Frida Kahlo by Nickolas Muray, 1940.
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This woman. This is the kind of chick I could always relate to, and I relate to now. Because I too have the tendency to wake up in the “morning”, look at myself in the mirror, and think You know, what my head really needs is two gigantic flowers. With the leaves still intact. I mean, you have to do your hair up anyhow, right? Why be boring? Why be half assed?
When I first discovered Frida I was about six years old, and taking the first of a series of art classes at East L.A. College, where they offered all kinds of cool stuff for children. I took all kinds of art classes. But anyway, as you walked into the quad area, there was (still there? gone?) a huge mural painted on one of the walls, and there was an image of, as I liked to call her, “the lady with the eyebrow”. I loved the eyebrow. I loved the mustache. I loved the hair, and the clothes, and the jewelry, and above all her totally laissez faire relationship with all of it. I couldn’t understand why, once you grow up, you got boring.
Why, the minute you have the power to dress yourself, to identify yourself however you want, the minute you have the power to go out there and buy the clothing you actually really want, why the HELL do you abandon your true persona, and start looking the fuck like everyone else?
Inquiring minds wanted to know. From an early age. I found out that eyebrow lady’s name was Frida Kahlo, and she was, awesomely, an artist. I found out that, even more awesomely, one of her favorite subjects to paint was HERSELF. I thought what is this? A woman who grew up and did whatever the hell she wanted and put on whatever clothes she wanted and became a painter? And then PAINTED PICTURES OF HERSELF????? I was flabbergasted, and happy. I was all like Yay! There is a tiny little space for someone like me in the world after all!
Now, keep in mind, I was very little when I came to these romantic conclusions. I didn’t know about Frida’s struggles with her health and injuries, or the sadness of her romantic life. I didn’t know that women weren’t usually painters, or rather that women’s art was not going to be displayed anywhere in the museums I habitually came to haunt. I didn’t know that Frida has been dissed for painting her own image so often. I didn’t know that there was no space for me in this world, in fact, and that Frida barely had a space in this world— what space she attained was largely based on her place and time of birth, and to some extent her husband, who might have been a faithless bastard, but he knew good art when he saw it, and wasn’t threatened by it either.
But in spite of all of that, Frida Kahlo has stayed an important role model for me, as an artist certainly, as a person, as a self-realized woman, who was far from perfect, and who struggled, and who died far too young, but nonetheless. That eyebrow lady was and is one stone fox, and damnit, her very clothing has become a valuable archive of needlework and traditional indigenous dress, and that is something I’m sure she would be very happy about.
I know I am.
So, since the ladies get One Fucking Day, in honor of International Woman’s Day, viva Frida. She is a big part of who I am.
(Source: theyroaredvintage, via eyeandclaw)
