There’s Something About Frida
A suitcase found in a Moab garage reveals a treasure trove of photos of the vivacious Mexican artist
This story begins in Moab.
Mimi (Muray) Levitt persuaded her brother, Chris, to go through three suitcases that had been sitting out in the shed for five years. They were full of photos taken by their father, photographer Nickolas Muray. This task took days.
Among the photos, mostly of them as kids, were a couple of gems. There were about 70 negatives of famous Mexican artists, including Miguel Covarrubias, Diego Rivera, and Frida Kahlo.
Mimi asked photographer Bruce Proctor to make contact sheets of these, so she could see what they had.
I watched Bruce print up Frida and Diego from the fragile negs. I watched, and listened to his decisions as he burned and dodged with great tenderness and respect to all involved. The faces of Frida, Diego, and Nick; and the corners of the rooms of the “Blue House.” I spotted those faces and corners with great care. I washed them, toned them, flattened, matted and framed them.
Six Images.
“Frida Painting the Two Fridas”
Frida poses with her pallet and brush in front of a huge painting, one of her largest. I think this must be one of the art historians’ favorite pieces to analyze. She’s wearing her “hand” earrings, a present from a surrealist friend. I think it was André Breton. Kahlo historian, Solomon Greenberg, writes: “André Breton visited Mexico in 1938, intending to introduce his theories of surrealism, and found the Mexicans were already surrealist, but didn’t know it.”
In this painting she wears two costumes, as the two Fridas, divided yet sharing the same circulatory system. Her hearts exposed.
In Victorian dress, with her heart wide open, she holds a medical tool. The pre-Diego Frida aspired to be a doctor.
In Tehuana skirt, she holds ian emblem of Diego. Diego encouraged her to lose the “boy” wardrobe and to don the native Tehuana costumes she enjoyed. Her heart is full, but in the photo not yet completed.
When she was 18, a bus accident dashed her plans for medical school and changed her life course. And her perspective, it seems: from pursuing an outside understanding of the interior, to revealing an intimate understanding of the exterior.
“Frida and Diego with Hat”
I spoke with Salt Laker Tina Martin, god-daughter of Frida. “Why was Frida so attracted to Diego? Why were any of the women? He must’ve had a great personality.”
Conversely, why was Diego attracted to Frida, to the point of marriage? He was, after all, a man with many beautiful lovers.
There must’ve been something to Frida’s persistence. She had made up her mind to marry him, before they had ever even met.
Diego and Frida were each other’s opposites, in many ways. Especially physically. He was huge, she was petite. She dressed in costume meticulously, while he didn’t seem to notice what he looked like. She was always aware of her physical condition and Diego would get so consumed by a painting that he would appear, to Tina, to “waste away”(to the extent he could). Frida would hug him and pat his big girth, saying, “Someone needs to take care of you.” There he is, seated, covering that chair, with Frida and her poor leg, standing beside him.
“Diego and Frida with Gas Mask”
This photo, taking during World War II, reminds me that both Diego and Frida we’re revolutionaries themselves, and communists, fighting against capitalism and Hitler. Political events shaped not only their lives, but their identities. Frida changed her birth year to coincide with the date of the Mexican Revolution and, even in the days right before her death, she accompanied Diego to political rallies.
The smile in this image forms an arrow pointing to the other mask, Frida’s. There seems something so silly about Frida’s pose with a gas mask and Diego’s grin. Knowing about Frida’s sense of humor, it’s hard to imagine that she didn’t even crack a smile. But in none, or nearly none, of her portraits does she smile. She gazes directly at the viewer, expressionless. Yet in that expressionless face can be read anything.
Mimi, Bruce and I met Tina Martin, at her home in Salt Lake City. Tina told us stories of visiting, and being visited by, Frida Kahlo. The picture Tina painted was up at vivacious woman, full of life. Full of laughter.
“We would know Frida was there, long before we could see her. We would hear her jewelry jangling, her skirts rustling, and we could smell her strong and flowery perfume.” Out of Frida’s pockets full of gifts of toys and candy. The children loved her.
Tina recalls Frida often in bed, and always an easel nearby. Frida would get the children to sneak her a little drinks, directing them to hide the alcohol in the medicine cabinet.
When Tina was three she was taken to the registry by her mom, Frida, and Frida’s sister Cristina, and became Ernestina (after her grandmother), Marta (the name her father wanted), Marlena (after the actress Marlena Dietrich; Frida’s choice). The women laughing and happy the whole time, making jokes. Tina’s description of Frida does not match the mask we face in her portraits, but paints a colorful, lively and happy character.
1940, about their tenth year of marriage, Frida and Diego divorced. It was widely known that both engaged in extramarital affairs. Possible explanations for the divorce include: Diego’s protection of Frida from reprisals resulting from his political actions; Diego’s affair with Cristina; Frida’s affair with Nickolas Muray; sexual problems due to Frida’s fragility, or even that Diego was impotent. The divorce was quick, and it lasted only a year. They remarried on his birthday, December 8 in 1940, under her conditions of independence, formalizing her autonomy.
“Do you think she tried to shock people with her appearance and actions?” I asked Tina. “No.” Frida was sincere in her words and actions. Diego, however, was the one who tried to shock. In his commissioned murals, he often left shocking and disturbing surprises. Frida was in awe (and in the shadow) of Diego. For that reason she did not take her own painting too seriously, or see it as very important.
But Frida’s art is very important. Sarah Lowe describes it as having “… created a rupture in art history by overturning expectations of the portrayal of women in art.” She did this by depicting her identity unfashionably and disturbingly.
Having suffered polio as a child, Frida’s right leg was smaller than her left. The neighborhood kids made fun of her. She dealt with that by doing acrobatics on her bicycle or skates.
Tina’s father, Alberto Misrachi, was Diego’s first dealer. The gallery he started featured the emerging Mexican artists who, in their own time, we’re changing the atmosphere of the country. Tina remembers being in a film with Frida, playing a small part as her daughter. They laughed the whole time. As a teenager Tina became interested in theater and moved to New York when she was 19. There she visited the close friends of her family, Nickolas and Peggy Muray.
According to Martha Zamora, “One affair of great consequence to Frida was with Nickolas Muray, who made some of the most beautiful photographs of Frida.” Nickolas met Frida during her second year of marriage to Diego, the spring of 1931.
Danny Jones was an assistant and good friend of Nickolas Muray’s. He described Nick as genuine, sincere, with a wonderful voice, not a man of small talk.
Nickolas Muray was born in Hungary and moved to Germany to avoid being recruited to the Emperor’s army and to study photo-engraving. In 1913, he arrived in New York with $25 and a “Masters Engravers” card in his pocket. He was good at his craft, as his meticulous personality lent itself to the ultra-precision and care needed for the type of photography he did. As a portrait photographer, he quickly became well-known and liked among the celebrity crowds.
Nick met Miguel Covarrubias (for whom Mimi was named). They “became friends, then roommates, soul mates, and inseparable partners in crime,” Solomon Grimberg told me. “Each covered for the other when one would be off with a lover and was married. During their first trip to Mexico, Miguel introduced Nick to his Mexican friends… [who] nicknamed him ‘the kid’ because he was so much younger than anyone in the group.”
“Image of Frida Painting ‘Me and My Parrots’ with Nickolas Muray”
How and why their affair ended, and who really broke it off, remains a mystery to me. What’s apparent is that it was a serious affair for both of them, and that they remained friends after.
Throughout his affair with Frida, Nicka had been single. He had divorced his previous wives, but had still kept in close contact with wife number two, Leja, the dancer, and their daughter, Arija, who sturdied painting under Diego Rivera in Mexico.
Diego Rivera often took Americans as his apprentices. One of them, Pablo O’Higgins, came from Salt Lake City.
Pablo grew up in Salt Lake as Paul. His family lived here but also maintained a ranch in San Diego. His contact with the Mexicans who worked on the ranch left quite an impression on Pablo.
After East High (his last classes there were art under LeConte Stewart and Spanish) he enrolled in art school in San Diego. There a friend from Guaymas gave Pablo an article from the October 1923 edition of The Arts magazine, regarding Diego Rivera and the muralist movement. Pablo wrote Diego a letter and was invited to “come and see what was happening.”
Sue Vogel, attorney and freelance writer who lives here in Salt Lake is writing O’Higgins’ biography. She says, “Pablo went to Mexico City by train, went to the Rivera’s house and entered a different world.”
An interesting thing about O’Higgins is that he totally denied his pre-Mexican history. He revised his whole background and never spoke of his father or brother again. He was angered if anyone spoke to him in English because he considered himself Mexican and wanted to reinforce his chosen identity. Ironically, he never gave up his US citizenship.
While in Mexico, next daughter, Arija, contracted an illness and was treated, but as Mimi recalls the story, she may have been over-treated and, in her weakened state, succumbed to leukemia. The death of Arija threw Nick into a terrible depression. Nick responsible, perhaps for being too overbearing and demanding a parent.
Then he married Peggy, about 25 years his junior, and had Mimi and then Chris. Mini barely recalls the trip the family made to visit free to NDA go in the summer of 1951. Frida was bedridden at that time. The young kids were introduced to her, then told to play outside.
“Dad was strict, old-world European. Tough.” Mimi wishes she had gotten to know him better but he was in his late 70s during her teenage years and probably didn’t feel like dealing with all the issues involved in raising a child. For grammar school, both Mimi and Chris were sent to a boarding school near Lake Placid, New York. In high school they were back in the city where Mimi missed skiing and dreamed of moving out west, to the real ski mountains. A friend of hers had a connection to a manager of Alta Lodge who arranged a job for her.
Mimi moved out to mid-January 1966, a year after her father’s death. Her first job was at the front desk, (exactly the same spot from which I telephone interview her). He fell in love with the owner, Bill Levitt, and they have been happily together since.
As a consequence of Mimi’s move to Alta, her brother came out, worked oat Alta, too, and 10 years later moved to the house in Moab where our story began.
That’s two images of the series are:
“Frida with Granzio”
Frida with the fawn, the identity of innocence wonder; and
“Frida Icon”
a classic portrait with a halo from the imperfections of the negative. I see Frida as a woman in the act of choosing her identity, as difficult and close to impossible as that might be, especially when confronted with the infidelities of the love of her life. And I’ll take Diego as my proof. Frida vowed to marry Diego, and have his children, before she had ever met him. I wonder how Frida saw herself. Mustache, eyebrow, jewelry, costumes, cigarettes, trash-mouth and all; she did what she did and laid it out there. She could not hide from her condition, only leave traces of it in the multiple facets of her gem-like paintings, and in the memories she has left with all the people who love her.
Tina rolls her eyes at the mention of the psychological analysis of Frida and her work over the years, “Frida would have laughed.”
Catalyst Magazine
January 2001
Art