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Lot Essay
“He does pretty well for a little boy,” Frida Kahlo once allowed of her husband, Diego Rivera. “But it is I who am the big artist,” she concluded, laughing at the seeming audacity of her claim. If Kahlo once struggled to be seen as “a painter in her own right,” she has long since emerged as one of the most influential and important artists of the twentieth century (quoted in F. Davies, “Wife of the Master Mural Painter Gleefully Dabbles in Works of Art,” Detroit News, 2 February 1933). In March 1933, she and Rivera disembarked at Grand Central Station, beginning what would be a tumultuous and often strained, eight-and-a-half-month stay in New York before their departure for Mexico at year’s end. While Rivera worked on Man at the Crossroads, the mural infamously commissioned (and destroyed) by Nelson Rockefeller, Kahlo painted hardly at all in New York, increasingly disenchanted with the pretensions of “Gringolandia” and in poor health. A rare and poignant work from this time, Self-Portrait (Very Ugly) betrays the psychic pain that Kahlo suffered with pathos and characteristically self-deprecating humor. She may have languished in New York, forever “dreaming about [her] return to Mexico,” but she nevertheless found sundry amusements and incitements, rallying support around Rivera and making her rounds in the city (quoted in H. Herrera, Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo, New York, 1983, p. 172).
Kahlo and Rivera had taken New York by storm two years earlier, when Rivera had opened a retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, and Kahlo renewed her friendships and favorite pastimes upon their return. “Frida went through dime stores like a tornado,” recalled Lucienne Bloch, the artist and daughter of the Swiss composer Ernest Bloch, of their shopping trips. “Suddenly she would stop and buy something immediately. She had an extraordinary eye for the genuine and the beautiful. She’d find cheap costume jewelry”—perhaps including the necklace that she wears in the present self-portrait—“and she’d make it look fantastic.” Kahlo was so taken by Jean Cocteau’s experimental film, The Blood of a Poet (1930), that she saw it twice in the same day (the second time with Rivera in tow). She scandalized her friends with the bawdy drawings she contributed to games of cadavre exquis, the Surrealist parlor game. “Frida did all the worst ones,” Bloch admitted. “Some of them made me blush, and I do not blush easily... Diego laughed and said, ‘You know that women are far more pornographic than men’” (quoted in ibid., pp. 162-163).
In May, the succès de scandale of Rivera’s mural at Rockefeller Center—sparked by its unmistakable portrayal of Lenin—upended the life that he and Kahlo had established in Manhattan. Kahlo lent her full support to protest efforts, from meetings to letter-writing campaigns; as a sign of her loyalty, she gave up the modish fashions that she had recently adopted and returned to traditional Tehuana dress. In a sympathetic interview, the New York World-Telegram described “Señora Diego Rivera, the comely young wife of the artist,” as “grieved, but not perturbed” (G. Sartain, “Rivera’s Wife Rues Art Ban,” New York World-Telegram, 10 June, 1933). The couple moved downtown, to 8 West 13th Street, in June so that Rivera could take up a mural project at the New Workers’ School. “Their house was always open in the evening, and anyone who wanted to would come,” recalled Louise Nevelson, who took a studio in the same building. “They were very serious about people; they didn’t make distinctions…Princesses and Queens…one lady richer than God. And workmen, laborers” (Dawns + Dusks: Taped Conversations with Diana MacKown, New York, 1976, p. 57). Among their group were the painter Marjorie Eaton, the dancer Ellen Kearns, and the sculptor John Flanagan.
While Rivera’s spirits revived as he returned to work, Kahlo was increasingly adrift, the physical pain in her right foot exacerbated by Rivera’s absences (in the company of Nevelson) and neglect. “Frida did not go out,” recalled Rivera’s ex-wife Lupe Marín, who spent a week with the couple while passing through New York. “She spent the whole day in the bathtub. It was too hot to go out in the streets” (quoted in H. Herrera, op. cit., p. 170). It was at this moment of malaise, in the summer of 1933, that Kahlo made the present self-portrait. “Rivera was painting a series of movable fresco panels at the New York ‘firetrap’ loft of the new Workers School,” Bloch recalled. “I was grinding colors for him and also experimenting with little fresco panels. When Diego saw my work, he suggested that it might be good for Frida to have a fresh plastered panel like mine to get her started again at painting. She had been homesick for Mexico and was very lazy” (quoted in Frida Kahlo: Das Gesamtwerk, Frankfurt, 1988, p. 180).
The first panel that Bloch and Stephen Dimitroff, one of Rivera’s assistants, brought to Kahlo dried before she began to paint, but the second panel became Self-Portrait (Very Ugly). “When later we came to see her at her apartment a block from the School, she was quite disgusted with her work,” Bloch recollected. “The background of her portrait was still barren, except for the writing she had scribbled all around the beautiful face: ‘No sirve—absolutely rotten—terrible—very ugly—Frieda’ and there was a sad looking bird and an apple and an expression she used to enjoy ‘oh boy!’ It was on the floor with a corner chipped off. We loved it so she gave it to us” (ibid., p. 180).
Self-Portrait (Very Ugly) survives as a plaintive memento of the loneliness that loomed over Kahlo’s final months in New York. She gazes outward with expressive intensity, her countenance conveying both resolve and vulnerability behind her signature single eyebrow. Though washed of its usual color (and carefully applied make-up), her face appears here as beguiling as ever, its charm belying the self-abnegation of the words that surround her. The glamour of New York had lately paled for Kahlo—a sentiment echoed in My Dress Hangs There, the only other painting she made during this stay—and in Self-Portrait (Very Ugly) she visualizes the free-floating anxieties that haunted her last months in the city. “For fifty-three years it was on the wall of each home we had, from New York to Michigan and California,” Bloch recalled of the fresco that she received as a gift. “This was Frida in all her beauty and her lively sense of humor—as we knew her when she was as young as we were” (ibid., p. 180).
Kahlo produced fewer than 150 easel paintings throughout her lifetime. While she painted a range of subjects, it is her haunting and enigmatic self-portraits—Self-Portrait (Very Ugly) among them—that define her oeuvre and her unmistakable contribution to the history of twentieth-century art and the genre of self-portraiture. Kahlo painted a mere fifty-five self-portraits, of which only twenty-nine are held outside of collections in Mexico. Works by Kahlo in Mexican collections are restricted under cultural patrimony laws and may not be exported from Mexico. Of the twenty-nine self-portraits not in Mexican collections, nine are held in public collections; the remaining twenty self-portraits are held privately around the world and rarely come to market.
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park
Kahlo and Rivera had taken New York by storm two years earlier, when Rivera had opened a retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, and Kahlo renewed her friendships and favorite pastimes upon their return. “Frida went through dime stores like a tornado,” recalled Lucienne Bloch, the artist and daughter of the Swiss composer Ernest Bloch, of their shopping trips. “Suddenly she would stop and buy something immediately. She had an extraordinary eye for the genuine and the beautiful. She’d find cheap costume jewelry”—perhaps including the necklace that she wears in the present self-portrait—“and she’d make it look fantastic.” Kahlo was so taken by Jean Cocteau’s experimental film, The Blood of a Poet (1930), that she saw it twice in the same day (the second time with Rivera in tow). She scandalized her friends with the bawdy drawings she contributed to games of cadavre exquis, the Surrealist parlor game. “Frida did all the worst ones,” Bloch admitted. “Some of them made me blush, and I do not blush easily... Diego laughed and said, ‘You know that women are far more pornographic than men’” (quoted in ibid., pp. 162-163).
In May, the succès de scandale of Rivera’s mural at Rockefeller Center—sparked by its unmistakable portrayal of Lenin—upended the life that he and Kahlo had established in Manhattan. Kahlo lent her full support to protest efforts, from meetings to letter-writing campaigns; as a sign of her loyalty, she gave up the modish fashions that she had recently adopted and returned to traditional Tehuana dress. In a sympathetic interview, the New York World-Telegram described “Señora Diego Rivera, the comely young wife of the artist,” as “grieved, but not perturbed” (G. Sartain, “Rivera’s Wife Rues Art Ban,” New York World-Telegram, 10 June, 1933). The couple moved downtown, to 8 West 13th Street, in June so that Rivera could take up a mural project at the New Workers’ School. “Their house was always open in the evening, and anyone who wanted to would come,” recalled Louise Nevelson, who took a studio in the same building. “They were very serious about people; they didn’t make distinctions…Princesses and Queens…one lady richer than God. And workmen, laborers” (Dawns + Dusks: Taped Conversations with Diana MacKown, New York, 1976, p. 57). Among their group were the painter Marjorie Eaton, the dancer Ellen Kearns, and the sculptor John Flanagan.
While Rivera’s spirits revived as he returned to work, Kahlo was increasingly adrift, the physical pain in her right foot exacerbated by Rivera’s absences (in the company of Nevelson) and neglect. “Frida did not go out,” recalled Rivera’s ex-wife Lupe Marín, who spent a week with the couple while passing through New York. “She spent the whole day in the bathtub. It was too hot to go out in the streets” (quoted in H. Herrera, op. cit., p. 170). It was at this moment of malaise, in the summer of 1933, that Kahlo made the present self-portrait. “Rivera was painting a series of movable fresco panels at the New York ‘firetrap’ loft of the new Workers School,” Bloch recalled. “I was grinding colors for him and also experimenting with little fresco panels. When Diego saw my work, he suggested that it might be good for Frida to have a fresh plastered panel like mine to get her started again at painting. She had been homesick for Mexico and was very lazy” (quoted in Frida Kahlo: Das Gesamtwerk, Frankfurt, 1988, p. 180).
The first panel that Bloch and Stephen Dimitroff, one of Rivera’s assistants, brought to Kahlo dried before she began to paint, but the second panel became Self-Portrait (Very Ugly). “When later we came to see her at her apartment a block from the School, she was quite disgusted with her work,” Bloch recollected. “The background of her portrait was still barren, except for the writing she had scribbled all around the beautiful face: ‘No sirve—absolutely rotten—terrible—very ugly—Frieda’ and there was a sad looking bird and an apple and an expression she used to enjoy ‘oh boy!’ It was on the floor with a corner chipped off. We loved it so she gave it to us” (ibid., p. 180).
Self-Portrait (Very Ugly) survives as a plaintive memento of the loneliness that loomed over Kahlo’s final months in New York. She gazes outward with expressive intensity, her countenance conveying both resolve and vulnerability behind her signature single eyebrow. Though washed of its usual color (and carefully applied make-up), her face appears here as beguiling as ever, its charm belying the self-abnegation of the words that surround her. The glamour of New York had lately paled for Kahlo—a sentiment echoed in My Dress Hangs There, the only other painting she made during this stay—and in Self-Portrait (Very Ugly) she visualizes the free-floating anxieties that haunted her last months in the city. “For fifty-three years it was on the wall of each home we had, from New York to Michigan and California,” Bloch recalled of the fresco that she received as a gift. “This was Frida in all her beauty and her lively sense of humor—as we knew her when she was as young as we were” (ibid., p. 180).
Kahlo produced fewer than 150 easel paintings throughout her lifetime. While she painted a range of subjects, it is her haunting and enigmatic self-portraits—Self-Portrait (Very Ugly) among them—that define her oeuvre and her unmistakable contribution to the history of twentieth-century art and the genre of self-portraiture. Kahlo painted a mere fifty-five self-portraits, of which only twenty-nine are held outside of collections in Mexico. Works by Kahlo in Mexican collections are restricted under cultural patrimony laws and may not be exported from Mexico. Of the twenty-nine self-portraits not in Mexican collections, nine are held in public collections; the remaining twenty self-portraits are held privately around the world and rarely come to market.
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park