Stuff You Should Know - Frida Kahlo: Painter, Icon, Genius

Episode Date: June 7, 2018

Frida Kahlo was a painter who transcended her own work to became an icon. Learn all about her fascinating and inspiring life and work in today’s episode.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everyone, we're coming to Salt Lake City, Utah in Phoenix, Arizona this fall. Yeah, October 23rd, we're gonna be at Salt Lake City's Grand Theater, and then the next night, October 24th, we'll be in Phoenix,

and we added a second show to our Melbourne show, right? That's right, a second earlier show in Melbourne, so you can get all the information for all of these shows at sysklive.com. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,

and there's Jerry Rowland. This is gonna be an interesting one because I don't know how to say the ladies last night. Jerry's over there with her spider monkey on her shoulder. A dead hummingbird hanging from her necklace. Just like any other day. Yep. We're here in La Casa Azul.

Right, and she's gotten a hold of some eyebrow pencil and filled in between the two across the bridge of her nose. So I'm excited about this. A, because you said Frida Kahlo before. Frida Kahlo. We started recording. Frida Kahlo.

And B, because you know my family's fascination with this woman in her work. No. We've talked about it before, and that's okay though. We've done a thousand episodes. We have talked about it before? Yeah. Okay, well we'll get back into it.

Yeah, we're way into Frida. Emily is borderline obsessed. Is she a Frida maniac? She is. That's awesome. And my daughter loves her. You know there's like Frida, I hate to use the word, but kind of cults, devotional groups,

where they basically dress up and are like Frida. It's like Channel Frida, Kahlo. Yeah, because as one of these articles that we source from points out near the end, not only does she draw in people for her art, but she draws in feminists, and she draws in women who have suffered miscarriages and disabled people who have suffered great pain

and chronic pain in their life. Yeah. So she, through her life, she's able to touch a lot of people because of her life. And I'm sure with any artist where if you know, the more you know about the artist, the more you can appreciate their art. Sure.

With Frida Kahlo, it's almost like- You gotta quit saying that. Frida Kahlo? Kahlo. Kahlo. Yeah. My whole life I've been saying Frida Kahlo. I like it, it rolls off the tongue.

Yeah, but you know, let's give her the due respect. The, when did we start doing that? I don't know. Okay, so you almost, you just almost can't fully appreciate any piece of her work without knowing at least the basics of her story, I think. Well yeah, and certainly once you know the basics,

you're like, oh, that's where all this comes from. It really makes sense. But she is a great artist, for sure I was going back and looking at some of her art, you know, I'm familiar with her, I know a little bit about her. But I definitely saw some pieces that I didn't realize before.

And just from researching this, I very much came to appreciate her even more. Like, she's a great artist. Just the techniques she used, the imagery she used, the symbolism, I really dig it all. And it's like, you can appreciate it because it gives you a visceral reaction. But you, the average person can also get

what she's feeling or what she's saying without being like, this means this and that means that. You just kind of get it visually. It's something that you can get and appreciate pretty easily. Yeah, I mean, we've seen her work in museums all over the world. Basically every new city we go to,

we see, is there any free to color work there? Have you been to La Casa Azul? No, but that's gonna happen. Oh, I'm sure. I was gonna say bucket list, but it's just on the list. Right. I'm like, I don't wanna do it when I'm 80.

Right, with Jack Nicholson or something. No. Morgan Freeman. No, no, no, we're gonna go down there for sure. All right, so let's start chronologically, huh? Let's start at the beginning. That makes sense. So Frida Kahlo, she was born back in 1907,

although she used to, being a revolutionary, she used to say that she was born in 1910, which was the year of the Mexican Revolution. But she was born in a town a little- Which was very Frida. Yeah. It's very Frida Kahlo thing to do. Right.

She was born in a town called Coyoacan, which is outside of Mexico City. And she was born in that house, La Casa Azul, the Blue House. Yeah, maybe, maybe not. There's a lot of parts of her early life, like the year she was born, where other people say like, nah, she's actually born nearby,

but she says she was born there. So, like her birth records indicate a different place, but it's, we'll say she was born there. At the very least, it was her family's house, right? Oh yeah. It was in her life, for her whole life. So much so, she actually died in that house. Yeah, and it's a museum now.

Yes, it is. It's a national museum dedicated to Frida Kahlo. Pretty cool. We can visit. Right. So, she was born in 1907. They figured out. Apparently, you figured out.

And her father, was he German or Hungarian? Cause I saw both. Well, here's another little thing. Oh boy, this is gonna be a long one. He was German, he was born in Germany, but Frida always said that he was of Hungarian Jewish descent, but that just doesn't appear to be true. Like ancestry, genealogy records.

So, was he like German Protestant or something? German, Lutheran? Lutheran, I think. That's Protestant, I think. I think so, but I think it was Lutheran. I can't remember. Okay.

But his name, depending on, it was Carl Wilhelm, but when he traveled to Mexico in the late 1800s, he changed his name. He took the translation, the Spanish translation. It was original German name, which would have been Guillermo, apparently. It's a great name. So, it was Wilhelm, though.

Yeah. And then in 1894, he became a Mexican citizen and married her mother, Matilda Calderon, who was American Indian and Spanish. Yeah, and we should say Frida's full name was Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo E. Calderon. Great name. It is, really, there's a lot to it there.

Basically gives you everything you want, right? That's right. So, she was born, and when someone else I came to admire from researching her as her father, he seemed to have been a pretty cool cat. He was a really good dad. Her mom was a little bit religiously hysterical, I think, and very strict.

But her dad was a bit of a foil in that he raised Frida. He noticed something in Frida, it seems, that she was different from her sisters, which she screamed, I mean, just like she dressed in men's suits and things like that. She was definitely different than her sisters, but he saw in her something very much different

than her sisters, not just in her outward behavior. And so, he kind of plucked her out of the path that his sisters were on, which was go get married or go be educated in a convent, go get married, go be a wife, and said, you, you're going to go a different path. Let's get you in a different school here. Yeah, he was a photographer,

so her first experiences with art were accompanying him on photo shoots and being in the studio with him. And like you said, he sent her to the German College in Mexico City, where she was introduced to European things. And very sadly, she was sexually abused there and then ended up going to, and I think was one of the first,

one of only 35 girls, young girls, to go to the National Preparatory School in Mexico, because that was right around the time of the Mexican Revolution. He said, maybe we should start letting young women in here. Yeah, and then she wanted to be a doctor. Yeah, she excelled in biology and some others, and was on a path to become a doctor, actually,

but one of the other things that she discovered at the Preparatory Academy of Mexico City was a real zeal for the Mexican Revolutionary spirit. Yeah, I mean, not only did she learn about Europe, but she got really into learning about her indigenous roots. Yeah. That seems to be something that fascinated her throughout her life.

Yeah, for sure. Was her European and her Mexican roots and how they combined in her, and she explored them outwardly as well. She even had a painting called Roots. Oh yeah, kind of on the nose. And roots were growing out of her body, even. Yeah.

We kind of skipped over one very important thing in her life. Oh, okay. When she was six, she contracted polio, and long recovery, permanently damaged one of her legs. She had a very, one of her legs was, I think her right leg was smaller, just very skinny. Yeah, a little withered.

Yeah, and she had a permanent limp from that age, which was a big deal. It was just the beginning of a lifetime of pretty horrendous physical disabilities and pain. Yeah, she was alive on the planet for 47 years, and starting at age six, you say? That's when polio hit her. That's when it began.

At the latest, it started at six and continued all the way up to 47 when she died. Yeah. So, in this kind of revolutionary group that she joined, the Cachuchus, which means the caps or the hats, which apparently today is narcoslang for cops in Mexico. Yeah, Cachuchus.

Cachuchus. It's hard to say. Cachuchus? Yeah, because of the two H's. The ch. Yeah. It's like Jason's coming or something. She fell in love with kind of the leader of that group,

but really she found herself as a revolutionary, right? Yes. And not just a Mexican revolutionary. She also became a communist ideologist and was for life. That's one thing that a lot of people don't realize is Frida Kahlo, this pop culture icon, this patron saying of women and feminists, was also very much a fervent communist, actually.

She referred to her husband later, Diego Rivera, who you're about to mention, as nobody's husband. He was a lousy husband, but he was a great comrade. He was just a great quote. Yeah, so in 1923, that's when she fell in love with Alejandro Gomez, Arias, and they were together for about five years, and we'll get to kind of what happened

toward the end of that relationship in a sec. But in 1922, when she was just 15, she was at school, at the Preparatory School, and Diego Rivera, who was very famous artist and muralist at the time already, this giant man. Like Alfred Molina size. That's who played him. Even bigger, I think.

Yeah, he was huge. And just tall and rotund and just a big personality and everything. Like Edward Herman. Sure, yeah. He was painting a mural at her school called Creation, when she was just 15, and she would go out there and just basically kind of stare at him

and while he was doing his work, and sort of became infatuated with him and the art. I get the picture that it was all sort of intertwined. And years later, they would meet and marry and then remarry, which we'll get into the ins and outs of their relationship. But it was an interesting love story of sorts. Artists.

You know? Yeah. Should we take a break? Sure. We'll take a break. And we will talk about the tragic events that befell her at the age of 18. ["The Nineties Call David Lasher and Christine Taylor"]

On the podcast, Hey Dude, The Nineties Called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the nineties.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it and popping it back in, as we take you back to the nineties. Listen to Hey Dude, the nineties called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to

when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help.

This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody,

about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say, bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Okay, Chuck, so like you said, something really bad is about to happen to Frida. She's 18.

She's on a bus with a boyfriend, who is the leader of the Cachacas. Cachuchus. Yeah, and the bus was struck by a trolley, or vice versa. She was on a trolley struck by a bus. One of the two, in either way, it was a bad, bad scene for her. She was impaled by one of the handlebars. It went through her pelvis into her womb,

that's how I saw it put. Broker spine. She was in a bad way. And supposedly, her boyfriend walked away unharmed, which just makes it even worse, you know? Yeah, I mean, the way I got it was that everyone was shaking up pretty bad, but it was this sort of freak thing that this rail impaled her hip, that she got the worst of it.

Now, this would go on to be, in my opinion, the most significant event of her entire life. 100%. Because it changed everything. It changed the course of everything. Remember, up to this point, she was planning on becoming a doctor. And she was so laid up for so long and so immobilized that she basically said, well, there goes my chance

of being a doctor. I'm not going to be able to catch up. I'm not going to be able to move. Who knows if I'll be able to walk again? And it just shifted direction. Plus, that whole womb thing is going to come into play later on. And that will definitely influence her art for sure, too. Yeah, so she's bedridden for months.

I think she had something like 13 or 15 surgeries from that point on for the next 30 years. And it turns out that she was a great painter, which must have been something to be like, well, I'm in this hospital bed. That they're equipping me with this special easel that I can use in my full body cast lying down. They're going to put a mirror on the ceiling above me

so I can be my own model. And she was very much known for her self-portraits. And she starts painting and is amazingly talented. Yeah, and at first, she was saying, OK, well, I can't be a doctor. And apparently, I have this knack for painting. Maybe I'll be a medical illustrator. And once you hear that, when you see some of her work,

you're like, oh, yeah. She basically was a medical illustrator. Yeah, but in a exploring anatomy as a metaphor for emotion. Yes. From what I understand, right? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. This might be hyperbolic to say this, but I don't know of any artist that poured herself out

on the canvas as much as she did. Certainly not up to that point, especially female artists. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Up to this point when Frida Kahlo came along, like, women were, if you were emotional, you were hysterical, one. But you certainly weren't, if you were a woman artist, you certainly weren't expected to explore emotions and grief

and personhood and the self. And you certainly weren't expected to do it in your paintings. And she said, her works showed that that was not the case. It wasn't even like you shouldn't do this. It was women can't do this. She came along and said, actually, we can, because I'm living proof.

Yeah, and if you're a man, you're just a brooding artist. Right, you're a mailing college. Yeah, if you're a woman, you're hysterical. Or you're depressed. And she just, man, she laid it out there as raw as you could imagine, and especially for the time, it was just off the charts how radical it was. Right, so she's able to do this because her family set up

a special easel in a mirror for her to be her own model. Yes. Right? Yes. So this is a big thing. Like, this is starting to come along, and she passes the time while she's recuperating doing this. And she recovers enough that she goes back to school

and starts hanging out with her old friends again. And from that re-entry back into the revolutionary slash communist world in Mexico at the time, she ended up in the orbit of Diego Rivera again. Actually, they ran across each other at a party. Yeah, and this was it, man. From that point forward, they would be tied to one another through their work and through their multiple marriages

to one another. She was 22. He was 20 years older than her. And he very much encouraged her early on and championed her and was her mentor as an artist. Well, she went up to him at this party and said, I want you to look at my work and tell me, should I pursue this?

Am I an artist or is this just nothing? And he looked at her work and he said, you were an artist. This is astounding. Like, you have what it takes and you should keep pursuing being an artist. And as a matter of fact, let's get married. Yeah, I mean, he was attracted to her, but I haven't seen anything that led me

to believe that any of his support of her work was not genuine and because he wanted to get her in the sack. No, no, no. He wasn't that kind of guy. He would get anybody in the sack. He certainly didn't have to marry you and he certainly didn't have to tell you you were a great artist that was below him.

I saw a thing. They both had multiple affairs. We'll talk about that throughout their marriage. And maybe or maybe not so understanding of each other doing so, but I saw one point that he supposedly got his doctor to write a note that said that he was physically incapable of being faithful. Really?

That's so Diego. I don't know if that's true or not. So he had, I just want to get this quote in. He had a great quote about her as an artist. He said that she was a realist as far as her art's concern. She was quote, the first woman in the history of art to treat with absolute and uncompromising honesty, one might even say cruelty.

Those general and specific themes which exclusively affect women. Yeah. Like that's, these are pretty strong words from a renowned artist who, I mean, Diego Rivera was well-renowned by this time already. So when he looked at her art and had things like that to say about it, it really meant something.

She was, if she ever wasn't outside her artist, she wasn't anymore. She was a genuine artist. She'd been decreed as such by the cream of the crop. Yeah, and she, I think the article on her own website downplays a little bit her successes during her life. It's certainly nothing compared to what she got many, many years later, decades later after her death.

They weren't free to maniacs back then. But she also was not just completely unknown as an artist. I mean, she got some notoriety during her life. She got to know Picasso, she got to know, these were the circles she traveled in, partially because of Diego Rivera. But they started moving around, starting in the 1930s. They didn't stay in Mexico.

They lived in San Francisco for a little while, depending on where the work was, because he was a muralist. Right, so he had to go to the place where he was doing the work. Yeah, exactly, can't say. I'm going to send you a mural. Just tape it up.

Send me a wall. And he had her in tow, which I get the impression like, sometimes she was a willing accomplice, and other times she was very much homesick for Mexico. Yeah, she for sure missed Mexico. I know she did enjoy her time in New York, and I don't know if she loved Detroit. I don't know if anybody did.

They moved to Detroit while he worked for the Detroit Institute for the Arts. But very famously, in the 1930s, they lived in New York City when Diego Rivera was commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller, who, in the movie, the great movie by Julie Taymor, and Salma Hayek was played by Edward Norton. Oh, really? Yeah, have you not seen that movie?

No. Oh, man, it's good. Yeah, I'll bet. And once you hear the, especially with the backstory now with the Weinstein stuff coming out, I mean, this was her Salma Hayek's passion project for her life, and he put her through a living hell. It's horrifying.

I think it was, it might have been in the New York Times, had a great article about it, or that she wrote, I think. But I think what got me on that was Edward Norton was, he rewrote the script for free, because basically one of Harvey's big things was, like, I'm not going to give you any money for this. Like, you got to do it for almost nothing. Everyone's going to have to work for free.

So she got everyone to work for free, or scale, from Edward Norton to Julie Taymor, the great director. And he demanded a lesbian sex scene. Like, literally it was like, I'm not doing this unless you do that. And she was bisexual, so it wasn't like, he created this out of thin air. But he's like, I want to see this on screen.

She supposedly had affairs with George O'Keefe and Josephine Baker, and all these famous female performers and artists. But she did not do that. I think she had a kissing scene with Ashley Judd at a party. Who is Ashley Judd supposed to be? I can't remember. I haven't seen her in a minute.

Emily's mad that she's not here right now. I told her about this last night. She's like, why am I not on this? Like, we don't have guests. Nice. She's like, I'm a guest on movie crush. I was like, well, that's a different podcast altogether. Sorry, Emily.

Yeah, she will pick this apart, trust me. But anyway, she had a devil of a time getting that movie made, and it went on to great success. And I think still is the highest grossing art-based movie of all time. Yeah, that's what I saw. Yeah. So anyway, they were in New York City

because Nelson Rockefeller, played by Edward Norton, had commissioned Diego Rivera to paint a mural at Rockefeller Center called Man at the Crossroads. And in it, it was one of these big, almost looked like a Sergeant Pepper's cover. You know, people all over the place. I've seen it. And he snuck in Vladimir Lenin in the painting.

So I have a question about that. Did he sneak it in and was caught? Or was he like, and also, by the way, have included this great man Lenin? He snuck it in as a response, as a very pointed response to something. And I can't remember exactly what it was. But it wasn't originally in the plan.

And I don't know if it was in the original sketch. I might be getting this slightly wrong. But at any rate, he got Lenin in there. And Rockefeller was not happy. I mean, I think it was more of his family. Like, he stayed his friend. It wasn't like he was like, I hate you. You're a big poopy pants.

Go back to Mexico. But he stopped the work. That painting mural was removed and destroyed. But eventually. Was it destroyed? Yeah. Man. Pretty sad.

But eventually, Rivera recreated that. A little smaller in Mexico City and changed the title to Man Controller of the Universe. And then in parentheses, Up Yours, Rockefeller. Maybe so. But that just sort of puts a button on them moving kind of all around the United States for a while. And this is when she was being introduced to high society

and everyone from, like I said, Josephine Baker to Trotsky. And she was working at the time, too, right? It wasn't like she was just hanging out. Yeah, she was still painting. And one of the paintings she did was the suicide of Dorothy Hale. Yeah, that was interesting. So she was commissioned by Claire Loose Booth,

Little Deuce Koop. She was from the publishing family of Time. I think she published Vanity Fair or something like that. She was a great publishing magnate. And this was back in the 30s. And she was friends with Dorothy Hale, who was an actress, a well-known actress, who had hit on hard times financially and was having to live on the generosity of her friends.

And she climbed up to the highest point of the high rise that she lived off of and jumped to her death. And it devastated Claire Booth Loose. And I hope I get that right at least somewhere. And who was her friend. And she commissioned Frida Kahlo to do a painting, which she thought this would be a portrait to commemorate my friend Dorothy.

That's not at all what Frida Kahlo did. Yeah, I don't know if she realized who she was commissioning fully. She's like, have you seen her work? Right. So what Frida Kahlo did was she took this assignment and commemorated not Dorothy Hale necessarily, but Dorothy Hale's death by suicide.

It's almost like a step-by-step diagram. It shows her at the top of the building in midair. And then in the foreground, largest of all, is her broken, bloody body on the ground. But it has this very somber text caption, basically, across the bottom in a scroll that explains what this is and how sad this is. And that it was the suicide of Dorothy Hale.

And so apparently when Claire Booth Loose got this, she unwrapped it and was like, what is this? I almost gagged. She's horrified. And she was going to destroy it. And friends talked her out of it. So it's still in existence today from what I understand. I think the Booth or Loose family has the painting

in their possession now. Yeah, and that's just emblematic of Frida's outlook, which was like, she was no BS. She's like, I'm going to show you what's real. So let me ask you this. You're the Frida expert here between the two of us. OK, maybe. Was she doing that like, I'm all in your face, Claire.

This is the reality of your friend's suicide. Or was it she, this was her expression of emotion that she thought Claire, I'm not saying her last two names, would kind of vibe on. And this would be the greatest commemoration of her friend. Which one? Well, I don't think it was all in your face. I think she thought that was the honesty.

I think she thought that was the most honest work. But I'm not sure whether or not she considered like, wait a minute, is she going to hate this? OK, so she wasn't like, it doesn't matter. She hates it. This is the most honest work. So even if this psychologically destroys her, Claire needs to toughen up.

I'm very curious. That's a good question. I understand a lot of the symbolism in her paintings now, but I don't necessarily. I haven't hit upon her motivation or personality quite yet. Emily's going to be so mad because she read her 800 page biography. And she's probably like, oh, we'll read page 600

and 30 jerks. And that'll explain it all. Sorry again, Emily. That's right. You want to take a break? Yeah, let's do it. OK. OK.

OK. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips?

Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling

of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when

questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael.

And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen.

So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. OK, thanks. All right, Chuck. So one other thing, very big thing happened to her in Detroit, actually. And she has a painting that commemorates it

called Henry Ford Hospital. She had her second miscarriage. Yeah. Because her miscarriages, I believe she just had the two. I think so. That's all. Right? Right.

She, those would affect and influence her work for the rest of her life. They deeply impacted her. And not just emotionally impacted her, but they were themed she explores, you know, like can you still be a mother to other things even if you don't bear your own children? When you, you know, like, how does it affect your femininity? It's a theme that really affected her and she explored. And it really is just right there in broad, bold colors in Henry Ford Hospital. Yeah.

I mean, she very famously had, was a mother to many animals. She had spider monkeys. She had dogs, cats, birds, she had a pet deer, all at her, at her house. We have a great children's book called, that I recommend called Frida Kahla and Her Animalitos. That's really, really fun for kids, but, and adults actually. But yeah, she really wanted to be a mother and it was devastating to her that she couldn't be. Right.

And like you said, like with all her work, so raw and laid bare. And I assume most people have seen her work, like we'll talk about some of it a little bit. It wouldn't hurt to kind of brush up on these if you have a couple tabs handy while we're talking. We have lots of blood, lots of exposed organs. Blood vessels connecting her to things? Yeah.

It's just, it's like you said, you don't have to work hard to understand what she's getting at when there's a painting of her with her like body cavity split open. Right. And like a baby bunny where her womb is. Right. Actually, I think I just made that part up. That's a great idea. I like that imagery.

It wouldn't surprise me if that was one of her paintings. Sure. But there was a lot of pain, physical pain depicted in her paintings and this is another huge theme or motif or whatever you want to call it to where the physical pain depicted and again, remember she's painting herself almost exclusively here. Her emotional pain is depicted as physical pain, so like nails all over her body or she has a huge tear going vertically up the middle of her body and her spine is a dork column that's crumbling.

Yeah. Just physical imagery that it did depict her physical pain too. She was always in a lot of pain throughout her life physically, but she also suffered a lot of emotional and psychic pain as well and all of it was combined as physical pain and evisceration and being laid open in her paintings. Yeah. And eventually she would meet Andre Beton. Is it Beton or Breton?

Breton? What did I say? Is it another surrealism? Yeah. And he is the one, she actually, in a funny way kind of said, she never considered herself a surrealist until Andre Beton came to Mexico and told me I was one. Yeah. Really, I do not know whether my paintings are surrealist or not, but I do know that

they are the frankest expression of myself. Yeah. But she's, if you want to classify her art-wise, surrealism or magic surrealism is definitely categories that a lot of her work fits under. So I saw a, I mean we used a lot of sites for this, I can't remember which one it came from, but I saw a description of her work as, that she was an individualist, which means like she was her own thing, she may have had influences and she definitely had Mexican indigenous art influence, that was a huge thing that really drives like the visual impact

of her paintings. But as far as like schools of art go or movements, she tapped into primitivism, indigenism, magic realism, surrealism, and again, all of it combined to make her an individualist artist. Well yeah, you mentioned her indigenous roots and she very much, and I think Diego Rivera is one who really encouraged her to embrace that and she started, she kind of, I mean she wore suits and stuff sometimes since she was a kid, but she wore more European style of clothing when she was younger and then really started wearing more Mexican, yeah,

really colorful stuff and most famously captured in, maybe her most famous painting, the two Fritas in 1939, it's the double self-portrait that on one side shows her in the more modern European clothing and then on the other side, it's her in her more indigenous Mexican clothing and both of them have their hearts exposed, I think on the European side, the arteries are severed and things, on the Mexican side, it's intact, the heart is intact, really, really pretty. It is very pretty, a lot of her work was pretty, some of it, sometimes it's like, it looks very primitive and then other times, in some details, like the eyes of a cat or something

like that, you're like, wow, that's really, that's very like, almost photo realistic. So it's very weird to me how her, I don't want to say her talent, but her, yeah, her visual talents kind of were applied in some places and not as much in others and I'm wondering what the details were that made her make those decisions. Yeah, she included her pets in a lot of her paintings, I think 55 of her paintings featured her pets, some very famous ones with her spider monkeys and birds on her shoulder. My favorite one is called What the Water Gave Me, it's a, oh I guess it's a self-portrait in a way of her, in a bathtub from her vantage point, so you just see her feet and toes sticking

out at the end of the tub and then the water is just full of all kinds of other stuff, like it's really nice, like there's a volcano with the Empire State Building coming out of the center of it with like gangrenous lava flowing over the sides, because she would get gangrene later in life, just another physical malady and had one of her legs amputated below the knee, there was a dead bird, a one legged bird being pierced by a tree, there's a nude woman floating next to her dress, looks like her parents on their wedding day and it's all like in the bathtub water with her feet and toes sticking out, one toe of course is mangled and cracked and bloody, there was so much gruesome, so many gruesome aspects

to so much of her work, but it kind of punches you in the gut. Very much, like to see these things in person is like, especially if you're a fan of her work, to actually stand in front of one of them and put your nose six inches from it is really pretty astounding. Do not sneeze. Do not sneeze on the art, they have signs everywhere. This article, our House of Works article points out The Wounded Deer and My Birth, both in the same paragraph here, those are two of my favorites actually, My Birth is so just

twisted but it's also really simple and straightforward, you assume it's her mother, the sheets actually placed over her mother's head so you never see her face and you also kind of get the impression that it could be Frida as well, but it's Frida's head, grown up Frida, coming out of the birth canal, the womb as it were, I feel like such like a 19th century white guy calling it a womb, but yeah, it is graphic but it's also, it looks, it kind of, I don't know, I don't want to armchair critique it or anything like that, I just like that one and then The Wounded Deer I think is awesome too. Yeah, we should probably apologize to every art historian and critic, like when it comes

to art, I love, and I know you do too, love going to museums and you're probably where I am, which is, I just like what I like, like, you know, if it looks nice to me, and nice doesn't mean, oh that's pretty, but you know, if it touches me in some way, then I'm like, I like that. Sure, that's what art is supposed to do. I enjoy reading the placards and then understanding a bit more behind it, but I'm definitely not some art historian or critic. Although I do appreciate being, having art explained to me by art historians, by people

who know like Sister Wendy, that whole series from the 80s or 90s, oh man, I've told you about it before, she's this nun who understands art better than anybody in the world and she had like a little PBS series for a while where she could just explain art and you just wanted to watch the next episode so bad, but I think the level that you and I are at that you are characterizing is, it was best captured on a Simpsons, where there was a museum audio tour that was narrated by Melanie Griffith and when they put it on and press play, she's like, oh let's see what's in this room, oh this one's nice, I like this one, oh look at that one, what's in the next room, that's the level we're at of understanding and appreciating

art. Melanie Griffith level. We briefly mentioned Leon Trotsky earlier, the exiled communist and rivaled the Stalin, they were friends and they hosted him, she and Diego Rivera at the Blue House and supposedly had a brief affair, although other people have questioned whether or not she really did because of, I think last year a lot of her love letters to Diego were published. Oh yeah? Yeah, and it's really interesting, their relationship, they divorced in 1939, remarried

the next year in 1940, lived in separate houses, they both had their infidelities, but a really interesting complex relationship, mentor, student, lovers, friends, rivals as well in some cases, but it's hard to, obviously as an outsider encapsulate it on a podcast, but a very complex relationship full of respect and admiration on some levels, but also he was also that sort of of the time in Mexico and America, just that male macho thing going on, I mean for goodness sakes, he tried to have his doctor write a note that said he was physically incapable of being faithful. So let's just say male dominant complex marriage and relationship.

Well I also saw she could kind of put up with his affairs and she definitely had her own, but supposedly his affair with her younger sister really crushed her. That was, I think, led directly to their divorce. I could see that. Yeah, that was uncool, Diego. Even with a doctor's note, Diego. Yeah, and he died just a few years after her, I believe, right? I don't know when he died actually.

Yeah, I think he died three years after her by the 1950s. Her health was really declining. She kept having these surgeries, kept the painting, in 1953 she had a solo exhibition and I love this. Man, she couldn't get around and this is so great in the movie. They, she wasn't going to go at all and then they brought her in by ambulance, brought in a four-poster bed and that's where she was in the gallery, she was laying in bed like greeting people.

Yeah. And she received everyone while she was in bed, bedridden. Pretty amazing. And she died a couple of weeks later, I think. Actually, I think the last time she was seen in public, she showed up for a protest against the US Baku that overthrew our bends in Guatemala. Yeah, Edward Bernays coming back in into the picture. Every time.

And she died again at age 47, man, after a life of pain, but a very productive life of pain too. Yeah. She changed things quite a bit. Yeah, and with her death, she, it's listed as pulmonary embolism, but they never did an autopsy in there. It's generally believed that she committed suicide. Oh, by how?

Pills. Her personal nurse said that she took 12, I think, painkillers when she knew that her max was seven and earlier that evening she had given Diego an anniversary present a month early, which it all kind of adds up in the chronic pain and just, you know, this was after polio, after gangrene, after amputation, after pneumonia. After the bus accident. After the bus accident. So, yeah, she may have just ended it, understandably.

So her, when she died, like you said, she was, you know, fairly well known in certain circles in the art world, but when she died, her work kind of entered into obscurity for a few decades. It was dormant. And then, yeah, it's a well put. And then in the late seventies, it was rediscovered by, I guess, nationalists you could call them, art nationalists in Mexico, and she has been basically a pop icon ever since. Once her story was really established and built and her work came back out, she's just

never really left the art scene since. Yeah. It's just pretty cool. Very cool. If she is in a museum near you, go check it out. Do you want to talk about her famous eyebrow? Because I think this article did a really good job of addressing it. Yeah.

So she painted herself, she very famously had what you would call a unibrow, right? Yes. And she would paint it a lot. But the article on House of Works quotes a book by Desmond Morris called The Naked Woman, A Study of the Female Body. And he basically says, Desmond Morris says that women will pluck their unibrow into nothingness, like religiously, and that it takes a woman who is above fashion to flaunt her unibrow, and that that term above fashion perfectly encapsulates Frida Kahlo, which I thought

was a pretty cool thing because Desmond Morris wasn't talking about Frida Kahlo. This article went out of its way to go find that and bring it in, and I think it analyzes her appreciation of herself inside and out pretty well. Yeah. I mean, if that was one thing that she did on her canvas was say, this is me in every single way, inside and out, and her legacy in the art world, especially among women and female artists is like the one article we read said you just can't overstate the importance. Right.

Nice. Good stuff. You got anything else? No. I apologize for all the mistakes. Yeah, sorry. Let's do Andy Warhol one next. I tried to do right by this one.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to call this specifically. Right. Sorry, Emily. Yeah. If you want, if you're not Emily and you want to know more about Frida Kahlo, you can search

her on our website. There's actually a pretty decent little article, and then there's tons of stuff. Go look at our art all over the web and in person, and since I said that, it's time for Listener Man. I'm going to call this mistakes in defense of us. Okay. Hey guys, I'm sure you get annoyed at the influx of emails you get every time you make a mistake on your podcast.

At least that's what I gleamed from a few recent episodes where you anticipate people writing and correcting you in effect. Right. How ironic. Yeah. I'm writing to counterbalance that. You guys do a fantastic job. Oh.

I'm amazed that you were able to cover topics in such detail with such high turnover rate with how quickly you produce episodes. I would expect so many more mistakes or sloppy work, but not, not with you. Man. Excuse me. No, not with you. I'm kind of like not, not. Yeah, I do too.

I'm starting my own podcast and it's made me deeply appreciative of how talented and gifted you guys are as hosts. One day I hope I'll be as smooth and easy going as you are. As always, please keep going with your work. You're my favorite podcast. Also want to give a shout out, especially to your Trail of Tears episodes. I recently went into the archives and listened to those two. You told that story beautifully.

I think you really did it justice and I would recommend that anyone who hasn't listened, go back and listen. Anyway, seriously, thank you for adding something fun to my life. And that great name is from Shalina Bethala or maybe Bethala, depending on how you pronounce it. Okay. And she is the host and I asked her, well, you're a bad plugger of your own work. Cause I don't even know what your podcast is going to be about, but it's coming soon

and it's called Worth It. Yeah. Good title. Yeah. Everyone, that is how you get your podcast plugged on stuff you should know. That's right. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Breaking news.

Oh yeah. Bethala came back to life. No, I just got an email reply from Shalina and she said, my podcast is about helping people create a life that they're happy with. Nice. I think a lot of people feel lost, don't feel connected to themselves or feel scared to do what they actually want to do, like pursue a creative career or do something that makes far less money.

So I talked to people who have been there or who are still there about their journey and what they have done to create happiness in their life. It's going to be good. Yeah. Good job. That sounds great. Yeah. Okay.

Best of luck with Worth It. Coming soon to a podcast distributor near you. Wherever you find your podcast. And if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. I'm at Josh M. Clark on Twitter and Chuck's at Movie Crush on Twitter. You can also hang out with us on Facebook at facebook.com slash stuff you should know or facebook.com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can send us all an email, the Stuff Podcast at howstuffworks.com.

And as always, join us at our home on the web, StuffYouShouldKnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to HeyDude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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