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

Episode Date: September 17, 2022

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 this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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, 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 podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi folks, it's Chuck here and it's Saturday and that means it's time for a select episode that we curate by hand and brain and mouth. This one is about one of my favorite painters of all time, one of my family's favorite painters. My wife Emily loves Frida Kahlo. My daughter loves Frida

Kahlo. We have two giant hand-painted reproductions on canvas of two of our favorite Frida Kahlo's hanging in our sunroom. And one day we are finally, finally going to go down to Casa Azul and see where Frida lived and worked because that is on the bucket list and it's going to happen. So check out this podcast episode about this iconic genius artist of a woman, Frida Kahlo colon painter icon genius. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry Rowland. This is going to be an interesting one because I don't know how to say the ladies

last name. 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. 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 and disabled people who've 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 artists 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. 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 right that's where all this comes from. It really makes sense. Yeah. 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 the technique 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 we've seen her work in museums all over the world basically every new city we go to we we see is there any Frida Kahlo work there? Have you been to La Casa Azul? No but that'll that's 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 want to 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 let's start chronologically huh 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 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 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 I got you. It's uh we'll say she was born there. At the very least it was her family's house right. Oh yeah. And she it was 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. Right. So she was born in 1907 they figured out apparently you figured out and her father was he German or Hungarian because I saw both. Well here's another little thing. Oh boy this is going to 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 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 and 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 Calderón who was American Indian and Spanish. Yeah and we should say Frida's full name is Magdalena Carmen Frida

Kahlo y Calderón. 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 as religiously hysterical I think and very strict. Yeah 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 you know 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 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 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 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 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 yeah better. That's when it began at the at the at the latest it started at six and continued all the way up to 47 when she died. Yeah. So at the in this kind of revolutionary group that she joined the ca chuchas which means the caps or the hats which apparently today is narco slang for cops

in Mexico yeah ca chuchas. It's hard to say. Ca chuchas. Yeah because of the two h's the ch ch. Yeah. It's like Jason's coming or something. She she fell in love with kind of the leader of that group but really like 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 free to free to call oh this pop culture icon this patron saying of 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. This is 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 and 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 you know 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 you know years later they would meet and marry and then remarry which will get into the ins and outs of their relationship but it was it was an interesting love story of sorts. Artists. You know. Yeah. Should we take a break? Sure. All right let's take a break and we will talk about the tragic events that befell her at the age of 18. 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. Hey that's me. Yeah we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are 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 podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest I don't believe in astrology but from the moment I was born it's been a part of my life. In India it's like smoking. You might not smoke but you're going to get second hand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it.

So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your 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 Kachachas.

Kachuchas. 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 and 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 as how I saw it put. Yeah. 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 you know 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 percent. Because it would, it changed everything. It changed the

course of everything. Yep. Remember up to this point she's 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 like 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. Yeah. They're going to put a mirror on the ceiling above me so I can be my own model. Right. 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 okay 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 I mean this might be hyperbolic to say this but I don't know of any artists that poured herself out

on the canvas as much as she did. Certainly not up to that point. Yeah. 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're 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 and 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. Your mailing call. Yeah if you're a woman you're hysterical. Right. Or you're depressed.

And she just man she laid it out there. Yeah. As raw as you could imagine and especially for the time it was just off the charts how radical it was. Right. So and 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 reentry back into the revolutionary slash communist world in Mexico at the time. Yeah. 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

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 he very much encouraged her early on. Yeah. And championed her and was her mentor as an artist. 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 are an artist. Yeah. 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. Right. And because

he wanted to like 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 you know 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 arts 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 those 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 um I think the article on our 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

right um they weren't free to maniacs back then but she wasn't she also was not just completely unknown right as an artist I mean she got some notoriety during her life she got to know Picasso she got to know I mean these were the circles she traveled in partially because of Diego Rivera but um they started moving around you know 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 yeah exactly can't say I'm going to send you a mural just tape 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 miss miss Mexico I know she did enjoy her time in like New York and I don't know 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 passion 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

New York or New York Times had a great article about it but um or that she wrote I think but um I think what got me on that was Edward Norton was uh he he rewrote the script for like for free because basically one of Harvey's big things was like I'm not gonna give you any money for this like you got to do it for almost nothing everyone's gonna have to work for free so she got everyone to work for free or you know scale right uh from Edward Norton to Julie Taymor the great director and um he he demanded a lesbian sex scene like literally was like I'm not doing this unless you do that and uh 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 yeah um she supposedly had affairs with George O'Keeffe and Josephine

Baker and all these famous female performers and artists but uh she did not do that I think she 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 it in a minute okay 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 all together sorry Emily yeah um she will pick this apart trust me but anyway she had a devil of time getting that movie made uh 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 yeah so anyway they were in New

York City because Nelson Rockefeller is played by Edward Norton had commissioned Diego Rivera to paint a mural at Rockefeller Center called Man at the Crossroads and um in it it was one of these big um almost looked like a Sergeant Pepper's cover you know how people all over the place I've seen it and um 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 I've included this great man Lenin he snuck it in um as a response uh as a very pointed response to something and I can't remember exactly what it was okay 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 um Rockefeller was not happy I mean I think it was more of his family like he he stayed his friend wasn't like he was like I hate you you're big poopy pants go back to Mexico right uh but he stopped the work that painting was uh mural was removed and destroyed but eventually was it destroyed yeah man pretty sad but eventually um Rivera recreated that okay 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 uh high society and and uh everyone from like I said Josephine Baker to to Trotsky and she was she was working at the time

too right it's what it wasn't like she was just hanging out yeah she was still painting and one of the paintings she um did was um the suicide of Dorothy Hale yeah that was interesting so she was commissioned by Claire loose booth little deuce coop she was the um she was from the publishing family of time I think she published vanity fair or something like that she's a great publishing magnate um and this was back in the 30s and she was friends with Dorothy Hale who was a an actress a well-known actress who had uh hit on hard times financially and was having to live on the um generosity of her friends and she climbed up to the highest point of the high rise that she lived off of in jump to her death and it devastated Claire uh booth loose and I hope I get that right

at least somewhere and who was her friend and she commissioned uh Frida Kahlo to um to do a painting which she thought this would be a portrait to commemorate my friend Dorothy yeah that's not at all what Frida Kahlo did yeah I don't know if she realized who she was commissioning fully yeah like have you seen her work right so what Frida Kahlo did was she took this assignment and and commemorated not Dorothy Hale necessarily but Dorothy Hale's death by suicide yeah it's it's almost like a step-by-step diagram it shows her at the top of the building in mid-air and then in the foreground largest of all is her broken bloody body on the ground but it has this very somber um text caption basically across the bottom in a scroll that explains what this is

and it's how sad this is yeah um and that it was the the suicide of Dorothy Hale and so um apparently when Claire uh booth loose got got this she unwrapped it and was like what is this yeah it was 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 has the uh the painting in their possession now yeah and that's uh just emblematic of Frida's outlook which was like she was no BS she's like I'm gonna show you what's real so let me ask you this you're the Frida expert here well no no no between the two of us okay maybe was she doing that like like I'm all in your face Claire this is the reality of your friend's suicide

or was it she this is this was her expression of emotion that she thought Claire I'm not saying her last two names would would would kind of vibe on and like 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 I'm not sure whether or not she considered like wait a minute is she gonna hate this okay so she wasn't like it doesn't matter she hates it this is the this is the most honest work so even if this psychologically destroys her Claire needs to toughen up I don't know I'm very curious that's a good question I don't 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 gonna be so mad because she read her 800 page biography and she's probably like oh well read page 630 right jerks and that'll explain it all yeah sorry again Emily that's right um you want to take a break yeah let's do okay hey I'm Lance Bass host of the new iHeart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass the hardest thing could 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 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 podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest I don't believe in astrology but from the moment I was

born it's been a part of my life in India it's like smoking you might not smoke but you're going to get secondhand astrology and lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it so I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you it got weird fast tantric curses major league baseball teams canceled marriages k-pop but just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology my whole world can crash down situation doesn't look good there is risk to father and my whole view on astrology it changed whether you're a skeptic or a believer I think your ideas are going to

change too listen to skyline drive and the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts 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 and this her miscarriage is I believe she just had the two I think so but 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 can you um you know like like how does it affect your femininity that's a 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 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 this really really fun for kids but um 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 um 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

yeah but lots of blood lots of um exposed organs blood vessels connecting her to things yeah it's just um 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 that's a great idea I like that imagery it wouldn't surprise me if that was one of her paintings sure you know um 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 um to where her the physical pain depicted and again remember she's painting herself almost exclusively here um her her emotional pain is depicted as physical pain so like nails

all over her body or she has a huge tear going uh vertically up the middle of her body and her spine is a dork column that's crumbling yeah just 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 uh eventually she would meet andre uh beton is it is it beton or breton breton i think the father the father of surrealism yeah and he is the one uh she actually um in a funny way kind of said she never considered her self a surrealist until andre breton came to mexico and told me i was one uh 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 um but she's if you want to classify her art wise surrealism or magic surrealism is uh definitely categories that her a lot of her work fits under so i saw a um i mean we 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 um 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 yeah that was a huge thing that really drives like the visual um impact of her paintings but as far as like schools of art go or movements she was she tapped into primitivism indigenism magic realism surrealism

and um again all of it combined to make her an individualist artist well yeah you mentioned the um her indigenous roots and and she very much at and i think Diego Rivera is one who really encouraged her to embrace that and she started uh she kind of i mean she wore suits and stuff sometimes and she was a kid but she wore more european style clothing when she was younger and then really started wearing uh more mexican indigenous stuff yeah really colorful stuff and uh most famously captured in maybe her most famous painting the two fritas in uh 1939 it's the double self portrait that uh on one side it shows her in the more modern european clothing um and then on the other side it's her in her more indigenous mexican clothing right 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 uh the heart is intact uh 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 they're 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 photorealistic yeah so it's very weird to me how her um i don't want to say her talent but her yeah her visual talents kind of were applied in some places and not not as much in others and i'm wondering what the details were that 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

um some very famous ones with her her spider monkeys and birds on her shoulder my favorite one is called what the water gave me um it's a 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 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 uh i don't think i've seen that one 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 wow because she would get gangrene later in life just another physical malady and had one of her legs amputated below the knee yeah uh 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 it's all like in the bathtub water um with her feet and toes sticking out one toe of course is is mangled and and cracked and bloody um there was so much gruesome so many gruesome aspects to so much of her work right but um it kind of punches you in the gut very much like it's to see these things in 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 uh is uh it's really pretty pretty astounding do not sneeze do not sneeze on the art they have signs everywhere this uh this article our house the forks article points out the wounded deer yeah that's a good

one and my birth both in the same paragraph here those are two of my favorites actually my birth is so just just twisted but it's also really simple and straightforward it's her mother but 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 um but it's frida's head um grown up frida like coming out of the birth canal the womb as it were yeah very like such like a 19th century like white guy calling it a womb you know yeah but um 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 um and then uh the wounded deer I think is awesome too yeah we

should probably apologize to every art historian and 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 right and nice doesn't mean oh that's pretty but you know if it touches me in some way then like I like that sure and I don't uh I enjoy it's supposed to do I enjoy reading the placards and then understanding a bit more behind it yeah but I'm definitely not some art historian or critic although I do appreciate being having art explained to me by our historians and by people who know like sister Wendy that whole series from the 80s or 90s I don't know that oh man I've told you about before she's this nun who understands

art better than anybody in the world so 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 yeah but I think the level that you and I are at that you were characterizing is um 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 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 oh that's the level we're at of understanding and appreciating art Melanie Griffith level uh we briefly mentioned Leon Trotsky earlier the exiled communist and rivaled the Stalin um they were friends and and they hosted him uh she and Diego Rivera at the

Blue House and supposedly had a brief affair um although other people have questioned whether or not was whether or not she really did uh 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 you know they divorced in 1939 um remarried the next year in 1940 lived in separate houses they both had their infidelities but um a really interesting complex relationship um mentor student lovers friends uh rivals as well in some cases uh 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 uh he was also that you know sort of of the time uh in Mexico and America just that male macho

yeah thing going on yeah uh I mean for goodness sakes he tried to have his doctor write a note that said he was physically incapable of being faithful right so let's just say male dominant complex marriage and relationship well I also saw she could kind of you know put up with his affairs and and she definitely had her own but supposedly he his affair with her younger sister like really crushed her yeah that was I think led directly to their divorce yeah I could see that yeah that was uncool yeah Diego yeah even with a doctor's note Diego yeah and he 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 um by the 1950s her health was really declining she kept having these surgeries

kept painting uh 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 uh she wasn't gonna 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 she received everyone while she was in bed bed written pretty amazing um and she died a couple weeks later I think actually I think the last time she was seen in public she showed up for a protest against the us back coup that overthrow overthrew our bends in Guatemala yeah Edward Bernays coming back in right into the picture every time yeah um and she she died again at age 47 man after a life of pain but a very

very productive life of pain too yeah change things quite a bit yeah and with her death she it's listed as pulmonary embolism but uh they never did an autopsy in there it's generally believed that she committed suicide oh by how pills uh her her personal nurse said that she uh uh took 12 I think pain killers uh when she knew that her max was seven and uh 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 buster accident after the bus accident so um yeah she may have just ended it wow understandably yeah 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 that yeah it's a well put and then in the late 70s it was rediscovered um by 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 um established and built and her her work came back out she's just never really left the the art scene since yeah it's just pretty cool very cool uh if she is in a museum near you go check it out and do you want to do you want to talk about her famous eyebrow because I think this this article did a really good job of addressing it yeah so if she had 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 um a book by Desmond Morris called the naked woman a study of the female body and he basically says Desmond Morris says that like women will will pluck the their unibrow into nothingness like religiously and that it takes a woman who is above fashion to to flaunt her unibrow yeah and that that perfectly that that term above fashion perfectly encapsulates Frida Kahlo yeah 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 I think it analyzes her appreciation of herself inside and out pretty well yeah I mean if there

was one thing that she did on her canvas was say this is me right and every single way inside and out and her uh her legacy is in the art world especially among uh among women and female artists is is like the 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 a Andy Warhol one next I tried to do right by this one okay yeah okay I was apologizing to Emily specifically right sorry Emily yeah uh if you want if you're not Emily and you want to know more about Frida Kahlo uh you can search her on our website there's actually a pretty decent law article and then there's tons of stuff go look at her art all over the web and

in person and since I said that it's time for listener mate I'm gonna 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 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 kind of like not not I do too um 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 I 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 uh 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 uh Shalina Bethala or maybe Bethala depending on how you pronounce it okay uh and she is the host and I asked her you're a bad plugger of your own work because I don't even know what your podcast is going to be

about but it's coming soon it's called worth it yeah uh good title yeah everyone that is how you get your podcast plugged on stuff you know that's right whoa whoa breaking news oh yeah pretty hollow 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 uh 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 who are still there man about their journey and what they have done to create happiness in their life it's gonna be good yeah good job that sounds great yeah hurry up Shalina

yeah okay best of luck with worth it coming soon to a podcast distributor near you wherever you find your podcast right uh and if you want to get in touch with us you can tweet to us at sysk podcast um you can also hang out with us on facebook at facebook.com slash stuff you should know 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 stuff you should know is a production of iHeart radio for more podcasts my heart radio visit the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows hey i'm lance bass host of the new iHeart podcast frosted tips with lance bass do you ever think

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