture thing, but as we move into the forties, into that kind of moment of excitement, it's almost like at the same time as she has this artistic explosive creativity, in terms of her health, it's the beginning of the real decline and breakdown. I mean, she's obviously always had these complications. And this particular writer almost is correlating those two things. It's as if there's a sort of paradox.

• 10:39James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 10:39Alastair Sooke?

  As she physically starts going into decline, she artistically. Becomes more prolific than ever. And I mean, it's not a nice theory, but it's one that I find, I actually find it quite compelling as soon as you look at the work and know what's going on in her life.

• 10:53James Fox?

  I think it's very persuasive. I think 1940 in particular was a really tough year for her. First of all, she's of course dealing with this separation from Diego, which is traumatic and difficult in her own right. She's, you know, for her whole adult life, she's been married to Diego Rivera.

• 11:08Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 11:08James Fox?

  So that's difficult. Then she's got the issue of, we mentioned this in the previous episode, the death of Leon Trotsky. So she had been friends with Trotsky, she had been lovers with Trotsky. It's in August 1940 that he's murdered and she's interrogated under suspicion. That is very stressful. And then, as you say, the health takes a massive nosedive in early 1940. She's in and out of hospital a lot in 1940. Her leg, which had been giving her problems really since she was six years old, when she contracted polio, is in agony. Her spine is causing her lots of problems.

• 11:43Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 11:43James Fox?

  She loses a lot of weight. She loses 15 pounds in 1940. So it's really, really difficult year. And that might explain why her independence, personally at least.

• 11:53Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 11:54James Fox?

  Doesn't last all that long.

• 11:55Alastair Sooke?

  No, I mean, there is this, well, it's quite weird. I mean, having divorced by the end of that year, what's the date? Is it December something 1940?

• 12:06James Fox?

  The 8th of December 1940.

• 12:08Alastair Sooke?

  They remarry. Diego and Frida get back together. They shack up once again.

• 12:13James Fox?

  I know.

• 12:14Alastair Sooke?

  And there is a sort of, there's a bit of a story, this kind of legend that exists, that supposedly when they remarry, Frida does so, you heard this on sort of two conditions.

• 12:23James Fox?

  I've got them written down here.

• 12:24Alastair Sooke?

  Have you? Good. Okay, let's hear them.

• 12:26James Fox?

  Okay, so she does have conditions to be fair to. This is what Diego says. He says, "She would provide for herself financially from the proceeds of her own work, that I would pay half of our household expenses, nothing more, and that we would have no sexual intercourse." In explaining this last stipulation, she said that with the images of all my other women flashing through her mind, she couldn't possibly make love to me, for a psychological barrier would spring up as soon as I made advances. I was so happy to have Frida back that I assented to everything.

• 12:58Alastair Sooke?

  Now, do we think that psychological barrier remained in place for very long?

• 13:02James Fox?

  I have no idea whether they did consummate the second marriage or not. I suspect they must have done.

• 13:06Alastair Sooke?

  I think they must have done.

• 13:07James Fox?

  But those were the initial conditions that she made.

• 13:10Alastair Sooke?

  But it's interesting that she actually, I mean, I'm just thinking about this now, hearing you read that out. For her, actually, she was, I think, in their relationship, more of the accountant who did, dealt with the bills and expenses. She's a bit more money minded than Diego, and I sense, I could be wrong, I sense that she used money, or it was for her a little bit of a sort of metric for how successful you could be as an artist, because of course Diego was, had been coining it, you know, commissions coming left, right and centre, he's working incredibly hard and making a huge amount of cash. A lot of that money is then going on, well, studio running that, medical expenses for Frida, which become more and more expensive.

• 13:52Alastair Sooke?

  But as, as we go into this late phase of her life, she sets great store by those moments when she is selling work, and I think that becomes for her a real imprimatur for being an artist, you know?

• 14:05James Fox?

  They say, don't they, you should never go back, but I think actually in some ways it worked, this second marriage actually, we'll be jumping slightly ahead, but I think it worked out pretty well for them. I think that it was a different kind of relationship, the stakes were lower, they knew by this stage what to expect, and perhaps more importantly, what not to expect from each other.

• 14:24Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 14:25James Fox?

  It becomes a more businesslike relationship, as you say, it becomes more of a friendship, and they are, I mean, you know, they are very supportive of each other through those final years.

• 14:35Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, do you think, I mean, the sort of romantic cliche when it comes to the sort of, you know, cult of Frida and Diego's, that ultimately for all of that tempestuous nature of their relationship, they're, they're real, they're soulmates, you know?

• 14:46James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 14:47Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, do you think that, it's a big question to ask an art historian, but...

• 14:52James Fox?

  I, I think, I think they, they love each other from start to finish. I think it's one of the reasons why they get back with each other. They kind of don't know really how to function without each other.

• 15:01Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 15:02James Fox?

  Of course, it's complex, it's messy like all relationships are. I think Diego, though he's a bit of a villain in some ways, and was a terrible womanizer, I think actually, as we shall see as this episode goes on, he, he does her, he does her proud in the end.

• 15:17Alastair Sooke?

  Just as a quick aside, because there's another very important male figure in her life, who was her dad, who we spoke about a lot, obviously, in the first episode, Guillermo, who came from Germany. And he dies aged 69 in April 1941, so quite soon afterwards. And I think it's another example, as well as the declining health thing, where they felt they were really sort of simpatico. They had the same temperament. I think, from what I've read, Frida was probably his favorite daughter. You know, she maybe looked a bit like him, she sort of behaved a bit like him. And he'd suffered, they'd also had that thing after she had that polio, where she accompanied him a lot when he was touring

• 16:00Alastair Sooke?

  and working as an official government photographer. They had this bond.

• 16:03James Fox?

  And he was an artistic soul as well.

• 16:05Alastair Sooke?

  He was an artistic soul. And I think possibly, he, you know, he was the one who told Diego, can't remember what it was, but sort of like, "She's a total wild child" or something, "Be careful", just before the marriage. He was almost like a sort of symbol of artistic independence and rebellion from bourgeois norms represented by her mother for Frida. He also had suffered a lot from epilepsy, so illness was a part of his life. There was another bond there. And I just know that that moment in the early 40s, again, where the health is starting to change, despite the remarriage, it's a difficult time for her. She is terribly, terribly sad following the death of her father. And I think you can see it in some of the self-portraits from around that period. You see a real seriousness,

• 16:49Alastair Sooke?

  often, to her gaze. She's not in any way girlish, coquettish. It's like this sort of new freedom mode, if you like.

• 16:58James Fox?

  Yeah, late work, in a way, even though she's still very young. And I think that might be one of the reasons why her reputation grows, why the art has this added complexity. So during the early 1940s, really, the exhibitions for her are coming thick and fast. And it begins with the great International Surrealist exhibition in 1940 in Mexico City. But then she shows in San Francisco, she shows in Boston, she shows in Philadelphia. The great painting, The Two Fridas, which we discussed at the end of the last episode, goes on display at the Museum of Modern Not.

• 17:28Alastair Sooke?

  Right.

• 17:28James Fox?

  In New York. So her star, she's still not as famous as her husband, of course, Diego is still the big dog. But her star is rising. The problem is, and we've mentioned this already, is that her health is just getting worse and worse and worse through the nineteen forty's. Her leg, that right leg is in agony, her spine is in agony, she's suffering nausea, she's losing weight, she's diagnosed with syphilis in the early nineteen forty's.

• 17:54Alastair Sooke?

  I didn't know that. That's right, Akemi, to add to the woes.

• 17:57James Fox?

  To add to the woes. I think the other issue that really becomes a major, major feature of her work and her life in the nineteen forty's is the operations on her spine.

• 18:07Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 18:08James Fox?

  So she had this, you know, just to briefly recap, she had this catastrophic injury in this bus accident back in nineteen twenty five when she was eighteen years old and had really never fully recovered from it. And they had botched the job when they'd have patched her up in the hospital in Mexico City in nineteen twenty five. They'd botched the spinal job, the vertebrae hadn't been positioned correctly. And she never really came back from that. She wore corset after corset after corset. And it caused her immense amounts of pain. And during the nineteen forty's, when she's having dozens of operations.

• 18:43Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 18:44James Fox?

  And in fact, dozens of different kinds of corsets, some of which are made from metal.

• 18:49Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 18:49James Fox?

  That she has to wear in the mid nineteen forty's.

• 18:51Alastair Sooke?

  Many of which she actually decorates. They've become almost like these sort of artistic works in their own right.

• 18:56James Fox?

  She starts to make paintings about the spine and the injury. One of them is called The Broken Column.

• 19:03Alastair Sooke?

  The Broken Column, it's it's an amazing work of art.

• 19:07James Fox?

  She makes it in nineteen forty four. We see her, it's another self-portrait, but her torso, her body has actually been broken open. And inside it, there is this crumbling ancient Greek column.

• 19:20Alastair Sooke?

  Hmm.

• 19:20James Fox?

  In place of a spine, the body is bound by a white brace, another one of these corsets. It's pierced by dozens of nails, tears are running down her face, and there's a crack, it's a barren landscape around her. It really is a powerful depiction of, I suppose, a body and a mind. That seems to be on the verge of breaking.

• 19:40Alastair Sooke?

  I think there are so many sort of aspects to this, just briefly to kind of draw out. I mean, one of them is that she's weeping. There are these tears which are running down her face. And that's not something particularly that we've seen in the self portraits that we've discussed so far. That's quite new. And there's also a sort of sense of all of the, clearly it's about her pain and suffering and her medical history. But there is undeniably a violent, phallic, sexual aspect to the painting. Where that column you've described, which stands in for her internal spine, is this phallic thing, which is ripping apart her flesh, right through her torso, her breasts are very prominently on display.

• 20:20Alastair Sooke?

  And then her skin is covered in these metal nails, dozens of these tacks. And I sort of wondered whether, I mean, you know, mentioned that she'd been in Paris, she knew the surrealists. The surrealists loved collecting African tribal art. I just wonder whether there's some reference either to indigenous Mexican art that I don't know about, or she had seen that sort of, you know, nail-studded African tribal art. Her bottom, the bottom part of her figure is covered in a hospital sheet. It's a very, very unsettling, unhappy image of pain, really.

• 20:54James Fox?

  Can I ask you a question as an art critic? When I look at this picture, it's obviously a very powerful image. It's not that well painted. I mean, compared to some of her previous pictures, the picture she made in the late 1930s and early 40s, it feels more rough and ready. It feels slightly more amateur in its technique. And I wonder whether that's also part of her declining physical abilities.

• 21:19Alastair Sooke?

  It could be. I mean, often when you find artists in, who are in declining health, or this isn't the case with her, but in old age, people sometimes wonder whether that has an impact on their technique. I mean, what I think you see here is a real attribute of her as an artist, which you could compare, it's a bit random, but someone like the English painter and artist William Blake, where in his case, maybe not actually in terms of handling of paint. It's not like you don't go to him. And sort of think, oh, my, look at the way you've brushed that. That's gorgeous. But he's inventing images, designing an image, which is so strong and come from the imagination.

• 21:59Alastair Sooke?

  And I think that's what you're seeing here. And the fascinating thing for me is that one of the big questions with Frida Kahlo, which we touched on last time, is is she a surrealist, isn't she? She's surrealist adjacent. She rejects it. I think you read out some.

• 22:12James Fox?

  I did too.

• 22:13Alastair Sooke?

  Exactly. Pretty unambiguous. But in this case, what I find really interesting is that it looks and feels like it's a surrealist image. But the difference for me is that with a male surrealist, this would be a kind of piece of weird whimsy and a flight of fancy. They've made up something that, oh, I dreamt it last night and they painted it. This really feels like it comes from somewhere inside molten hot, which she's expressing. She's articulating her own experience. And I think that's fundamental to her sort of skill as an artist.

• 22:48James Fox?

  Shall we turn to another picture that she makes two years later, which really dwells on similar themes? This is a painting called The Little Deer. It's sometimes called The Wounded Deer. She painted in 1946. It's another bizarre picture. We're in the middle of a forest. And in the middle of the canvas, there is a deer. But this deer has the head of Frida Kahlo, who is looking out at us and out of her distinctive black hair, it's obviously grown back.

• 23:17James Fox?

  She has these two enormous antlers, so it's a stag.

• 23:20Alastair Sooke?

  And if you just beneath the antlers, you've got deer ears behind her human ears.

• 23:24James Fox?

  Yes, I know. A bizarre little motif there. And importantly, in this picture, the deer is, I think it must be dying. It's been hunted. There are one, two, three, there are nine arrows that have been fired into every part of her body.

• 23:40Alastair Sooke?

  There are nine points to the antlers. There are nine dead looking trees in the forest behind her. I was going to ask, what's all this with the nine?

• 23:47James Fox?

  I didn't know. I hadn't even counted the arrows until now. That's very interesting. Do you have a sense?

• 23:53Alastair Sooke?

  I started reading something online and I didn't really understand. What the symbolism was, it was something to do, well, I mean, this is a great example where if anyone were listening and they knew and wanted to kind of get in touch, I think we would love to to find out the answer to that conundrum. But anyway, sorry, I interrupted the flow.

• 24:10James Fox?

  No, well, she has been struck by nine arrows and there is blood pouring out of these wounds. I, I mean, the classic interpretation of this picture, Alastair, is that this is Frida's attempt, just in a way, as the same was when Broken Column, to show the physical suffering she has endured throughout her life.

• 24:29Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 24:29James Fox?

  Because really, from that first accident she suffered at the age of eighteen, all the way through to now. She has suffered so many surgical procedures, so much pain, so many implements have penetrated her body, you know, ever since. Is that how you see it? Do you see it as another kind of reflection on the the physical suffering she has endured?

• 24:50Alastair Sooke?

  I think physical, but I also wonder whether it's emotional as well, because I was having a look at this and if you look at the placement of the arrows, they seem to go along near the spine of the deer.

• 25:03James Fox?

  Oh, yes.

• 25:03Alastair Sooke?

  But also towards the heart of the deer. And we know that the heart in her work is such a big motif.

• 25:10James Fox?

  You're on fire today, Alastair.

• 25:12Alastair Sooke?

  It's often made visible and in this case it's implied, but I think there's a sense of emotional and physical suffering all at once. I mean, it it it's a really bizarre picture because despite the suffering, her face, the human elements of it, appear very calm and impassive. And actually weirdly serene, given all of that suffering that she may be experiencing. And then you have a similar kind of contradiction even in the background, where there's this blue sky and sunlight in the distance. But then a big cloud above the sea and a lightning bolt. So there's a sort of storm and not a storm simultaneously at the same time.

• 25:50Alastair Sooke?

  And of course, when you look at an image in art of someone pierced by arrows, classically in Western art, Saint Sebastian.

• 25:59James Fox?

  Sebastian, the pincushion.

• 26:01Alastair Sooke?

  He's the the pincushion, exactly. So he would what? He would always, he's always depicted. He was martyred by the Romans.

• 26:07James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 26:07Alastair Sooke?

  By being, yeah.

• 26:08James Fox?

  Yeah, I think this is, you know, so much of her work has strong Catholic influences, doesn't it? And it's something that I think isn't emphasized always quite so much as it should be. Um. But Saint Sebastian is, the attribute of Saint Sebastian is, he is a pincushion, he is, he is, you know, arrows in every part of his body. So this does feel like she is depicting himself, herself as a kind of martyr.

• 26:30Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 26:31James Fox?

  In the same way that The Broken Column is depicting her as a kind of martyr. So I think that Catholicism is important.

• 26:37Alastair Sooke?

  I think there's also, though, there's a sort of more indigenous or Aztec symbolism at work as well, because, you know, the deer seems to, its right hoof, which her right leg was the, um, the one that was injured, it seems to be holding it up as though it hurts. And there's some Aztec symbolism where the right leg, the deer symbolized the right leg. So she's drawing on Christian and non-Christian, you know, pre-Columbian traditions as well, fusing it all together into a very, very memorable image. But it's quite small.

• 27:13James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 27:13Alastair Sooke?

  And, and, and that's another thing that I, I, I don't know if you've said this already, but if we have, I think it bears repeating. Diego was part of this Mexican muralism movement. Murals, massive things in public buildings. Frida Kahlo's images, you see them in reproduction, they are enormously strong, they feel so powerful, they feel so big, but they're very, very small. And I think that's one of her contributions, is that she's working on a more intimate scale, right?

• 27:38James Fox?

  Yes. Again, influenced by Mexican traditions.

• 27:41Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 27:41James Fox?

  Influenced by these little votive paintings painted on metal that would be hung up in shrines. So that's definitely part of it. Couple of other things I want to observe about this picture. First of all, she did have a pet deer.

• 27:52Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 27:53James Fox?

  So Frida Kahlo loved her pets. We, I think, discussed in the first episode that she had two pet spider monkeys.

• 28:01Alastair Sooke?

  Fuhlang Chang.

• 28:01James Fox?

  Fuhlang Chang was one of them, any old monkey.

• 28:03Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 28:04James Fox?

  She had, uh, parrots, she had Mexican hairless dogs, one of whom who took Noguchi's sock at that crucial moment.

• 28:11Alastair Sooke?

  Was that Mr. Named after an Aztec god? Um, Shalotl, Mr. Shalotl.

• 28:16James Fox?

  Oh, really? I didn't know the name. Okay.

• 28:18Alastair Sooke?

  Do you think that these pets were, because obviously she, after she married Diego, she was desperate to have children.

• 28:23James Fox?

  I think so.

• 28:24Alastair Sooke?

  And do you think they were sort of surrogate children that she never had?

• 28:27James Fox?

  I think so. I think she even describes that as part of it.

• 28:30Alastair Sooke?

  Right.

• 28:31James Fox?

  Yeah, and she also had this little pet deer called Granizo. And this, we think, is Granizo that she has based the picture on. The other thing, I don't know if you can see it in your reproduction, but what she has written at the bottom left of the picture, next to her name.

• 28:44Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 28:44James Fox?

  Is the word karma.

• 28:46Alastair Sooke?

  This is very interesting.

• 28:47James Fox?

  With a C rather than a K, but I think it means the same thing. And I wonder whether, is she saying this is her fate? This is her destiny? This is, dare I say, what she deserves?

• 28:58Alastair Sooke?

  Hmm, for something in a past life.

• 29:00James Fox?

  Possibly.

• 29:00Alastair Sooke?

  I wondered, I mean, it's a really interesting detail. It's another example of this kind of multi-layering that's going on in her work. So we've already talked about, you know, sort of reference to Christian Western art, that sort of pre-Columbian art, Aztec kind of traditions, indigenous traditions in Mexico. And then suddenly this new, because this dates from 1946, and by now she is becoming interested in Oriental philosophy. She quite often paints self-portraits and also portraits of Diego, where there's this thing called the third eye. Have you seen that? This sort of circle in the forehead, which is like a sort of window into one's mind,

• 29:40Alastair Sooke?

  I guess, but also soul, which is drawing upon Buddhist Hindu traditions. I did, I was intrigued by this detail. And I went back to, in fact, the catalogue I have in front of me is from the 2005 Tate Modern show. And it is addressed in one of the essays, and there's a writer, Ganit Ankori, who spoke about it. And I thought this, I just didn't know about this. I thought I'd mention it, because this writer's referring to the Oriental reference, which you've already described, this karma, reflecting Carlo's belief in reincarnation. And it may help us interpret the water and lightning that appear in the background, because apparently, water is an Oriental symbol for the divine essence, and lightning stands for the option of reaching Nirvana enlightenment.

• 30:25Alastair Sooke?

  So it kind of potentially ties together some of this very dense symbolism within the work.

• 30:31James Fox?

  There's one other piece of symbolism in the work before we move on. And that is that right beneath Frida's body, or the deer's body, there is a broken branch.

• 30:41Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 30:42James Fox?

  And lots of people have debated what this broken branch means. But there is a Mexican tradition, I read, that whereby if someone had died, you would place a broken branch on top of their grave.

• 30:55Alastair Sooke?

  Right.

• 30:56James Fox?

  So that is a sense, it gives me a sense that perhaps she knows that, perhaps she is approaching the end, who knows.

• 31:03Alastair Sooke?

  How old is she when she's painting this? She's born in 1907, isn't she?

• 31:05James Fox?

  Almost, she's almost 40. So she's 39 years old, 38, 39 years old. So she's still young.

• 31:11Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah, but really thinking death is kind of foremost in her mind, right?

• 31:15James Fox?

  I think that's part of it. Yeah, I think placing this branch beneath her own body cannot not be meaningful in that sense. So we are, as this painting suggests, approaching, I think, the end game for Frida Kahlo. But the little deer has some life in it left, Alistair. So please, join us after the break.

• 31:37Alastair Sooke?

  A reminder that if you want to see the artworks we're discussing, you can switch to video in your podcast app at any time. And if you're enjoying this episode, please consider following Stories of Art wherever you get your podcasts and maybe even leave a review.

• 32:02James Fox?

  Welcome back to Stories of Art. We are now in 1950, a new decade. Frida Kahlo is in her early to mid 40s now, still younger than us, Alistair. But her health has declined further. Her spine still isn't right, her leg is still in agony. And in early 1950, her doctor finds that the toes on her right foot are turning black. She's developing gangrene. In fact, she's so unwell that she spends much of that year, actually, much of 1950, in hospital in Mexico City. She seems to know that she's in there for the long haul because she decorates her hospital room. Very elaborately, she has books there, she has art materials, she has skulls, she has flags.

• 32:46James Fox?

  Diego, lovely guy that he is. He actually takes a room next to her in the hospital, so he can spend time with her at night.

• 32:54Alastair Sooke?

  Soulmates, you see.

• 32:54James Fox?

  Which is quite charming, it's quite nice actually. She has loads of visitors. They have a lot of parties, they drink an enormous amount of tequila. They even managed to get hold of a projector, did you know this? They have a projector in the hospital room. And every week they do a screening of a Charlie Chaplin film or a Laurel and Hardy film. So she's really, she's really sort of settled in, in this hospital. She rigs up an easel. Some people may have seen the photographs of her in a hospital bed with an easel on, on top of her.

• 33:23Alastair Sooke?

  Which of course is what she was doing after the accident so many years before.

• 33:27James Fox?

  She's come full circle in that sense. And she says this, she says, "I never lost my spirit. I always spent my time painting because they kept me going with Demerol and this animated me and it made me feel happy. I painted my plaster casts and paintings. I joked around, I wrote, they brought me movies. I passed three years in the hospital as if it was a fiesta. I could not complain."

• 33:51Alastair Sooke?

  I think there's an element of bravado there.

• 33:53James Fox?

  I think so too.

• 33:54Alastair Sooke?

  Because you also, in the sources, you hear quite a lot in this, I mean, basically, her health really deteriorates rapidly, which is what you're describing. And there is this kind of, what could you call it, almost like mask of, of kind of optimism and laughter, that she's trying to keep her own spirits up.

• 34:08James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 34:09Alastair Sooke?

  Because you also hear about real melancholy, possible suicide attempts. You know, she is plunged into depression at lots of points and friends are really conscious of this and visiting her partly to make sure that she isn't going to do anything too drastic. So it's a very, very difficult period.

• 34:25James Fox?

  She's drinking a lot, she's smoking a lot, she's taking a lot of drugs. She is, you're right, very often suicidal. She makes at least one suicide attempt in the early 1950s. But she still has this last hurrah.

• 34:39Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 34:40James Fox?

  And I just love this story. The spring of nineteen fifty-three, she has an exhibition in Mexico City. It's her first one-person exhibition in her country of birth. And she's so, so excited about this show, but her health is truly awful. And her doctors say to her, you cannot leave your bed. You are not well enough or strong enough to get out of your bed. But nothing was going to stop her. Do you know the story?

• 35:06Alastair Sooke?

  It's so famous.

• 35:07James Fox?

  Do you want to tell it?

• 35:08Alastair Sooke?

  Well, I mean, just in terms of the context, I think Diego wanted to have a show for her, and that didn't quite happen before she eventually died. But there was this other exhibition, which is the one that you've described, and it was organised by a photographer called Lola Alvarez Bravo, Mexican photographer, female photographer. And the thing about the story is that because Frida had been painting so many of these works that would be shown at it in bed, they decided, didn't they, to bring the canopied bed into the gallery to give a sense of her environment that created the works of art the visitors would see. And as you pointed out, she was enormously determined to be there. This is, I think, her first one woman, her first solo show in Mexico. She obviously had the New York

• 35:52Alastair Sooke?

  show. And so it's a big moment for her, and she's in terrible health. People didn't think she'd be able to come. But there's almost like this kind of great performance that happens on opening night, I guess, where friends are there, reporters are there, family members are there, and suddenly this ambulance pitches up, arrives at the gallery, and Frida Kahlo is brought in on a stretcher and put into the bed in the middle of the space. And then everyone pays court to her, and reporters are asking her questions, and she's referring to the fact that she's not sick, but she's, I think this is her quote, broken, but she's still alive because she's still painting. And it's just this kind of...

• 36:37Alastair Sooke?

  Emblem, if you like, of her resilience, isn't it?

• 36:40James Fox?

  It really is. And but there's one photograph of her lying on that bed in the middle of the gallery, surrounded by well wishers. And it sort of reveals once again the bravado. You know, you can see her in that photograph. She's smiling. But you can almost see from her face that she's gone. You know, she must have taken so many drugs, so many painkillers.

• 37:01Alastair Sooke?

  Well, you know, there were these stories about how because she she was essentially addicted to opiates and having morphine the whole time to help with the pain. And there were these stories that friends would discover syringes everywhere, sometimes in potted plants when she was at this point, you know, back at home, just dotted around because she was so reliant on taking these drugs to deal with the pain.

• 37:20James Fox?

  Yeah. And Diego says of that opening night, he says, I thought afterwards that she must have realised she was bidding goodbye to life.

• 37:30Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 37:31James Fox?

  And indeed, her health declines further after that show in nineteen fifty three. It probably hastens her decline, actually. Her right leg is finally amputated later that year. And by now, I think really, you know, she has lost the will to live. She's drinking enormous amounts. She's drinking two litres of cognac a day.

• 37:51Alastair Sooke?

  Oh, my God. Is that right?

• 37:52James Fox?

  I haven't drunk two litres of cognac in my life, but two litres of cognac a day. She's taking lots of drugs, more and more painkillers. She's making further suicide attempts. She's becoming quite hostile and unpredictable. There is a real sense at this point, by the by the mid nineteen fifty s, that having had this unbelievable lust for life,

• 38:09Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 38:10James Fox?

  this unbelievable determination to, you know, survive these, everything that life threw at her, that she's sort of giving up.

• 38:18Alastair Sooke?

  Have you come across, just as part of this, her her diary or looked much at the diary that she's keeping?

• 38:24James Fox?

  The diary is a remarkable document. It's was really kept under lock and key for most of her life and indeed afterwards. It was only, I think, published in the nineteen nineties. Very interestingly, she makes an entry right towards the end of her life.

• 38:40Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 38:41James Fox?

  Her final entry shows a kind of angel of death, actually. There's a sort of angel, dark angel of death. And there's a line she writes in this very scrawling, almost childlike handwriting. She writes, "I hope the exit is joyful and I hope never to come back."

• 38:57Alastair Sooke?

  So this is post, she's, she's left the hospital. So you could read that literally on, in the sense of like, she's going back home. She never wants to return to the hospital. But inevitably, in light of everything that you've been describing, people retrospectively read that line because I think she follows it with a signature with Frida.

• 39:14James Fox?

  Yes.

• 39:14Alastair Sooke?

  And there's a real sense that she is prepared to exit this world. I mean, there's a real sense that, that diary I, I knew less about and I, I found it so fascinating just to read a little bit about it because it's such, um, it's a new form of intimate, confessional, emotional revelation. And in it, there are all of these kind of lines, like there's one where she suddenly is writing, "I am disintegration personified."

• 39:43James Fox?

  Right.

• 39:43Alastair Sooke?

  And there's just another line, which I sort of, I thought was very resonant for us because this series is throwing up some rather unexpected links. But she starts to, there's this real sense of imaginative identification with different things within the pages of the diary where there are sketches and text. And one of them is that she's obviously very interested in ancient Egypt. Now we've, in this series, we've featured the bust of Nefertiti and she becomes quite obsessed, in this moment at least, with Nefertiti. And she's referring to this made up character, Nefah Isis, and she refers to this Nefah Isis figure, and then another one who is a portrait of the one and only Nefah, founder of craziness. But I found the Nefertiti thing quite interesting because if you remember, she's a very beautiful

• 40:27Alastair Sooke?

  ancient Egyptian queen that Frida Kahlo really admires, who was married to a pharaoh Akhenaten, who was a very big figure, who in his art was portrayed as quite a fat, pot-bellied figure. And I just wonder whether there's some identification with, you know, Diego as Akhenaten, her as Nefertiti, but it's a sort of sign of. The breadth and scope of her references at this late phase and also kind of visionary quality, which as you've described, she's really thinking about the end of of her life, I guess.

• 40:59James Fox?

  Well, and the end comes. So on the evening of the 12th of July, 1954, she gives Diego Rivera a ring, which is their anniversary present, and she gives it early. And then at 11 o'clock, she falls asleep with Diego by her side. And sometime early in the morning of the following day, so that's the 13th of July, 1954, she dies.

• 41:22Alastair Sooke?

  Mm hmm.

• 41:23James Fox?

  The official cause of her death is pulmonary embolism, whatever that is.

• 41:26Alastair Sooke?

  Right.

• 41:27James Fox?

  But many people still think it was a suicide. And she is only 47 years old.

• 41:33Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, it's so young.

• 41:34James Fox?

  So, so young. Diego obviously had known it was coming, but he is completely broken. I think you might have mentioned this earlier on in the series. He is completely destroyed. In fact, when she lies in state, she's actually gets a kind of state funeral. He refuses to believe that she's dead. He's there and he's saying, she's alive, she's alive. And they actually have to go and they have to cut her flesh to prove to him that she won't bleed, to prove to him that she's not bleeding and that she's dead. She has this very significant state funeral. She's dressed in her Tawana outfit, of course. There's a hammer and sickle flag over the coffin.

• 42:13Alastair Sooke?

  Well, that's quite controversial, isn't it? Because, you know, something we haven't touched on so much in this episode, but she, her sort of political commitment is a big part of the Frida myth and persona. And even days before the death, I mean, there's this famous moment where she leaves the house and she's photographed at a political rally, a march against American intervention in elections taking place in Guatemala. And she's holding up her fist. I think there are placards there. She's with Diego. But she looks so ill and just on the way out, essentially. But this communist flag at the funeral, some people have suggested that this is more about Diego's great kind of performative gesture.

• 42:57Alastair Sooke?

  And I think Frida, by this point, she really had quite a lot of frustrations with the Communist Party, not least the way they treated or thought about women.

• 43:05James Fox?

  Yes.

• 43:05Alastair Sooke?

  But there is a lovely detail. Do you remember in the first episode, her first love? Some people even said, her only true love, rather than Diego, but.

• 43:12James Fox?

  Alejandro.

• 43:12Alastair Sooke?

  Alejandro. I think he's the guy, isn't he, who Diego says, can you place this flag on the coffin? And so that early friend, boyfriend, question mark, who was with her at the moment of the accident, is there, present at the very end, an important role at the funeral.

• 43:31James Fox?

  There is a procession through the streets, hundreds of important Mexicans attend. Rivera is there, if you look at the photos, looking like a ghost, so, as I say, broken. She's cremated, and you can still find her ashes, actually, today in the Frida Kahlo Museum.

• 43:46Alastair Sooke?

  So that opens in 58, right? So not long afterwards. Have you been there? I can't remember.

• 43:50James Fox?

  I have, I have been there, yeah. It's wonderful. I think we should talk now, you know, we've killed off Frida. I think we need to talk about her resurrection. We need to talk about her afterlife, because she had, obviously, Alastair, the most extraordinary life, as we've described in some detail. But in some ways, even more extraordinary is the transformation in her reputation, her extraordinary rise to fame after her death.

• 44:15Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 44:17James Fox?

  And I think the first big step in that is in 1958. I think you're right, it's the opening of the Frida Kahlo Museum, the Casa Azul, the house in Coiocan that was built by her father Guillermo and her mother, and that was her lifelong home, really. In 1958, that opens to the public. I think we have to give a great deal of credit to Diego. I'm probably being too kind to Diego in this, but Diego buys the house, he pays off the mortgage, and he is the person who establishes the trust to ensure that this house becomes a publicly accessible museum. And now, what, five, 600,000 people go to this museum every

• 44:57James Fox?

  year? It's a massively important part of the cult of Frida Kahlo. And I think we do need to give credit to Diego for making it happen. So I think that's the first step in her rise to fame.

• 45:10Alastair Sooke?

  I was really, I am fascinated by this, because the moment of her death, she is a big figure, in the sense that she has international recognition. That same year, the year before her death, fifty-three, when she has that solo show where she arrives in the ambulance, some of her work is shown in an exhibition of Mexican art at the Tate in London. But when she dies, she is still in the shadow of Diego Rivera, her husband, who is the bigger figure, for sure. And yet, fast forward to today, certainly in, I think, our adult lifetimes, Frida's always been the one who has this kind of currency.

• 45:52Alastair Sooke?

  And she's somehow, I think we spoke about it at the very start of this series, she's transcended visual art and become this great icon of pop culture. And I've been thinking, like, how does this happen? So the foundation of the museum is one thing.

• 46:05James Fox?

  I think it's step one.

• 46:06Alastair Sooke?

  Step one. I mean, I, as it happens, at the moment we're recording this, there was a big exhibition of Frida Kahlo's work in 2005 at Tate Modern, and there's now another one. And I got in touch with one of the co-curators, a man called Tobias Ostrander, and I was asking him this. And I didn't know about this kind of backstory, but I found it really fascinating. So in the late seventies, I don't know whether you were sort of going here, forgive me if you were, but there was some exhibitions towards the end of the seventies where there's a new sort of group of artists, the Chicano artists, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, or Chicano artists, who are these Mexican-American artists. And it's a sort of new movement.

• 46:50Alastair Sooke?

  And they find in Frida Kahlo a heroic figure. So they start to foreground her at that moment. Quite soon after that, it then spreads out to feminist artists in the eighties. Now, that's the moment of the publication of the really big, famous biography that you've read by our dear friend Hayden Herrera. And that does a huge amount to kind of bring her into the mainstream of art history. And it's the moment where feminist art history is massively on the rise. And she becomes this great icon of that movement. And then by the end of the millennium, she's entering

• 47:31Alastair Sooke?

  Popular culture in all sorts of ways. There's famously Salma Hayek, I think wins an Oscar for playing Frida Kahlo in great biopic of her life. But also people like Madonna are collecting her work. So Madonna lent a couple of paintings to the 2005 Frida show. Do you know what they were? One of them is that painting of the birth.

• 47:52James Fox?

  Oh, really?

• 47:53Alastair Sooke?

  You spoke about it.

• 47:54James Fox?

  Madonna's.

• 47:55Alastair Sooke?

  Madonna owns that work. I don't know if she still does. I assume she does. Apparently she isn't lending any work to the New Tate show. I don't know why, but she did before. So that was one of them. And I think she also has a self portrait, possibly from that sort of difficult moment that we began this episode with in the early 1940s. So you can see how there's a sort of a trajectory begins to emerge and the way that people thought about Frida changes and she's becoming the superstar that she is today. But I'm sure you've got loads of thoughts on

• 48:23James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 48:23Alastair Sooke?

  Why she is still has that kind of currency.

• 48:26James Fox?

  I totally agree with your sketching out of that trajectory. So, you know, the opening of the Blue House is really important in the 1950s. Then, as you're right, in the 70s and the 80s, you get the rise of feminist art history, when feminist art historians are out there looking for great female artists to tell their stories, to bring them out of the shadows. Frida Kahlo becomes very, very important post girl for that movement. Then you've got Mexican nationalism rising in the 1970s and 80s. So both of those movements, international feminism, Mexican nationalism are both kind of invoking Kahlo as a kind of spearhead.

• 49:05Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 49:05James Fox?

  Then, as you say, you get the move into the pop culture and that happens really in the 1980s. I think the Hayden Herrera biography, which is published in 1983 and is a bestseller and is translated into dozens of languages around the world, that plays a major, major role in getting her story out there. She also in the 90s becomes this merchandising item. She becomes an icon for capitalism in some ways, which is quite kind of bizarre.

• 49:31Alastair Sooke?

  Well, because she has, because self portraits were such a fundamental part of her art, her image, her face is so recognizable and it can be commodified. And it's on endless products and everyone knows her with the monobrow as just by the first name as Frida. And it's quite interesting, I mean, I find it quite interesting thinking about these two Tate Modern shows because the 2005 one, which I've got in the catalogue here, that really concentrated on Frida as an artist. It's presenting a lot of the work. But this new one is looking at the phenomenon of what people call Frida mania. But she, I mean, do you agree with that sort of idea that she's leaving, she sort of leaves art behind?

• 50:13James Fox?

  I think so. It's that she becomes a subject for pop culture. 2002, you get the Salma Hayek film, very successful film that takes it to a different audience, takes it out of the art world. You also have plays, you have operas, you have ballets, you have stage shows, you have children's books, you've got comics. In 2018, did you know this, Mattel released a Barbie doll.

• 50:38Alastair Sooke?

  Frida Barbie?

• 50:39James Fox?

  Frida Kahlo Barbie doll.

• 50:41Alastair Sooke?

  Well, I hope she was wearing the Diego Rivera suit. It was an androgynous version with kind of sawn hair.

• 50:46James Fox?

  I'm afraid not.

• 50:47Alastair Sooke?

  That's probably not very Mattel, is it?

• 50:48James Fox?

  No, and it was very controversial, actually, partly because the family said, well, we didn't give permission for you to use her likeness, but also because they sort of whitewash her. They show her without the disability, they show her with much paler skin, they show her looking much more traditionally feminine, and they show her with, even with pale eyes. And so it was seen as a kind of proper betrayal of what Frida Kahlo was all about, a version of this challenging of the traditional standards of female beauty, challenging capitalism as well. So that was deeply controversial.

• 51:23Alastair Sooke?

  I find that fascinating. I didn't know about that at all. But that sort of sense, I was trying to work out before coming here this morning to record this, you know, if we're thinking about, she clearly is this potent, potent symbol. But what is it that she is representing today that was maybe different to, you know, in her lifetime or in the 70s or 80s or whatever? And, you know, I just started dropping down a list. It's quite immediately long, just very quickly, you can think of things like that sort of sense of fluidity of identity. Simple selves. She's this great symbol of resilience. She is a kind of fashion icon. She symbolises being just simply a rebel for lots of people. Gender fluidity, that painting you started with, that's a big part.

• 52:04Alastair Sooke?

  You mentioned the disability just there. I think that's something that's now a much more rightly, thank God, kind of dominant part of the discourse, but a centre of anti-ableism. You know, there's been a lot more emphasis, I think, in the scholarship on Frida Kahlo, on her disability in recent years. And also, she is, because we're living in a really, I mean, it's hilarious that we're two white middle-aged blokes saying this, but we're living in this great anti-patriarchal moment.

• 52:30James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 52:31Alastair Sooke?

  She represents everything that is anti the patriarchy.

• 52:35James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 52:35Alastair Sooke?

  And instead, she is this, you know, maybe, is she the first? The first great artist, I mean, okay, we featured Artemisia and she's done it a different way in sort of Italian Baroque painting, but the first female artist of female experience, kind of intimate, frank, laid bare, confessional. You think of artists like Louise Bourgeois, Tracey Emin. They surely are indebted in a way to the career of Frida Kahlo.

• 52:57James Fox?

  You've said everything I was gonna say.

• 52:58Alastair Sooke?

  Oh, God, sorry. We should, we should have compared, no.

• 53:01James Fox?

  No, but I think that's so true. You know, one of the really fascinating trajectories in all of this is that, and you've mentioned this already, when Frida Kahlo meets Rivera, he is more famous than her. When they marry, he is more famous than her. Throughout her life, he is more famous than her. When, when she dies, he is more famous than her. But what happens in the aftermath of that is they kind of cross paths, the, the, the tables turn.

• 53:28Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 53:28James Fox?

  She just gets much, much, much, much, much more famous and his fame begins to subside. And, you know, you could say to such an extent that, you know, we go from describing her as Diego Rivera's wife to him being Frida Kahlo's husband. And I would say that, you know, if he had not been married to Frida Kahlo, very few people would know Diego Rivera. And what I'm really interested in about, about that trajectory is that obviously both of them are very political artists, and I think the politics is the heart of this. I think Diego Rivera's politics is the politics of social movement. It's the politics of class warfare. It's the politics of Marxism.

• 54:09James Fox?

  Whereas Frida's politics, although she has those political views herself, the art is about identity politics.

• 54:16Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 54:17James Fox?

  And I think whether we like it or not, for good or for bad, identity politics has won out in recent decades.

• 54:23Alastair Sooke?

  Well, it certainly has now, and I think this is so interesting to think, if you're taking the really big picture view, what both of those artists reflect is that art never exists in a vacuum. The art that collectively, you know, art is all about a consensus builds around something. And the way it collectively will build changes over time. There are moments when the paintings of Johannes Vermeer are completely out of favour, practically forgotten. And there are moments, such as now, where his clean pared back imagery looks like a sort of, you know, is reminiscent of the clean design of Apple products, where suddenly he's massively in vogue. That's a slightly superficial analogy, but here, you're so right. His brand of, if you like, toxic masculinity is massively out of favour.

• 55:05James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 55:05Alastair Sooke?

  Everything she represents is what the culture is all about today. And it meshes, and as a result, she is the superstar that she is.

• 55:14James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 55:14Alastair Sooke?

  So here's a question. Do you think this moment now, do you think this is peak Frida Kahlo?

• 55:20James Fox?

  I think it's peak Frida Kahlo. I think, I think she is absolutely speaking to our moment, our generation of the last few years, so, so effectively. And I wonder whether in 10 years' time, 15 years' time, as things move on again, and the, and the, and the language of culture and society changes, whether that might ebb a little bit.

• 55:40Alastair Sooke?

  Hmm, so interesting.

• 55:41James Fox?

  But the one thing that, that we cannot argue with is that she is the most heroic and brave individual.

• 55:49Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 55:50James Fox?

  She really is. I mean, when you think she is someone that, who, for her whole life, really from the moment she contracted polio at the age of six, to the moment of her death 40 years later or so, she suffered near constant pain. Constant physical pain. And it is amazing that she survived it. And it is amazing that she had the will to live. And it is amazing that in spite of all of those obstacles, she was able to produce such a stunning body of work.

• 56:17Alastair Sooke?

  I don't think you make allowances for the art, knowing about the biography at all. The images themselves, her best paintings, they have this shocking, unexpected, ferocious strangeness, which is just so brave in itself. And they're phenomenal pieces to look at. And so, yeah, it probably is peak Frida Kahlo moment now, but you've got to think those will endure.

• 56:42James Fox?

  The work will endure. Well, I think we should wrap this up, Alistair. It's been fantastic talking about Frida Kahlo with you over the last three episodes. So to all our listeners, goodbye.

• 56:52Alastair Sooke?

  Goodbye.

• 56:58James Fox?

  Frida, The Making of an Icon is on at Tate Modern in London until the 3rd of January 2027. And join us next week when we head back to the Dutch Golden Age to explore The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer.