Devouring Frida. Margaret A. Lindauer

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СКАЧАТЬ Rivera’s persuasion. Trotsky and Sedova lived in Kahlo’s family home in Coyoacán for two years until the friendship and political alliance between Trotsky and Rivera broke down. (Kahlo and Rivera lived in their San Angel home at the time.) During these two years before the rift, and particularly in the months immediately after January 1937, the two couples socialized frequently, often among other artists and political activists. During social gatherings, the politics of revolution and art were debated, though historical accounts include only the male voices, implying, by omission, that Sedova and Kahlo either did not have political opinions or did not engage in political discussions. The women reportedly did not converse with each other because Sedova did not speak Spanish. Sedova and Trotsky separated for a number of weeks in July 1937, by which time, Jean Van Heijenhoort reports, the brief affair between Kahlo and Trotsky had ended.⁷⁰ Trotsky asked Kahlo to destroy his letters, and they shared a concern that Rivera not learn of the affair. Kahlo’s biographers consequently suggest that the inscription on Self-Portrait (Dedicated to Leon Trotsky), which begins, “Para Leon Trotsky, con todo cariño, dedico ésta pintura” (For Leon Trotsky with love, I dedicate this painting), indicates Kahlo’s unabated affection suppressed by her own pragmatic discretion and fear of Rivera’s temper, which led her to destroy all other evidence of the affair. Thus the painting constitutes the only tangible testimony of the briefly amorous relationship.

      Noting that the painting was produced and given to Trotsky after the affair had ended, Herrera submits that Kahlo intended the self-portrait to “tease her ex-lover,” suggesting that in the painting the artist “is dressed ‘fit to kill’ ” with painted lips, cheeks, and fingernails, and a flower and ribbon in her hair, and jewelry pinned to her bodice.⁷¹ Her description of Kahlo’s demure, turn-of-the century, western clothing as dressing “fit to kill” clearly is based on the knowledge that Kahlo and Trotsky had an affair rather than on the visual appearance of Kahlo in the self-portrait. Yet other writers share Herrera’s interpretation, suggesting that Kahlo surreptitiously portrayed herself with the intent of captivating Trotsky’s libidinous interest. In a notable exception, Richmond describes Kahlo’s clothing as conservative but maintains that Kahlo consciously selected it because it would appear provocative to Trotsky. Richmond contends that Kahlo “is acting out a masquerade” in which she plays a “docile golden beauty” who is “settled and calm, the perfect dignified companion to a Great Man.”⁷² Richmond proceeds to suggest that because Kahlo portrayed herself with a “brazen carnality,” this self-portrait “is actually quite terrifying” because it demonstrates both Kahlo’s calculating ability to adopt a persona and the intrepidness with which she is “announcing that she is in control.”⁷³ Thus, basing their opinions on Kahlo’s appearance and the dedicatory note she holds, Herrera and Richmond imply that the painting is significant in relationship to Kahlo’s private life, illustrating the theatricality with which Kahlo calculatingly adopted the very persona that would ensnare Trotsky.

      Writers focusing on Kahlo’s infatuation offer contrasting accounts of her relationship. On one hand, Kahlo is described as an adoring apprentice Trotskyite, naive to the nuances of Trotskyism, but infatuated with the famous revolutionary. Richmond “suspect[s] that … she experienced a serious bout of hero worship.”⁷⁴ In this case, Kahlo holds a stereotypically feminine, secondary role in relation to Trotsky. On the other hand, she is cast as dangerously manipulative and coy. Herrera claims that the painting is among Kahlo’s “most seductive self-portraits.”⁷⁵ In essence, interpretations of the painting, and of the affair, construct contradictory character portraits of Kahlo; yet both fit squarely with gender stereotypes. In one instance, she submits to a subordinate relationship to the male revolutionary “authority.” In the other, as seductive mistress, she represents the dangerously coy and manipulative fallen-woman/whore persona. Interestingly, in both narratives Trotsky’s mythic status is nearly unshaken; his character largely maintained as the “great man,” the revolutionary hero.

      Just as Trotsky’s sexuality has been exempt in discussions of the painting, there has been no consideration of Kahlo’s possible political sentiment. The dedicatory note begins, “For Leon Trotsky with love I dedicate this painting” and continues with a date, “the 7th of November, 1937.” The date marks the twentieth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, the essence of Trotsky’s public identity and a direct reference to his political stature. Yet because the painting exemplifies the prescribed style and subject matter of diminutive feminine art, the dedicatory note “with love” has obscured political intimations, thereby leading writers to discuss the artist’s sexual rather than political affairs. Considered in a public, political realm and in relation to the date November 7, her clothing holds political rather than sexual significance. Trotskyism generally defined itself as an international movement promoting the tenets of the Bolshevik Revolution through continuous revolution empowering the working class. Kahlo’s clothing is clearly not of a worker but of a member of the turn-of-the-century bourgeoisie, who prospered from exploitation of the working class. Thus it creates a disjuncture between herself and Trotskyism. Helland argues that Kahlo “disapproved of Trotsky’s internationalism” and only because Rivera admired him did she “befriend the exile” and invite him to stay in her childhood home.⁷⁶ Thus her clothing, which was indeed a theatrical masquerade, as Richmond suggests, may be considered as politically rather than sexually significant. If the painting represents Trotskyist dedication—not by Kahlo herself, but by a fictional character constructed through Kahlo’s masquerade, who indeed attracts Trotsky politically rather than, or in addition to, sexually—it can be considered to instill critical commentary on the international movement. Accordingly, the painting mocks the fact that many supporters who “dedicated” themselves to Trotsky and Trotskyism were among the privileged bourgeois economic and social classes. Trotsky’s exile in Mexico was a bourgeois project, a political cause taken up by the “Mexican bourgeois intellectual” class, of which, Mulvey and Wollen remark, Kahlo was a member.⁷⁷ The Dewey Commission, which presided over the proceedings resulting from Stalin’s charges against Trotsky, was itself an upper-middle-class, North American contingent of intellectuals. In a sense they, too, dedicated themselves to Trotsky, first by agreeing to oversee a significant international judicial proceeding and then by adjudicating in Trotsky’s favor. Yet, interpretations of Kahlo’s painting consider the politics of class, culture, and ideology to be irrelevant. Instead, she is categorically marginalized as a woman painter depicting impassioned expression.

      The ambiguous setting depicted in Kahlo’s painting metaphorically represents the lack of distinction between women’s public and private social status. Kahlo is portrayed standing between drawn curtains that may be interpreted as a grand, private entrance into a domestic environment and/or a public stage which a broad audience may view. As with the juxtaposition in Henry Ford Hospital, Self-Portrait (Dedicated to Leon Trotsky) implodes the public and private. And interpretations of the painting that consider Kahlo’s association with Trotsky as purely sexual reinforce public discourses obsessed with monitoring women’s private lives and gender transgressions as a means to maintain a stable society. It is not surprising that Kahlo’s association with Trotsky has been cast as purely sexual while historical events beyond the artist’s private life have been given little attention, for a discussion of political content would be an acknowledgment that Kahlo crossed a gendered boundary by entering a masculine, political realm in addition to exhibiting aggressive sexual behavior and presuming to produce marketable works of art. Thus in addition to characterizing the nature of Kahlo’s personal feelings toward Trotsky, some interpretations of the painting exemplify how women are confined to feminine prescription, locked out of male-dominated critical, political discourse. The drawn curtains, in relation to interpretations of the painting, signify women’s sustained containment on an apolitical stage that serves to legitimate mythic masculine authority and virility. The painting’s original title was “Between the Curtains,” which, as Mulvey and Wollen assert, “gives the impression of consciously highlighting the interface of women’s art and domestic space, as though in her life (and in her dress) she was drawing attention to the impossibility of separating the two.”⁷⁸ Acceding to Kahlo’s artistic success and political activism counters mythic gender dichotomy and therefore largely has been discussed separately from paintings upon which social prescription СКАЧАТЬ