If Frida was to
write her autobiography, Slavenka Drakulić`s big little novel Frida`s Bed would be it.
Drakulić`s
carefully crafted words reveal the woman behind one of the most iconic masks of
modern art.
The mask of
Frida Kahlo.
Frida is bared down
to all that she truly was: a fighter and a victim, a wife and an adulterer... Most importantly- an artist.
This
contemplation on life, love, death, art, betrayal and above all- pain, leaves a
deep, lasting impression on the reader. So deep, you find it hard to separate
yourself from Frida.
So deep, you
become Frida…
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| Photo by Invitation To Inspiration
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Death has
hovered around her since childhood. A shadow that is always there. A ghostly
white skull with touches of gray; gray, the color of fear, is ever- present in
her life and a part of her. She is standing there alone beneath the angry sky and swirl of menacing clouds. Still
a child, she has yet to grow into her face. When she grows up she will have
Frida`s face. Again and again Frida will paint her own face over the white
skull, proof that she is still alive.
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| Photo by Invitation To Inspiration
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| Photo by Invitation To Inspiration
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Maestro, I could not even imagine what a painter
who had possessed the most beautiful women in the world would see in me. I felt
your probing eyes move down my back, stopping at each scar as if to inspect my
map of pain. I don`t know how long I stood there like that. When I turned
around you looked at me, wide- eyed, as if I were a ghost. Then you picked me
up in your arms. You laid me down in the copper tub and turned on the water.
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| Photo by Invitation To Inspiration
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I lay there, my
eyes closed, while you soaped me down, your hand carefully touching my skin as
if you were afraid of hurting me. For the first time I felt sure that I was not
alone anymore. And then a miracle occurred, Maestro, you recognized me, and
that is why I want you with me now, I do and I do not want you. No one has ever
been naked as I was then. Normal people are merely naked. But my body was both
naked and wounded- it was vulnerable. My scars did not frighten you. It is
through scars that one touches a person`s solitude. I learned that from you,
with you, that day.
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| Photo by Invitation To Inspiration
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The talented
young woman who had no training, did not sell or exhibit her pictures, became
aware of her status as the Maestro`s wife as soon as they married. She almost
completely lost her self- confidence. So
her new goal was at least to become a good wife, to learn how to cook the
Maestro`s favorite dishes, which she would bring him in a flower- festooned
basket to his scaffold. She even changed the way she looked.
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| Photo by Invitation To Inspiration
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She had mastered
the technique of dissociation, of separating from her body, long ago when as a
child she would escape through an imaginary door to join her imaginary little
friend.
After a while
what she saw was not herself but a mask. Virtually all of her self- portraits showed
the fixed look of a mask. Masks were important to her, they hid the reality
behind them. As with every actor, masks and costumes allowed her to become
whatever she wanted to be. Her life with the maestro soon became a play where
she designed her own costumes and sets, scripted and staged the story, directed
and starred. And the she put it all on canvas.
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| Photo by Invitation To Inspiration
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She would spend
hours brushing her hair and dressing, turning routine into ritual. The costume,
the make up, the hair were all her way of holding herself together. And she had
a sense of humor. It amused her to parade around with the Maestro, she loved
all the acting and ruses. When she stood in front of the mirror in the
mornings, deftly applying her bright red lipstick, she would immediately feel
different, she would become a different woman. Like a skeleton decked out
fluttering brightly colored scraps of cloth.
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| Photo by Invitation To Inspiration
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While he was
painting his subversive, controversial, sweeping murals, Frida was sitting at
home alone and, when her inner demon drove her to it, she would reach for her
paintbrushes. The small paintings she did at the time were unusual and suffused
with pain. Though confessional, they were highly provocative because they cut
through you like a knife. Even when not immediately decipherable, they had a
visceral effect, they were like a punch in the stomach.
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| Photo by Invitation To Inspiration
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She still had
the sensation that death was shadowing her, hovering over her every painting.
It was her job, she felt, to hold that shadow at bay, to master her fear of it,
perhaps capture it in her paintings. The Maestro liked to say that painting was
his life. She made no such declarations, but it was no less true of her as
well. She would loudly denigrate her own paintings, but the truth of the matter
was that painting was her life preserver; it kept her afloat and allowed her to
swim, to breathe.
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| Photo by Invitation To Inspiration
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A painful body,
an unwanted body. I suffered on both counts. I was not only on pain, I had been
rejected as well. However hard I tried, I never quite managed to separate
myself from my body. I never succeeded in becoming a butterfly. After the
accident I knew that my soul depended solely on my body, on this sarcophagus
from which there was no escape. You can free me from this terrible captivity, I
told the Maestro, by imagining that my body is not an obstacle to my soul. Love
me, please, love me. I begged him for love, any kind of love.
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| Photo by Invitation To Inspiration
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White, not black
was the color of her death. She thought she saw the door open and her
nameless little childhood friend walk into the room. As once long ago, the
little girl took her by the hand. And Frida surrendered to her touch.
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| Frida Kahlo: The Dream |
