Frida on the CatwalkMaimon Schwarzschild

On a visit to Mexico City a few months ago, I visited the famous Frida Kahlo house in Coyoacan, where it turned out a fashion shoot was under way.  (Here are some of the fashion pictures from the shoot, now online.)   The Kahlo house is disconcertingly beautiful: colourful, built round a lovely patio, with lots of Aztec and Mayan pieces which you probably couldn't acquire legally nowadays.  Disconcerting because the house is a temple not only to Kahlo but also to her heroes Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung.  The centrepiece of Kahlo's studio is her unfinished portrait of Stalin, still on its easel.  (Not a good likeness, I thought, quite apart from anything else.)  Above Kahlo's bed there is a votive picture of Mao.  Clearly, Kahlo's idea of social justice - palpably, in fact, her personal religion - were the greatest mass murderers of the twentieth century.  (Or of any century, so far.)

Say what you will about Kahlo's art - it has always seemed self-dramatising kitsch to me - she had a lovely house.  It's disconcerting to realise that you have tastes (in surroundings, if not in art) in common with a devotee of political barbarism.

The fashion shoot pleased me, on the other hand.  There's something oddly reassuring about Kahlo's radical chic transformed into pure unadulterated commercial chic.

Will Trotsky be next?  His house is around the corner from Kahlo's.  He appears to have had a brief affair with Kahlo.  That would have been before Kahlo's hero in the Kremlin had Trotsky murdered with the icepick.

Comments

[Peter]

::It's disconcerting to realise that you have tastes (in surroundings, if not in art) in common with a devotee of political barbarism::

Well put! I live a few minutes from Frida's house, and it's definitely disconcerting on a number of levels. What's also disconcerting is that people name their children after her!

I've seen the bullet holes in Trotsky's door, but didn't realize that it was only on the second attempt and with an ice pick that Stalin was able to kill him.

[John Werntz]

Not an icepick, for heaven's sake. An ice-axe, aka piolet, aka alpenstock.

[PersonFromPorlock]

Why so appalled? Versailles isn't all that shabby even if the Bourbons were. Many of the world's great buildings were built by awful people.

[Axel Kassel]

I believe Trotsky was dialectically transformed with an ice ax, such as climbers use, rather than an ice pick.

[Ron]

"An ice-axe, aka piolet, aka alpenstock." It was an ice-axe, right in the top of the head by the assassin son of "La Passionaira" from the Spanish Civil War. That's a good bit of trivia, what was her name?

[Paul H.]

Going by memory so all this is subject to correction, but I think Trotsky actually lingered a while before dying?! Even more amazing since it was an axe & not just a pick.

He was posing as a friend/political sympathizer and thus had gained access to the household. During the "fatal" visit, he had brought some kind of manuscript for Trotsky to read; while Trotsky was seated (at his desk?) with his back turned examining it, the assassin grabbed the ice axe (a Trotsky souvenir/display item?) as an weapon of opportunity.

I think Trotsky must have had guards who searched everyone who entered (?) due to previous assassination attempts.

The assassin did about 20 years in a Mexican jail, was released, and (as I recall reading a long time ago) promptly boarded a plane (for Czechoslovakia) and "disappeared" (the implication of what I read was that he was done in by the KGB). It'll be interesting to google and see what (if anything) has come to light about his ultimate fate; haven't looked into this since the demise of the USSR.

[Paul H.]

Sorry comrades I got some important details el wrongo. It's not that I'm a saboteur/ historical revisionist, merely that my bourgeois pre-internet upbringing impedes the revolutionary impulse to google first before posting.

1) He smuggled in the ice axe, hidden in his raincoat.

"Mercader later testified at his trial:

I laid my raincoat on the table in such a way as to be able to remove the ice axe which was in the pocket. I decided not to miss the wonderful opportunity that presented itself. The moment Trotsky began reading the article, he gave me my chance; I took out the ice axe from the raincoat, gripped it in my hand and, with my eyes closed, dealt him a terrible blow on the head."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky

2) Mercader ended his days fat dumb and happy.

"Release and honors
After the first few years in prison, he requested release on parole, which was denied.... He was eventually released from Mexico City's Palacio de Lecumberri prison on May 6, 1960 and moved to Havana, where Fidel Castro's new revolutionary government welcomed him. In 1961, he moved to the USSR and was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal — the country's highest decoration — one of only eight non-Soviet citizens to receive the award. He split his time between Cuba and the USSR for the rest of his life, revered by the KGB (the successor to the NKVD), and died in Havana in 1978.

He is buried (under the name of Ramón Ivanovich López) in Moscow's Kuntsevo Cemetery and has a place of honor in the KGB museum in the Russian capital."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram%C3%B3n_Mercader

[Patrick Carroll]

What depresses me is that my wife, having seen the Frida movie, and with no historical understanding, thinks Frida is just the cat's meow.

She has no understanding of the human misery inflicted by Stalin and Mao. It's not taught, and not explored in the movies. So, right now, Frida floats out there as an unrecognized value-free, sense-stroking media whore.

Unfortunately.

[Paul H.]

"...an ice-axe, right in the top of the head by the assassin son of "La Passionaira" from the Spanish Civil War. That's a good bit of trivia, what was her name?"

Dolores Ibarruri, accent on the "a". One "s" (not two), sp: "La Pasionaria" (passion flower), or at least so says this web site:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPibarruri.htm

Died in 1989, I saw a brief obit on her at the time in Time or Newsweek. That was my first encounter with her name but the obit made an impression so I sorta knew what to look for in a "search".

Seems to me the obit said she remained an unrepentant Stalinist to the end, but the "spartacus" link says she had denounced the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 (maybe because Brezhnev didn't do it as well as Stalin would have ? Dunno, it's hard to keep up with the twists and turns of revolutionary doctrine).

But -- she evidently wasn't the mother of Ramon Mercader. "...At the end of the war Ibárruri fled to the Soviet Union. Her only son, Ruben Ibárruri fought for the Red Army during the Second World War and was killed at Stalingrad on 3rd December 1942.."

The wikipedia article on Mercader gives the info on his mother -- also a Spanish Communist activist/agent, but a different individual from La P.

The Commies vs the Fascists, in the 30's and 40's -- my goodness, they were definitely some hard boys (and girls) back in those days.

[Ron]

Couldn't have been two La Passionaira's could there, no probably not. It was at least 35 years ago when I was reading about the Spanish Civil War. Didn't the communists steal all the gold resereves from Spain before they left? I seem to remember that they took the whole treasury and wouldn't give it back. I often wonder why there are no movies of these times and such interesting things, I get tired of watching movies about nazi's when the real devils were the communists; they out murdered the nazi 10 to 1.

[Paul H.]

Wasn't exactly a "theft"; like everything else in history, it's more complicated once you get into the specifics.

See the wikipedia article on the Spanish Civil War; if only time for the "quick and dirty" version, here's a specific Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_gold

Like "la P" I had a vague memory of this from old reading but it's always interesting to go back and study up. I didn't remember (or didn't ever know) that the issue was known in Spanish as "el oro de Moscu"; the phrase has a nicely sinister ring to it wouldn't you say?