Pod Insights Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society The Truth about Frida Kahlo About this episode Frida Kahlo is an icon of art, feminism and... eyebrows.
Her art and imagery has entered into the mainstream like few artists have, and her life was as colourful and challenging as her creations.
She lived through revolutions, crippling accidents and illness, had a complicated marriage (to say the least) and many lovers.
Who was the woman behind all of this?
Joining Kate is Professor Patience Schell, Chair in Hispanic Studies at the University of Aberdeen, to help us get to know her.
This episode was edited by Tim Arstall. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Kate Lister? Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
0:35 Kate Lister? Hello, my lovely betwixters! It's me, Kate Lister, and you are listening to Betwixt the Sheets. Before we can go any further, I do have to tell you, yep, it's the fair do's warning. This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects and you should be an adult too. Just someone on social media recently asked me if we reuse the fair do's warnings, or if I do it originally every single time. And after almost 400 episodes, I'm rather embarrassed to say it never actually occurred to me that we could just reuse them.
1:07 Kate Lister? No, I really do do a different one every single time. And, well, we've started now, so we'll just keep doing it. Anyway, enjoy the show!
1:19 Kate Lister? We're in Mexico City in 1925, and a young Frida Kahlo is about to board a bus. In a few moments, a catastrophic accident will change her life forever. The woman she becomes is in many ways because of this shockingly violent moment. Her relationship with her body, her sexuality, and of course, her art, can all be said to start right here, in the wreckage of this crash. For the rest of her life, Frida Kahlo will refuse to be modest about pain or polite about desire. She'll turn her own body into a canvas, staring back at the world on her own terms. She is a fascinating, complex woman who we've been long overdue getting to know on this show.
2:03 Kate Lister? So this is the truth about Frida Kahlo.
2:31 Kate Lister? Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. Frida Kahlo is an icon of art and feminism, not to mention Mexico. Her image is reproduced everywhere, but her story is also one of suffering, defiance and scandal. Joining me today to help us get to know this incredible artist is the wonderful Patient Shell, Chair in Hispanic Studies at the University of Aberdeen. And whilst I'm here, I wanted to let you know again about the two Betwixt the Sheets live shows that are happening in May. We've got one in Edinburgh and we have got one in London town. Tickets are available at fein.co.uk. Just search for Betwixt the Sheets and we will see you there. Right, without further ado, let's do it.
3:23 Kate Lister? Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Patient Shell, how are you doing?
3:29 Speaker 01 Oh, I'm great. It's so nice to be with you, Kate.
3:31 Kate Lister? It's so nice to meet you. And this is such a requested episode. And it's honestly embarrassing, we haven't done it before. Frida Kahlo, what a woman.
3:41 Speaker 01 I know, amazing, huh?
3:42 Kate Lister? Absolutely incredible. Probably one of Mexico's best-known artists?
3:47 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
3:48 Kate Lister? Yes.
3:48 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, yeah, I would say so.
3:50 Kate Lister? Absolutely.
3:50 Speaker 01 Definitely.
3:51 Kate Lister? And if anyone's listening and you don't know who she is, you do know who she is. Go and give her a Google and then you'll go, oh, I do know.
3:59 Speaker 01 She's the one with the eyebrows.
4:00 Kate Lister? She's the one with the eyebrows, right? How long have you studied Frida Kahlo, known about Frida Kahlo? When did you first encounter her? Do you remember?
4:11 Speaker 01 Yes, I went to the Mexico Splendors of Thirty Centuries exhibition, which was at the New York Metropolitan Museum in 1991, if I'm remembering correctly, and some of her work was featured. And I, being a young person who was quick to become a fan, I bought one of her posters and it was on my wall for years. So yeah, it was the portrait of Frida in a Tijuana outfit with the wonderful lace around her face and the small portrait of Diego on her forehead. And it's sometimes called Diego on my mind. Diego, obviously, being her husband, Diego Rivera.
4:45 Kate Lister? But her work, how would you even describe it? If somebody hasn't seen it, how would you describe Frida Kahlo's work?
4:51 Speaker 01 Frida Kahlo's work is best known for the self-portraits.
4:54 Kate Lister? Yep.
4:55 Speaker 01 And she emphasizes her monobrow, which we've already mentioned, and she does not hide her mustache. And she gazes at the viewer with a really direct look. She's assertive, she's strong, she's unabashed. It's a very Mexican aesthetic. I know she's very interested in pre-Columbian art and Mexican traditions. But yeah, these vivid self-portraits, vivid colors.
5:20 Kate Lister? Lots of colors.
5:21 Speaker 01 Lots of colors.
5:22 Kate Lister? Yeah. I don't actually know an awful lot about her life, which is a terrible thing to say, considering that. Because she's so iconic and images of her are iconic. They've done that thing that have kind of, it's slipped into popular culture in a way that like Andy Warhol's work on Marilyn Monroe has done. Like those kind of images, they're everywhere. They're on posters in people's dormitories, but they might not even know who it is. Her work has done that, but I don't know very much about who she actually was. So what's her origin story? Can you tell us a bit about who her family were and where she grew up?
5:55 Speaker 01 Yes, definitely. Frida Kahlo was born in Coayacan, which is now a part of southern Mexico City. But at the time, it was a separate little town in the south of Mexico City. Her father was Giermo Kahlo, who was a Hungarian German immigrant to Mexico, and he was a photographer. And her mother was Matilde Calderon. She was a Catholic woman of mestiza background, which means she was mixed indigenous and Spanish ancestry.
6:22 Kate Lister? Now there's a clashing of cultures.
6:26 Speaker 01 But Guillermo had previously been married and he had two daughters from that marriage. And then he married Matilde and Frida had two older sisters and one younger sister. And she grew up in the family house in Coacan.
6:40 Kate Lister? Was it a happy childhood home?
6:42 Speaker 01 It was a fairly happy childhood home. She was very much her daddy's girl. Her mum was a strict Catholic woman.
6:51 Speaker 01 She became ill in nineteen fourteen, so she was born in nineteen oh seven, although later she claims it was nineteen ten. We can talk about why on another another moment. But when she was about seven, she got polio and she was bed bound for nine months.
7:05 Kate Lister? Wow.
7:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, a really big thing for a little kid. And one of her legs, her right leg, ended up shorter than her left leg and not quite as strong. And her father really encouraged her to be very sporty to try and compensate for this. So this was unusual for a Mexican child, girl in the period. But her father encouraged her in wrestling, in football and swimming. So she was a bit of a tomboy.
7:29 Kate Lister? What was her relationship with her mother like? You said that she's a very, she was very strictly Catholic. Was she okay with Frida being encouraged to go and wrestle people?
7:40 Speaker 01 She she was expected more traditional things from her daughter. Yeah, so but they they're very loving, you know, loving relationship. But yes, a much more traditional expectations. But she was born in a different world and the world was really changing. And Frida Kahlo, Frida Kahlo embraced those changes and epitomized them in some ways.
7:59 Kate Lister? In what way was it changing? Give us a sense of what you mean there.
8:03 Speaker 01 Um, in Matilde's youth and adulthood, Mexico had been ruled by Profi Díaz, who was a dictator. He ruled from eighteen seventy six until nineteen ten. And in nineteen ten, the Mexican Revolution broke out, overthrowing Díaz. And the revolutionaries, there were lots of different factions and they had different goals and demands, ranging from wanting the vote to be respected because Díaz regularly had held elections and he'd regularly won them. So they wanted the vote to be respected and they wanted people not to be allowed to stand for reelection, like Díaz had done for years. But others wanted more radical change. They wanted rights for workers. They wanted redistribution of land.
8:47 Speaker 01 That was one of the changes that had happened under Díaz was the concentration of land. And its removal, particularly from indigenous villages. So there were a lot of social demands and changes coming out of the Mexican Revolution. And in nineteen seventeen, a new constitution was written, which was the most radical constitution of its time.
9:06 Kate Lister? Wow. Okay. So there's a lot of stuff going on
9:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:09 Kate Lister? in the background then.
9:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
9:12 Kate Lister? What about, actually, before I get on to that, can we talk about how this polio impacted her? Because, you know, thanks to vaccines, this is something that we don't have to, to, to deal with. They've, they've eradicated polio.
9:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:26 Kate Lister? Hopefully. But what was, what did it mean for Frida when she contracted polio?
9:33 Speaker 01 Well, as I say, it meant, for one thing, nine months in bed.
9:36 Kate Lister? Nine months in bed.
9:37 Speaker 01 This period of convalescence and recuperation, which is very hard for a, a little kid, anyone, of course, but a little kid particularly, as you can imagine. She also became sensitive about her right leg and the damage, the visible damage to the right leg. So she, that was something that she, uh, you know, tried to sort of cover up. And I think possibly she compensated, as I say, in these sporting and attempts to really prove herself, prove herself capable.
10:04 Kate Lister? Was her right leg noticeably affected by the polio?
10:07 Speaker 01 Yes, she walked with a limp.
10:08 Kate Lister? Okay, okay. So it's quite, uh, it's had quite a severe impact on her body then.
10:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
10:14 Kate Lister? What about her love of art? Where does that come from? So you mentioned that her dad is a photographer. Was that the influence?
10:21 Speaker 01 Yes, there was certainly that. There was certainly that. And she had another terrible health crisis, which is when she was eighteen, she was in a really traumatic accident. At that point, she was attending high school in Mexico City, a very prestigious school with about two thousand students, about thirty of whom were girls. So it was really, you know, she was at the forefront here. And she was coming home on the bus, um, with her boyfriend at the time, and the bus and a trolley collided. And in that collision, she was impaled with a with a handrail.
10:56 Kate Lister? Oh, my god.
10:57 Speaker 01 Which went through her left hip and came out her vagina. And she says she lost her virginity in that moment.
11:03 Kate Lister? Holy hell.
11:04 Speaker 01 Her vertebrae was fractured. She had three fractures of her pelvis. She had eleven in her right foot. So it was huge, huge physical damage. And it's also described that in the course of the accident, her clothing was torn off. And there was an artist traveling on one of the vehicles who had this kind of gold sprinkles, gold powder, which fell over her. So she was this bloody injured woman covered in gold. So really dramatic and dramatic visually.
11:34 Kate Lister? Holy hell.
11:34 Speaker 01 In any case, so the recuperation from that accident took a lot of time, a lot of time. And that's also where she started to paint because she was bed bound. It was something she could do.
11:45 Kate Lister? What was that recovery like? Those sound like catastrophic injuries.
11:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, Diego de Veda, her husband, later on, says that only five people survived the accident. Now, that's what he said. I've not verified this independently. But, yeah, it was a terrible, terrible accident. And it really is amazing that she survived. And she survived as well as she did because she recovered her mobility. Diego Veda recounts the first time he met her at her house, she was in a tree. You know, so she did recover her mobility enough to be able to climb a tree. But, yes, it was a difficult recovery that took quite a long time.
12:21 Kate Lister? Was she able to finish school if she was recovered? Did she go back to school?
12:26 Speaker 01 No, she didn't go back to school.
12:27 Kate Lister? God almighty. So presumably then she must she must have gone back home dealing with those injuries.
12:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, she was in the hospital for a period. I'm trying to think. She was in the hospital for about a month. And then went home and neither of her parents rushed to see her in hospital. This is one of the things that's noticed. Her sister, her elder sister, Matilde, was the one who went to hospital.
12:47 Kate Lister? That's a bit weird.
12:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, it does raise questions.
12:51 Kate Lister? Why do you think, I know that we weren't there, but if you had to hazard a guess, that's odd. Like, your daughter's been impaled in a bus, in a bus crash, and you don't go and see her.
13:00 Speaker 01 The suggestion is that the parents were too upset.
13:03 Kate Lister? Oh, okay.
13:05 Speaker 01 But.
13:06 Kate Lister? Okay.
13:07 Speaker 01 I, I, you know, what can we say? It is strange.
13:10 Kate Lister? It's strange. We can say it's strange.
13:12 Speaker 01 It's strange. Her elder sister was there taking care of her.
13:15 Kate Lister? Do we know how Frida herself responded to this? Because this sounds like one of those life altering moments.
13:23 Speaker 01 Yes. It seems like she remade herself in terms of her personality, or maybe it's better to say it consolidated who she was heading towards becoming. So she made herself into this outgoing, outrageous, witty, life of the party, little bit bad, little bit naughty, little bit drink too much, a little bit swear. Woman. She became this kind of can't be defeated figure who, who people loved spending time with. You know, she was fun. She was funny.
13:53 Kate Lister? Okay, I can see that. I could say, and was it at this point that she started doing art when she was recovering? Had she been doing art before that?
14:00 Speaker 01 To be honest, I, I've not seen anybody say she'd been doing art before that.
14:04 Kate Lister? Okay. What kind of art was she producing in, in her early, in her early days?
14:10 Speaker 01 Well, the first finished portrait, which she gave to her boyfriend, who I mentioned, that then boyfriend who I mentioned earlier, was a self portrait and she was an elegant young woman in a velvet dress. There's a kind of directness to her painting, which you see from that very first self portrait. She was also, you know, she wasn't trained. So there's, people describe her as self trained and kind of having a, a learn as she went style.
14:36 Kate Lister? There's something wild about it as well.
14:38 Speaker 01 Yeah. And I think that becomes more the case as the art goes on. But yes, there's a lot of energy in it. There's a lot of.
14:44 Kate Lister? That's a good word, energy, yes.
14:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, like you feel like she's going to step out of the painting and start talking to you.
14:49 Kate Lister? You really do, don't you? When did she start getting noticed? Was she an undiscovered genius in, in her lifetime? And it's only after death that we all went, oh, she was very good, really?
14:58 Speaker 01 Yes and no. She starts getting noticed. So she and Diego de Vida got married in nineteen twenty nine. And in nineteen thirty, they went to the United States. And that was for him to do these various commissions that he had, and they stayed there for three years. And so in the United States, she started doing some painting. She started getting noticed, although she was noticed as much for her clothing initially as anything else, because she was wearing traditional Mexican dress. She'd started wearing Tijuana costume, Tijuana traditional dress, which comes from the Ismas of Tijuantepec in Oaxaca. And this is clothing that's actually a fusion of Spanish and indigenous styles.
15:42 Speaker 01 It's a loose blouse, often embroidered, and a long skirt, often with lace on it, and sometimes a headdress with that lace, as I mentioned, but doesn't have to be. But she was wearing this in San Francisco.
15:54 Kate Lister? Yeah, that'd get you noticed.
15:56 Speaker 01 Noticed, yeah, getting noticed. But for her first show, the first public showing of one of her paintings was at the Sixth Annual Exhibition of the San Francisco Society of Women Artists in nineteen thirty one. And that was her wedding portrait that she'd done, Frida, Frida Carlo and Diego de Vida.
16:17 Kate Lister? I'll be back with patience and Frida after this short break.
16:28 Kate Lister? Hello, betwixters. I'm jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right, it took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there, and the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.
17:10 Kate Lister? Well, we're gonna have to talk about Diego then, aren't we? As much as I'd love to do this and go, oh, screw him. We'll just focus on Frida. I don't think we can do that. So who is he and how did they meet?
17:24 Speaker 01 Okay. Diego de Veda was one of the big names in Mexican art at the time.
17:31 Kate Lister? He's a big shot, isn't he? Everyone's heard of him.
17:33 Speaker 01 He's like a rock star. I mean, in his time, he was a huge figure. And he was literally quite big as well. He's a big, tall, fat man. He's self-described. They met initially, saw each other, shall we say, when he was painting a mural at her Preparatoria Nacional, the National Preparatory School in Mexico City. So, and he remembers her watching him, watching him paint. He remembers thinking she was little more than a child. But at that point, she was a teenager. Her interest in him and the painting was enough that his wife, common law wife at the time, was quite annoyed with Frida hanging about.
18:14 Kate Lister? Oh.
18:15 Speaker 01 Yes, yes. But Frida was not, she was not, shall we say, a gorgeous figure of sexual threat at that moment. She was just, there was a kind of intensity about her. And then they re-met when she had taken up painting after the accident. And I didn't mention earlier, but before the accident, she was planning on becoming a medical doctor. And one of the reasons to do this was to help her family financially. After the accident, she couldn't do that anymore. She wanted to earn a living from painting. And the family also had a lot of medical bills because of her injuries. So there were some financial concerns. So the story is that she took her artwork to Diego de Veda when he was involved painting another mural
18:59 Speaker 01 and basically said to him, what do you think? Is this good enough? Can I, can I make a living? And she was not approaching him in a romantic way or anything. She really wanted his professional opinion on her art.
19:13 Kate Lister? And he heard, would you like to see my penis? Is that what?
19:19 Speaker 01 He heard that pretty much with any woman. I mean, Diego was incorrigible.
19:24 Kate Lister? Tale as old as time. So he's a bit of a womanizer then?
19:28 Speaker 01 Yes, with a capital W, if we can do that.
19:31 Kate Lister? But he had a common law wife, did you say?
19:33 Speaker 01 Yes, Lupe Marin, who was his wife at the time, and she, they had married in the church, but they hadn't done a civil ceremony. So that meant it wasn't legally binding. And they had two kids and two daughters and he left her and took up with Tina Modati, who was a photographer, a communist Italian photographer. Yes, he had a track record of leaving women when they got pregnant or had his kids.
20:01 Kate Lister? Oh, that's not a good look, is it? That's
20:03 Speaker 01 No.
20:03 Kate Lister? All right. So what do you think then that young, I'm assuming she was young when they met?
20:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, she, she was 22 when they got married and he was about 20 years older.
20:13 Kate Lister? It's, it's, it's so, we've heard this story before. Okay. What do you think that the attraction was then for Frida?
20:20 Speaker 01 I think it was the art.
20:22 Kate Lister? The genius.
20:23 Speaker 01 I think it was the genius. Yeah. I mean, she talks about him. I've got quotes from her about him as a physical body. If you want to hear more about that, I can give you that. Okay. Shall we start? Shall we go there? Okay. So this is after she was his wife, but she says, I cannot speak of Diego as my husband because that term, when applied to him, is an absurdity. He has never been, nor will he ever be anybody's husband. I cannot speak of him as my lover because to me, he transcends by far the domain of sex. And then she goes on to describe his body, talking about how he's got these eyes like a frog that are separated and give him this wacky
21:03 Speaker 01 broad vision. And she talks about when you see him naked, his skin is kind of green tinged.
21:12 Speaker 01 She she goes on, this is, I have to say, I think this is my favorite bit. Diego's chest of it, we have to say that had he landed on an island governed by Sappho, where male invaders were apt to be executed, Diego would never have been in danger. The sensitivity of his marvelous breasts would have ensured his welcome. Although his masculine virility, specific and strange, would have made him equally desired in the lands of these queens avidly hungering for masculine love.
21:43 Kate Lister? Oh, I'm confused, Frida. What is going on here? He sounds repugnant from what she's saying.
21:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:52 Kate Lister? But also, she can't help herself.
21:54 Speaker 01 Yeah. And when you look at pictures of him, you think this is not an attractive man. Why was this man basically a sex symbol in his time?
22:02 Kate Lister? He's got something going on then.
22:03 Speaker 01 He's got something going on. He was clearly charismatic, appealing. Yeah, women, women were drawn to him. It was said around this period, so nineteen twenties, that the young US tourists who went to Mexico to experience life had to have a little visit with Diego as part of that experience.
22:23 Kate Lister? Oh, my God. Wow. Okay. He is, he is a fuck boy and a half.
22:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, pretty much.
22:30 Kate Lister? So Frida, it sounds like she knows what she's getting herself into here. This doesn't sound like a young naive woman who is like, oh, I married him and then he turned out to be an absolute scoundrel.
22:39 Speaker 01 No, well, she she certainly knew what she was getting into, whether she thought things would be different.
22:43 Kate Lister? Oh, no, she thought she could save him. Oh, we all do that.
22:46 Speaker 01 I mean, we don't know. Right. We don't know.
22:47 Kate Lister? All right, we don't know.
22:48 Speaker 01 But she she knew what she knew who she was marrying. You do see in those early years of marriage, some concern about leaving him alone for long periods of time. So, you know, maybe concern about what he'd get up to, although he he managed to get up to stuff when he wasn't alone for long periods of time. So.
23:05 Kate Lister? Right.
23:06 Speaker 01 He didn't need an excuse.
23:07 Kate Lister? I was gonna ask you, was she right to be concerned? What was?
23:11 Speaker 01 Yes.
23:11 Kate Lister? What what was this marriage like then?
23:15 Speaker 01 It was tempestuous and it was loving and it was.
23:21 Speaker 01 I'm gonna say there was respect for each other as artists.
23:24 Kate Lister? Okay.
23:24 Speaker 01 Not the kind of respect one might think of in a relationship where there's not so much cheating.
23:29 Kate Lister? Yeah.
23:30 Speaker 01 But they certainly had a great respect for each other as artists. And he really thought she was spectacular as an artist. You know, there's no doubt that he was impressed by her work and supportive of her as an artist. What else to say? They're non-conventional, neither wanted to be conventional. So I think his cheating hurt. And I think her cheating with men hurt him. But at the same time, they were not subscribers to bourgeois morality. They were much freer than that. And, you know, this, this is the 1920s. It's the Mexican Revolution has loosened up sexual mores and they were both enjoying that.
24:13 Kate Lister? So she is having affairs as well. Do we know who she's having affairs with?
24:19 Speaker 01 Yes, there is a log list and both of them really seem to, oh, well, I had to slightly backtrack. There's a point in his autobiography where he says, Frida was mostly angry. I paraphrase, right? But Frida was basically angry with me when I had affairs with women who she didn't respect.
24:37 Kate Lister? Oh, that's an interesting caveat. Okay, it's sort of like a kind of, you could have done better, sort of.
24:41 Speaker 01 Exactly.
24:42 Kate Lister? Interesting.
24:42 Speaker 01 Now, whether that's true or not, that might be self justification. But if we look at some of the figures she slept with, these are extraordinary men. You know, she's really, really interesting artists, creative people. Trotsky, Leon Trotsky was one of the men. Yeah.
25:00 Kate Lister? I didn't know that. Oh, so give me some other people that were on her body count list then. Trotsky, that's, that's, I didn't expect that one.
25:08 Speaker 01 Yes, so we've got Trotsky, we've got Nick Murray, who was a Hungarian photographer. And it seems like, I've, I've read different things about how long the relationship lasted. But one source suggests 10 years.
25:21 Kate Lister? That's a long time.
25:22 Speaker 01 They were in a relationship for 10 years. And some scholars suggest that she actually, had he been willing to marry her, perhaps she might have married him. There's also Isama Naguchi, who was in Mexico on a Guggenheim, is another man she had an affair with.
25:39 Speaker 01 So there's, there is quite.
25:41 Kate Lister? So she's not slumming it. She's not, she's, I kind of like this idea of like, if you're gonna cheat, cheat big. Like, you know, don't, don't be just with anybody. It has to be with somebody who's at least interesting.
25:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, absolutely. I think for both of them, you see, well, maybe not so much for Diego. I think Diego would sleep with a lot of women who perhaps did not stimulate his mind.
26:05 Kate Lister? Fair.
26:05 Speaker 01 But you think he preferred to sleep with women who stimulated his mind as well as his body. Um, Frida, though, it does seem like she's, she's going for men who were really gonna give her something intellectually, artistically, challenge her in some way. Yeah.
26:19 Kate Lister? Wow. And she also had relationships with women, didn't she?
26:23 Speaker 01 Yes, yes, she did. There is debate about this, not as much is known about her relationships with women. And some scholars suggest that this is basically the heteronormative focus of the literature on Callow. She definitely had really intense friendships with women. So sometimes it's hard to tell where, whether we're looking at a sexual relationship or a very intense friendship. But names that have been suggested are Maria Felix and Dolores Del Rio, who are Mexican actors, also lovers of Diego. Also suggested maybe Josephine Baker.
27:00 Kate Lister? Yeah, I've heard that one.
27:01 Speaker 01 Maybe, um, Chavela Vargas.
27:03 Kate Lister? Tallulah Bankhead, was that somebody there as well?
27:05 Speaker 01 Chavela Vargas, a Costa Rican singer. I've also heard suggested Jacqueline Lamba, who was the wife of Andre Breton. And I have a section from Callow's diary. She started this diary in nineteen forty-four and kept it until her death. And when we say diary, it's not like, dear diary, today I.
27:30 Kate Lister? I slept with X, Y and Z.
27:32 Speaker 01 Wood that she had, wood that she had. Um, no, it's a combination of kind of. Musings, um, stream of consciousness and, and lots of imagery, lots of paintings. But in any case, I mentioned Jacqueline Lambeau, who was married to André Breton. And in her diary, she remembers a visit that they had had some years before. And she, she writes in her diary, I have not forgotten you. The nights are long and difficult, the water, the ship and the parting which made you appear so small in my eyes. Framed in that round porthole as you gazing at me so as to keep me in your heart.
28:12 Kate Lister? That's, it's, that's pretty spicy. That's pretty hot stuff.
28:15 Speaker 01 It does suggest a loving romantic connection to me. Yeah.
28:20 Kate Lister? It's always very difficult with this stuff with historians and historians are always getting in trouble for saying that everyone was just friends. That's like, that's like, that's a comedic meme that still does the round. You could have two men in bed together completely nude and historians would still be going, they could just. But it's because we want to be cautious because we need
28:38 Speaker 01 Yes.
28:39 Kate Lister? the evidence to be there. And what you get, especially when you're looking at history of marginalized groups of people is the slightest hint that they may have been gay or bisexual or trans and people that it becomes really important to us culturally important. So we focus in it and we want them. We want Frida Kahlo to be a bisexual queen, but
28:58 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:58 Kate Lister? we've got to be a bit careful with the evidence.
29:02 Speaker 01 We do. And I mean, I think she did have sexual relationships with women as well as men. I, that's what I believe.
29:08 Kate Lister? Yeah.
29:08 Speaker 01 And I think using our labels isn't always helpful.
29:13 Kate Lister? Yes.
29:14 Speaker 01 Because I think we have to understand her in her time. Juan O'Gorman, who was an architect and muralist and knew both of them. He described her as ambisexual and said that she loved love. And that she loved animals. She loved her friends. She loved family. She, so it was how kind of she expressed love. So I think that's an interesting way to look at it is it's not perhaps. I'm not suggesting for a minute she shouldn't be a gay or queer icon.
29:43 Kate Lister? No, no.
29:44 Speaker 01 I mean, it's terrific. That, that's wonderful. But I, I think she, in so many ways, she transcends the labels which Ryan put on her.
29:51 Kate Lister? I think she does too. Do we have anything in her own right? I mean, apart from the letters, do we have anything to try and understand how she understood her sexuality or who she was attracted to?
30:02 Speaker 01 That's a really interesting question.
30:04 Kate Lister? When there's the artwork, does she explore it in her art?
30:07 Speaker 01 Yes, there is a painting of two nude women. Now, I'm doing this from memory. Two nude women in an embrace in a naturalistic setting. And one of the women is lighter skinned and one of the women is darker skinned. And that has been read as a kind of erotic moment. And it's certainly an interracial relationship. So that's a very interesting one. The diary, which I mentioned, which has been published in the commentary on the diary. And I agree with this. It said that the images of naked women in the diary, they're not sexualized. So they're not depicted as sexual objects.
30:50 Speaker 01 It's a gentle and a kind gaze, but it's not a lustful gaze.
30:53 Kate Lister? Yeah.
30:53 Speaker 01 On these women. But at the same time, I mean, there's a story about her playing this surrealist pictograph game where you kind of fold the paper down and add in body parts. And then you open it up and what do you have? And Frida Kahlo seemed to delight in giving women erect penises that were ejaculating and these kinds of things. So she's very playing around with gender norms and sexuality. And, you know, we see her in the paintings, not hiding her mustache.
31:24 Kate Lister? Yeah.
31:24 Speaker 01 There are moments in her life where she dressed in suits. So there's a wonderful family portrait when she's about 18. And everybody's looking fairly traditional. And then there's Frida in quite an abbot suit with slicked back hair. There's a portrait of her self portrait where she's sitting in a chair in a suit and she's cut off all her hair and it's all strewn around her. So playing with kind of androgyny and certainly a very different look from her. Taekwana lace and long skirts.
32:02 Kate Lister? I'll be back with patience and Frida after this short break.
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33:13 Kate Lister? How did people react to this at the time? Because, I mean, even today, it can be quite striking. You look at some of her artwork, and you can see in these images that, like, that person looks very different from everyone else in this picture. But how did people react to this in early 20th century Mexico?
33:32 Speaker 01 Well, she wasn't the only woman dressing in folkloric and indigenous costume dress — I shouldn't say costume dress — who wasn't of that culture. So, in the 1920s, after the Mexican Revolution, one of the big changes was a revalorization of Mexican culture, folkloric culture, rural culture, historic indigenous culture. And so these symbols started to be used as a kind of expression of national cultural identity. And we see some of this in Diego's work as well, Diego Rivera's work. So this sense that Mexico should look to its own cultural traditions to try and represent itself.
34:14 Speaker 01 And part of that, for some women and in some other environments, was wearing Mexican traditional and folkloric dress. So Frida Kahlo was not the only one dressing this way.
34:26 Kate Lister? Okay.
34:26 Speaker 01 I was looking for these because I I thought they'd be fun to to have to hand and I can't find them unfortunately, but I have somewhere reproductions from a cigarette company's advertisements in the nineteen twenties. And they're also women in traditional Mexican dress, smoking.
34:44 Kate Lister? Wow.
34:45 Speaker 01 So, you know, celebrity women dressed up with shawls and with these lovely embroidered blouses, smoking. So it was a kind of revolutionary stance, almost, wearing these clothes. But as I say, when you wear them in San Francisco.
34:59 Kate Lister? Huh.
34:59 Speaker 01 Or Detroit, you know, it's a different matter.
35:02 Kate Lister? Yes, yes. How did her health hold up throughout throughout her life? I mean, somebody that's been through that much physical trauma, it must have had a lasting impact on it.
35:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, she ended up having, and again, I've seen different numbers here, um, how many operations she ended up having over the course of her lifetime because of the complications around the injuries from the accident. And also some of the complications because of the polio, that she ended up having these ulcers in her leg. The figures I've seen range from about twenty five to thirty two different operations.
35:37 Kate Lister? Wow, okay.
35:38 Speaker 01 So, and operations on her spine, operations on her foot, um, she had her appendix out. We can also talk about maternity if you want.
35:46 Kate Lister? Yeah, yeah.
35:47 Speaker 01 She did have abortions as well, so, which is obviously unrelated. Well, no, I I
35:53 Kate Lister? It's a health issue.
35:53 Speaker 01 Can't say, actually. I was gonna say it's unrelated to the accident, but it's not. You know, there was question about whether she could carry a baby to term because of the damage that she'd suffered. And one of her doctors thought she probably could, but, you know, it's a question mark.
36:08 Kate Lister? It's a risk, isn't it, that? I mean, if doctors have told you, we don't know if your body's gonna be able to do this.
36:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, she had different advice from different doctors. And if we're thinking about Frida Kahlo and maternity, there is this, what I think is a myth, that she was desperate to have Diego Rivera's baby, and she was crushed, some even say neurotic, because she couldn't. And, I know, thank you very much, eyebrows. But she got pregnant in their first year of marriage, and she had an abortion. And the reason she gave was the baby was in the wrong place, the fetus was in the wrong place. But she was three months pregnant. And the technology of the time, so is that credible? What does that mean?
36:50 Kate Lister? Okay.
36:52 Speaker 01 And then, when they were in the United States, she was pregnant again. And she initially wanted to abort it. And she tried with ingesting on prescription. And the abortion didn't work. And she ended up deciding to keep the pregnancy. But in the letters that she wrote to her doctor and friends, we really see a lot of ambivalence around being pregnant, you know, ambivalence around her own health, and could her body handle it? Ambivalence around Diego and his moment in his career, but also what it would mean for them. And bear in mind, as I said earlier, he had a tendency to leave women who had his babies.
37:36 Kate Lister? Oh, God, yes. Yes.
37:37 Speaker 01 And then there was a third abortion of some, a few years later. Now, Diego, in his autobiography, says that she had other pregnancies, and she did really want to have his baby. And he says he told her she couldn't get pregnant again because of the risk to her health. So
37:52 Kate Lister? I wonder if he worked out what was causing that, then?
37:58 Kate Lister? Jerk.
37:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. But, you know, where exactly the truth lies?
38:03 Kate Lister? Did she have any children?
38:04 Speaker 01 She never had children. I'm happy to say confidently that the idea that Frida was somehow desperate, desperate, desperate to have Diego's baby and would do anything to have that happen, that's not credible.
38:16 Kate Lister? It doesn't sound like she's desperate, desperate, desperate. It sounds like she had the opportunity a few times and decided not to go through with it.
38:25 Speaker 01 That seems the most likely. She definitely had three abortions. And, you know, could she have had a baby if she had been on bedrest and under medical care for nine months? Maybe. But that was not a choice. When the moment came, she made other choices.
38:42 Kate Lister? And she also had her leg amputated, didn't she?
38:45 Speaker 01 Yes, that was quite late in life. That was nineteen fifty three.
38:50 Kate Lister? Was that related to the polio?
38:52 Speaker 01 Yeah, the leg amputation was because she had had, yeah, that was in nineteen fifty three. She had had issues with gangrene.
39:02 Kate Lister? Gangrene?
39:02 Speaker 01 The leg, gangrene. Yeah, the leg was gangrenous. And they ended up amputating it just below the knee.
39:08 Kate Lister? Do you know what what caused that? You said she had ulcers on her leg. Had they gone gangrenous then?
39:13 Speaker 01 It it from nineteen forty nine, she had gangrene in her right foot. I've not seen anybody say directly, it was the ulcers that led to the gangrene. But it was something that had been happening for a number of years and clearly it had spread from her foot.
39:27 Kate Lister? She must have been in a tremendous amount of pain.
39:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. And she was on heavy painkillers at different points in her life and also drinking to try and deal with the pain.
39:40 Kate Lister? My god, that's crazy. So she's in this marriage with Diego. He's having affairs. She's having, everybody's having affairs. The artwork is amazing.
39:51 Speaker 01 I should just tell you about one more affair he had because it's key.
39:54 Kate Lister? Please.
39:55 Speaker 01 He slept with her younger sister.
39:57 Kate Lister? No, he didn't. Get out of here. Diego.
40:02 Speaker 01 Very bad.
40:03 Kate Lister? Oh.
40:04 Speaker 01 Very bad.
40:04 Kate Lister? How how much younger?
40:06 Speaker 01 Oh, now that's a question. Eleven months.
40:09 Kate Lister? Oh, it's not. It's not as awful as I thought that could have been. Oh, did she find out about that?
40:14 Speaker 01 She did find out about it and Christina, the sister, was the one who she was closest to of her sisters. Christina also appears in various of Diego Rivera's murals, including she posed for him nude, which maybe not such a good idea.
40:30 Kate Lister? That's a good idea.
40:32 Speaker 01 Um, one of the things about Diego Rivera's murals is you can tell the women he's sleeping with because he puts this kind of glassy eyed look on their faces. So if you see his murals, you're like, oh, that one. Yeah, that one.
40:45 Kate Lister? The ones that didn't sleep with, they just have their arms folded across the chest.
40:49 Speaker 01 Exactly. They're very serious looking. So Christina, there is an image of her looking a bit glassy eyed. Anyway, yes, so Frida did find out. And it was devastating, as you can imagine. And it harmed her relationship with Christina for a period, although they did make up. But she and Diego divorced a little bit later.
41:09 Kate Lister? Oh, they divorced? Okay.
41:11 Speaker 01 They did divorce for just one, one year.
41:14 Kate Lister? Well, they can't stay apart from one another, can they, these two?
41:17 Speaker 01 No, no, it was, let's see, they divorced in nineteen thirty nine and then they remarried in nineteen forty. Diego says he went to her and said, we need to get a divorce because I I'm hurting you and I can't stop hurting you, you know, well.
41:33 Kate Lister? That's such a bullshit line, that one. That's such a stupid, oh, don't fall in love with me. Oh, I'm just gonna hurt you. Oh, fuck off. Sorry, I may, that may have been tapping into something quite personal to myself there. I'll refocus. So they get divorced and then they get back together again very quickly.
41:53 Speaker 01 They do fairly quickly. And they actually have, one of their friends who was a doctor tells them, you two, for your own sake, you need to get back together.
42:03 Kate Lister? Medically ordered.
42:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, he, he says, Leo, their friend and doctor, advised them to get back together because it was bad for their health, even though he knew Diego couldn't be faithful. Now Frida gave him three conditions on getting back together. One is she would cover her own expenses by selling her artwork. Two is that he would pay his half of household expenses. And three, they wouldn't have sex.
42:30 Kate Lister? What?
42:31 Speaker 01 Now, I don't know for a fact, obviously, that that third condition was met. But Diego does recount in his autobiography that in that last period of their marriage, when they'd remarried, Frida enjoyed hearing about his sexual liaisons with other women.
42:49 Kate Lister? Well, this is an interesting shift and an interesting dynamic.
42:54 Kate Lister? That it's become a sexless relationship and they're kind of cheering each other on having sex with other people.
42:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, and I think, I mean, in some ways, maybe they maintained the bit that was fundamentally most important for them about their relationship, which was the the connection as artists and people and that the sex actually became a bit of a problem.
43:15 Kate Lister? Messes stuff up.
43:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, the the emotion around the cheating, which he was not prepared to stop.
43:20 Kate Lister? It doesn't sound like it. Did they stay together for the rest of, well, the rest of her life because she died crazy young?
43:27 Speaker 01 She died at forty seven in nineteen fifty four.
43:29 Kate Lister? That's no age to be dying, do we know?
43:31 Speaker 01 I know.
43:32 Kate Lister? Why? I mean, I say why, but she's had so many health complications. Was it just a result of bad health?
43:37 Speaker 01 Well, officially, the story is that she, yes, that she died of bad health, but there are suspicions of suicide, which I believe. So it's really, really tragic, really tragic. So for the last years of her life, her health had really deteriorated. She was having to wear these corsets to to help keep her secure, you know, because her spine was so damaged. And the amputation was in nineteen fifty three. Just as an aside, there is an absolutely fabulous leather red boot prosthesis that she had. So high heeled, red boot, painted, just like, if you're gonna have a prosthesis, my goodness, the way to go about it.
44:21 Speaker 01 Yeah. But in any case, after the leg amputation, that was really a very difficult period for her. And you can see this in the diary, how how hard it was for her. She'd also lost a lot of her motor control. Late, late in life, she was actually being cared for. She wasn't able to fully care for herself. So her ability to paint had diminished terribly because she no longer had the fine motor skills required for the painting.
44:47 Kate Lister? Oh, no.
44:48 Speaker 01 And the last written entry in her diary was, I hope the end is beautiful and I hope never to come back. Now, it's possible that was about coming out of the hospital. It's possible that was not in terms of deciding to end her own life. But Diego Rivera recounts that she often told her nurses that she wanted to die. And she also gave him their twenty fifth anniversary gift the night before she died, even though their anniversary was two weeks away.
45:22 Kate Lister? That's that sounds like that's planned.
45:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, and she told him, I feel I'm going to leave you very soon. And the last painting in the diary is this winged figure, wearing boots and with green wings. And it's leaving the page, the the figure is slightly off the page, heading away. So really quite moving.
45:46 Kate Lister? So you think that this was a deliberate act then?
45:50 Speaker 01 I think so. I think it was probably, she had access to drugs.
45:54 Kate Lister? Right.
45:55 Speaker 01 Um, so I I suspect if it wasn't deliberate deliberate, it was a little bit allowing too much.
46:03 Kate Lister? Yeah.
46:04 Speaker 01 To be, yeah.
46:05 Kate Lister? Oh.
46:05 Speaker 01 I mean, we can't, obviously, we can't know for sure, but there are enough.
46:09 Kate Lister? But it sounds like she was in a tremendous amount of pain and was in, losing so many things that that were vitally important to her.
46:17 Speaker 01 Yes, and it does seem like not being able to paint was absolutely crushing. And Raquel Tibol, who was an Argentine journalist and art critic, who spent some time with Frida in those very last period, remembers that when she went to visit her in the Casa Azul, the blue house in Coacan where Frida had grown up, and which Diego had paid off the mortgage and then put the house in Frida's name. So this was her home, her family home and her home. And Raquel remembers that Frida took one of her paintings, which was probably the last one and very poorly executed. And she took a knife and she started to scrape at it as if in anger.
47:01 Kate Lister? Gee.
47:02 Speaker 01 So I think there was a lot of just anguish that she could no longer be the painter she wanted to be.
47:09 Kate Lister? I think that that that makes sense. So as a as a final question then, about this absolutely extraordinary person.
47:17 Kate Lister? Did she know how good she was? Was she in her lifetime? Did she? Because like now we look at, she's so, it's feminist and it's iconic and it's about Mexican heritage and nationalism and sexuality. Did she know that she was that good?
47:33 Speaker 01 That's a really good question. I'm going to say she must have because clearly she had this standard that she held herself to and an expectation of what she wanted her art to be, how she wanted it to be. And she knew that what she was doing was revolutionary in its own way. She knew that she was really challenging forms of self-representation and, you know, creating these sometimes disturbing, but always arresting and haunting paintings and very honest. So yeah, I think, I think she did know. I hope she knew.
48:12 Kate Lister? I hope she did.
48:13 Speaker 01 I sure hope she knew.
48:14 Kate Lister? I hope she knew. Patience, you have been wonderful to talk to. Thank you so much. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?
48:23 Speaker 01 I am at the University of Aberdeen. I'm going to get inundated with.
48:27 Kate Lister? With Frida Kahlo fans.
48:29 Speaker 01 My God.
48:30 Kate Lister? Leave Patience alone.
48:33 Speaker 01 No, lovely. I'd love to hear from people. I teach Latin American history at the University of Aberdeen. I'm in the Spanish department, but I'm a historian of Latin America.
48:41 Kate Lister? Well, thank you so much for coming by to tell us all about this amazing woman. You've been brilliant.
48:47 Speaker 01 Thank you, Kate. Thank you very much for the opportunity.
48:53 Kate Lister? Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Patience for joining us. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along, whatever it is you get your podcasts. Coming up, we've got the third episode of our mini-series on history's worst breakups with Oskar Kukoschka and Alma Marla. And oh my God, this one is a doozy. And we also have an episode on George Sand, one of the most scandalous people of all 19th century Paris, all coming your way. And if you would like us to explore a subject or if you wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected] . This podcast was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.
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