FRIDA AND DIEGO'S CROSS-COUNTRY JOURNEY CREATED ART, CONTROVERSY AND FAME

Self-Portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States 1931

PART 2 

Frida Kahlo's travel to the United States began in San Francisco where she and husband Diego Rivera lived in 1930 and 1931. Rivera, the most famous artist in the world at the time, bigger even than Picasso, had been commissioned to paint two murals in the city. If ever there was a working vacation, this was it. On the project's completion, they traveled from the west coast briefly back to Mexico, and from there, caught a ship via Cuba to New York, the second leg of their stateside journey. Kahlo and Rivera were no doubt the most artistically involved couple the world has ever seen. Both fed off the other's imagination, work, and inspiration, dove-tailing their way into making art that revered their native land. 

During that time, scholars credit 23-year old Kahlo's creative breakthrough to an over abundance of input, not uncommon for an emerging artist in new surroundings. Her world had expanded and she was able to paint with other artists while experiencing the sights of San Francisco which she called "the city of the world." Her art also drew on a vast body of knowledge rooted in her Mexican upbringing, which she then synthesized with experiences she gained in California—a perfect storm for an emerging talent such as Kahlo.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Frida and Diego in New York, 1932

In New York they stayed at the Barbizon-Plaza on Central Park South, the first music-art residence center in the US, complete with art studios, only two blocks from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Soon after they arrived they were swept up into the social lives of many prominent people. Everyone wanted to meet Diego Rivera and his wife Frida. Though Rivera was quite the social butterfly, Kahlo not so much.

Rivera would exhibit at MoMA and had also been commissioned by John D. Rockefeller's wife, Abby, to re-create a mural in their home titled Wall Street Banquet, which had featured Rockefeller, Henry Ford and J. P. Morgan. After consideration, Rivera declined as it was quite controversial, casting the scions of industry in a bad light.

CLASS STRUGGLE

In New York, Frida observed the huge disparity between the wealthy and the poor. At first she and Rivera, though surrounded by well-heeled patrons, kept "witnessing the horrible poverty and the millions of people who have no work, food, or home, who have no hope in this country of scumbag millionaires who greedily grab everything," she wrote her mother. 

New York City Out-of-Work Dock Workers 1932

They visited a homeless shelter where they saw people sleeping "like dogs in a pen," she wrote. With the Depression in its third year, grim reality had set in and Rivera was inspired to paint Frozen Assets, where bodies were placed in morgues hidden away beneath cranes of industry. They witnessed a multitude of encampments nicknamed "Hoover Valley" for the president.

HARLEM SHUFFLE

After Diego's lengthy workaholic days at MoMA, at night they gravitated to Harlem for the jazz clubs, speakeasies, and dance halls though Kahlo noticed disparity there, too. While the world teetered on economic collapse, shrewd Frida noted the white and middle class headed to Harlem where the main draw was dancing and drinking while "feeling superior in whites-only clubs featuring black entertainers," wrote Celia Stahr, author of Frida in America.

Outspoken Frida called it out. Women of color pleasing the masses. "Everything here is pure show but down deep it's all real shit.  By now I'm completely disappointed in the famous United States," she wrote her mother. She said near Central Park where they lived, it was beautiful with fancy shops and restaurants while the working class lived in areas reeking of garbage. New York, she said, presented a "new level of poverty."

FRIDA PAINTS

In New York she stewed about injustice and in a new painting, she encapsulated a world where everything was pure show, titled Window Display on a Street in Detroit (though she began the painting in New York, she finished it in Detroit, 1931). Meanwhile Rivera sweated out finishing his last murals for the MoMA exhibit with five Mexican-themed murals—Indian Warrior, Sugar Cane, Liberation of the Peon, Agrarian Leader Zapata, and The Uprising.

Window Display a Street in Detroit, Frida Kahlo

For the opening, Rivera had painted 23 murals, 56 oil paintings and would display 89 water colors, sketches, and drawings (some on borrow). In many ways, Rivera and Kahlo were the social conscience of the country they visited. They saw things from unblemished eyes and painted their truths. (Below: Agrarian Leader Zapata and Sugar Cane, by Diego Rivera for DIA, from www.diegorivera.org).

MEETING GEORGIA

At the MoMA opening, Kahlo met famous photographer Alfred Stieglitz, husband of rising star Georgia O'Keefe. In O'Keefe she saw a woman who mirrored her in many ways—a painter married to a successful artist twice her age, a lover of nature and Indian culture, and a sexually free being, wrote author Celia Stahr. It's well known that O'Keefe and Kahlo had a relationship, though neither of them spoke about it openly.

Georgia O'Keefe (by Alfred Stieglitz)

Meanwhile the world of fashion contributed to the blurring of distinctions between labels such as bi-sexual and New Woman. Both Frida and Georgia, said Stahr, utilized the androgynous look to defy stereotypical norms and to assert their own independence and power as artists. 

Though Kahlo and Rivera only spent six months in New York, it was a stepping stone for Kahlo. She made closer friends than in San Francisco, including getting re-acquainted with old friends from Mexico. During her last months in the city she made two drawings, both titled The Dream. They had a surrealistic quality that the art world took note of, and the second one turned out to be prophetic—it showed her being impregnated by Rivera's "seed." Later that month she discovered she was pregnant.

MOTOR CITY

The train to Detroit took 14 hours from New York, long enough to transition from the world's most vibrant city into the city of technology and manufacturing, and the midwest—a far cry from the hub of activity and style she had just left. But Detroit's train station, beautifully constructed in the Beaux Arts style, cheered Frida's heart. Upon entering Detroit proper, however, the couple was soon to find out the city, in the depths of the Depression, was 50 percent unemployed. Poverty in Detroit was worse than NYC. 

Michigan Central Station (Vintage Michigan)

The U.S. manufacturing capital proved to be more alien to Frida's Mexican heart than either San Francisco or New York. In a city of 1.5 million, only 15,000 were Hispanic. She'd never felt more alone. And they'd arrived shortly after a five thousand people protest in front of Ford Motor had ended in gunfire, killing four.

She'd entered a war zone. Poor, unemployed people, no jobs, no housing, as Ford had provided company housing for many of his workers. Not to mention the city was anti-Semitic and she had Jewish blood. She was in hell. Things were going from bad to worse. Plus she was pregnant, and with problems left over from the accident in her broken body, she didn't know if she could sustain a pregnancy. She considered abortion but was talked out of it. Eventually her Detroit obstetrician performed a C-section, but the child did not live.

BAD NEWS BACK HOME

Trouble however, was not yet done with her. Shortly after the disaster of losing the child, she learned her mother was desperately ill in Mexico and a last minute trip to see her had to be arranged. With Diego commissioned for murals to both Ford and the Detroit Institute of Art (DIA), he wouldn't be able to accompany her. Luckily artist/photographer Lucienne Bloch, Rivera's assistant and Frida's friend, said she'd go along. Tickets were booked for the daunting train ride and border crossing. They arrived September 9, nearly three days later in Mexico City, slowed by enormous flooding in Laredo. Her sisters met her at the station as her father was not in good condition either. 

Guillermo Kahlo and Matilde Calderón, Frida's mother

Frida's mother had breast cancer and died a day after an arduous surgery. Frida's entire family was beyond distraught. When she told her father about Matilde's death, "he was done for," said Lucienne Bloch.  Kahlo returned from Mexico six weeks later to a city she despised and to a husband she feared was having an affair with one of his benefactors. Getting back into a routine and finding a rhythm with Diego proved challenging, wrote Stahr. When she met mythologist Joseph Campbell years later, he would tell her she had embarked on the classic Hero's Journey: Bus accident, miscarriage, mother's death. After all this, she returned to Detroit a changed person.

Disgusted with everything, she demanded DIA allow her to have a studio at the museum. Being away from patrons and society matrons who wanted to only talk clothes and gossip, this would give her the freedom to concentrate on her art with no interruptions. Her painting, My Birth, was born at this time. It was a painting that allowed her to release her fears and was considered another breakthrough.

MURALS ON DISPLAY

Diego's hectic schedule proved successful. He completed 77 panels for the DIA's Garden Court in March 1933, though not without controversy regarding his Communist leanings, written about by a Time magazine reporter. Doubts failed quickly though as the DIA opened the courtyard to early onlookers for ten cents a ticket to preview the murals for themselves. In three days 13 thousand people paraded through and were thoroughly impressed. All malicious thoughts fell away, and Edsel Ford was quoted as saying, "I admire Rivera's spirit. I believe he was trying to express his ideas about the spirit of Detroit." 

Detroit Industry Mural Panel by Diego Rivera (photo Lucienne Bloch)

Shortly before the formal opening of the murals at the DIA, Frida and Diego left for New York. He had been given a prestigious commission by Rockefeller to paint at the RCA Building in the new Rockefeller Center. Both were on a high: Rivera for his Detroit murals and Frida happy as she'd completed five paintings while in Detroit. A working holiday indeed. 

FIERY CRUSADER OF THE PAINT BRUSH

On Rivera's arrival, New York Times reporter Anita Brenner called him, "the fiery crusader of the paint brush." He began his murals at RCA Building, titling them Man at the Crossroads. As Hitler was heating up in Germany, Rivera wanted to make the rich take notice with his mural. He planned to contrast a scene of fascist warfare on the upper left side of the wall to a May Day demonstration in Moscow on the right, featuring Leon Trotsky, the exiled Russian revolutionary who had played a major role in the new government of the Soviet Union before being ousted by Stalin when he came to power in the twenties. Lenin was also in the mural, and not as a bad guy. Rivera planned to paint great wealth alongside desperate poverty— beauty turning to ugliness. In his murals workers would hold signs that read, "Divided We Starve—United We Eat." 

Man at the Crossroads, by Diego Rivera

As art critics, reporters, and onlookers strode in to take a look, the impression began to take hold that Rivera had a political ideology in mind for his mural. Things reached a crescendo when in April a reporter from New York World Telegram checked in at RCA. He posted a story about the mural with this headline, "Rivera Paints Scenes of Communist Activity and John D. Rockefeller Foots the Bill.'' 

On May 4, days before the mural was to be presented, Rockefeller wrote Rivera a letter asking him to tone down the Communist influence in the painting. Rivera did not defer, and on May 9, police entered the building and were told to shut down the work if Rivera did not paint Lenin out of the mural. Rivera would not concede and was presented with a check for his work and ushered out of the building in his coveralls. The work was boarded up and the only known photographs of it were taken by Lucienne Bloch, photographer and Rivera's assistant.

RIVERA FIGHTS BACK

Fired up, Diego, Frida and their group of workers decided how to counter the RCA shutdown and suppression of his work. Diego would paint murals at three "Communist" schools in New York. The next day the book burnings took place in Germany to "cleanse the German spirit" and this brazen act overrode the brouhaha at RCA Center. Because of Rockefeller's decision to can the murals, Rivera lost the commission to paint at the Chicago World's Fair. He shifted his vitriol against Rockefeller to painting a mural at the New Workers School instead of at the three Communist schools as pay back. 

Because of Rockefeller's act, both Frida and Diego threw themselves into workers' rights protests and political issues for the summer months that year. Rivera, still angered by the brushoff from Rockefeller, wallowed in indecision on how to proceed. Back in Mexico, a mural for a medical school commission awaited him. To soothe his wounds, he'd resorted to an affair with a young sculptress, and didn't keep standard hours at the New School mural. His antics were causing trouble in his marriage and he knew it, plus money was running out. 

A CHAPTER ENDS

Self Portrait With a Necklace, by Frida Kahlo

Frida apparently worked well in adverse situations as she created two more important paintings in their last months in New York: My Dress Hangs Here and Self-Portrait With a Necklace. When they finally boarded the Oriente in New York harbor in December 1933 to return to Mexico, both hoped to restore some balance in their relationship. Stahr wrote Frida had no idea what the future would hold. On leaving Gringolandia, she realized during her time there she'd created her best art. She had gripes about the States and had suffered the trauma of double death in Detroit, but the U.S. was a place where her creative spirit broke through to new heights, allowing her genius to soar. 

In Mexico, things between Kahlo and Rivera would continue to heat up, but as for art, Frida was on her way. 

Quote from Kahlo: "Perhaps it is expected that I should lament how I have suffered living with a man like Diego. But I do not think the banks of a river suffer because they let the river flow, nor does the atom suffer for letting its energy escape."

If you enjoyed this post, check out my other works, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. It's available on Amazon with tales of expat life and living within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites. Also, check out my website at www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are available on Amazon where you can find my overview of the 2012 Maya calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed—Demystifying the Prophecy. 

 

HOW SAN FRANCISCO IGNITED THE RIGHT STUFF IN EMERGING ARTIST FRIDA KAHLO

Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Monkeys

THE EVOLUTION OF FRIDA

Though much has been written about Frida Kahlo, one of the most celebrated women artists of our time, little is mentioned of her travels in the United States and specifically San Francisco in the 1930s, a period that shaped her voice as an artist. Her year in San Francisco also made a lasting impact on the city's local art scene.

Frida in America*—The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist, by Celia Stahr, documents her time in Gringolandia, as Kahlo nicknamed her neighbor to the north. According to Stahr, no other author has explored her body of work while living in the States in depth and there hasn't been a major Kahlo biography since Hayden Herrera's in 1983. However, Suzanne Barbezat's 2016, Frida Kahlo At Home, does an excellent job portraying key aspects of the artist's life and works with many visuals. 

BY TRAIN TO SAN FRANCISCO

Shortly after her marriage in 1929 to Diego Rivera, known for both his art and politics, they traveled from Mexico City to San Francisco. Rivera had been commissioned to paint a mural at the Pacific Stock Exchange, now the City Club. This would be Frida's first trip outside Mexico. After a stop to see friends and art dealers in Los Angeles, they headed to San Francisco by train. The tracks followed the Pacific, and sitting in the train car she sketched a picture of San Francisco which she had dubbed long before seeing it, "the city of the world." This drawing, now lost, included a city scene with rectangular skyscrapers and the ocean along with a self-portrait.

In Montgomery Street Apartment by Paul Juley

At 23, more than 20 years younger than her world famous husband, she was a novice painter while Rivera was at the height of his creative powers. When they stepped off the train, Rivera recalled he was "almost frightened to realize her imagined city was the very one we were now seeing for the first time."

FAMILY TIES

Frida Kahlo's Parents, Guillermo and Matilde 

Born to Guillermo Kahlo, her German father, and Oaxacan/Tehuantepec mother, Matilde Calderón, Frida had long planned to go to medical school and studied at the Prepa in Mexico City. Her university plans changed abruptly in September 1925 while riding a city bus that was hit full speed by a trolley on her way home from a shopping trip. In the accident, a metal pole impaled her pelvis, leaving her spinal column broken in three places along with a broken collarbone, pelvis and some ribs. She was in the hospital in a full plaster body cast for a month, but returned home six weeks later. Though told she would never walk again, with fixed determination, she began to walk haltingly in three months. No doubt part of her rapid recovery after the excruciating accident was due to the strength training she received with her father's help after contracting polio at age six. Guillermo trained her to be a strong athlete which provided her the freedom that usually only came to males in that era.

THE ACCIDENT'S EFFECTS

Sketch by Frida Kahlo of Bus Accident, 1926

Kahlo's horrifying accident irreversibly changed the course of her life—from a former student studying medicine to a budding player in the creative world of art. After the interruption of her medical studies, her drawing and painting took on greater significance as her physical movements were curtailed. Before the accident, Frida always accompanied her father, a professional photographer, on his photo shoots. He suffered from epilepsy and Frida's presence was a safeguard for both her father and his equipment should a seizure occur while he was working. It created a very close father-daughter bond. While her father tested out various settings, she would often serve as a model and learned to pose at an early age which served her well in the future as she gained fame.

The Bus by Frida Kahlo, 1929

Because of her physical limitations from the accident, she could no longer assist her father. Her mother realized the girl needed a creative outlet and hired a carpenter to create a lap easel. Matilde also suggested placing a mirror atop the bed's canopy for self-portraits. Soon after, Frida began applying pigment to small canvases and began drawing what she knew best—her friends and family. One of her early influences was the art of Leonardo Da Vinci and she tried using his techniques and symbolism in her paintings and iconic retablos.

COMRADE FRIDA

Frida Kahlo Painting in Bed (Artzocam)

After the accident she was introduced to the Communist party through a friend, Tina Modotti, an Italian American photographer and political activist who'd lived in Mexico since 1923. Through Tina's influence, Kahlo committed herself to communism after extensive reading about the Russian Revolution. In Tina's group, she was re-introduced to muralist Diego Rivera. She'd previously met him while he was painting a mural at the Ministry of Education where she goaded him to come off his scaffold and look at one of her paintings. He was duly impressed and later said her painting revealed "an unusual energy of expression and precise delineation of character."

By 1928 they began seeing each other after his divorce from second wife, Lupe Marín. Though he was a notorious womanizer, something about Frida kept him coming back. It could have been her blunt honesty or her raw talent as an untrained artist, Stahr writes. Along with that, her unconventional beauty was combined with a quick mind and sharp wit. Their interest in both art and politics ignited the relationship, plus they were attracted to the importance of creativity, black humor, and a passion for social justice.

Diego Rivera's Murals in Ministry of Education
Where He Met Frida

MEXICANIDAD 

They'd see each other at Tina's meetings and Rivera would take her home. There they'd discuss painting and its importance to a new post-revolutionary indigenist movement, Mexicanidad, which was often a topic in Tina's magazine, Mexican Folkways, where Rivera served as art director. Mexican Folkways' articles discussed excavations of Aztec sites, regional crafts and music traditions, children's art, and photos of diverse people and regions in Mexico.

In 1929, as her relationship with Rivera evolved, she joined the Communist Youth League. It was at this time she went into her full gender-neutral fashion look, wearing overalls or work outfits, no dresses, completed by a little black iron and sickle pin she wore on her collar.

Frida's Casa Azul, Coyoacán

A NEW LOOK

But when they married late that summer, Frida stepped out with a new look. Her wedding ensemble was a long ruffled skirt, white peasant blouse, and rebozo shawl, considered to be simple street clothes. To Frida, this outfit aligned her with working class indigenous women, indicating she was part Indian, thanks to her mother's family roots. Soon after, she began wearing a prominent jadeite necklace engraved with an Aztec symbol, the olin, found on the carved Aztec Calendar Stone. The carved glyph represented movement or the movement required to shift from one world into another, said Stahr. 

METAPHYSICS AND SYMBOLISM

Kahlo was a student of metaphysics and revered alchemy, the transformation of matter. She was well aware of symbolism and how it could stir the masses. Her peasant blouse emphasized her leftist leanings as a woman of the people as well as her purity as a young bride. She identified as a mestiza who was proud of her country's revolutionary ideals. In her marriage dress and in her first portrait painted as a married woman, Self Portrait, Time Flies, she laid out an intricate mythic framework of her desired alchemical union with Rivera, author Stahr stated. Rivera came to mysticism through his father, a Freemason and Rosicrucian. Kahlo came to it through her studies in all schools of philosophy at Prepa and through books friends shared with her. Metaphysics was at its height worldwide in the 1920s and 30s and the inquiring mind of an intelligent teen was like a sponge in water. Frida soaked it up and went on to use many symbolic principles in her paintings and retablos.

In San Francisco, from the moment they stepped off the train, she literally stopped traffic. Her ensemble had locals halting mid-street to stare at her in her huaraches under a long peasant skirt, green striped shawl, and dangling earrings as they made their way to Montgomery Street, part of the old Barbary Coast where the artists' co-op they'd live in was located. "Even in this bohemian section of San Francisco," remarked photographer and friend Edward Weston, "the sight of this unknown Mexican woman created excitement."

Allegory of California by Rivera in the Pacific Stock Exchange, 1931

LA INDIA BONITA

Weston's photos of Frida during her San Francisco stay along with those of Imogen Cunningham would come to be known as the best taken of her in that period. Weston captured her physical strength in strong arm and back muscles, along with her political strength as an indigenous woman. His photos helped establish this important symbol of her identity. She proudly wore her rebozo which conveyed allegiance to indigenous women throughout Mexico. His photos showed a striking, thoughtful, indigenous woman.

"Frida was creating a new persona of the indigenous Mexican woman by combining the traits of beauty and intelligence," Stahr wrote.

Frida in Rebozo (Toni Frissell, 1937)

Some of Kahlo's caricature can be attributed to a beauty pageant that took place in Mexico when she was 15. A newspaper sponsored a beauty pageant for indigenous women called La India Bonita. Publisher Felix Palavicini, a former revolutionary, wanted to validate Indian female beauty and the pageant was the thing. A young Nahuatl-speaking 14-year old woman from Sierra Norte de Puebla won, becoming the new face for Mexican indigenous women. This inspired Kahlo. In San Francisco she solidified her "La India Bonita" persona and brought together indigenous pride with a modern twist. Her long peasant skirts also served another purpose: they covered up her right leg and injured foot.

Diego's studio was on the top floor of the co-op where he worked daily on sketches for his new mural. With Diego absent, Frida painted "quite a lot, almost all day long," she wrote her mother. She wanted to have an exhibition in San Francisco and worked hard to create enough paintings for one. From the beginning of their relationship, said Stahr, they related to each other as painters and things didn't change in San Francisco.

WOMEN ARTISTS

Frida in San Francisco
(Imogen Cunningham)

Rivera and Kahlo hung out with artists, rubbing shoulders with prominent writers and photographers. Kahlo met and bonded with Dorothea Lange shortly before her Depression era photographic journey through America. Meeting women artists was an additional benefit to Kahlo on their west coast sojourn. These friendships became a great source of strength. She made art weekly with two women from the co-op where they painted wildly inappropriate things, swore, smoked, and laughed. For Kahlo, this was a time of creative freedom allowing her to delve into taboo topics, helping her to find her own voice. San Francisco's MOMA stated "Her style moved from a broad, mural-like handling to a folkloric mode based on 19th century Mexican portraiture."

In that era, women had to take advantage of any opportunity that came their way. Soon Frida's experimentation would pay off. Though women were banned from the Bohemian Club where male artists gathered, they formed the San Francisco Society of Women Artists with organized exhibits at the Legion of Honor. Though not a member, Frida benefited. Her American art debut took place at one of the society's annual exhibitions and in it, she displayed her marriage portrait.

A PHYSICIAN WITH HEART

"Frieda" and Diego Rivera (Marriage Portrait)

During their time in the city which included long meandering walks, late nights, and hours of painting, her leg began to ache more and more. At this time she met Dr. Leo Eloesser, who from day one would become a stabilizing force in her life. He gave her thorough examinations and recommendations that proved beneficial to her physical and mental well being. The doctor clicked not only with Kahlo but with Rivera as well and their friendship was lifelong. Frida said he had the heart of a musician, which he was. With a medical practice by day, he played viola at night. He also spoke fluent Spanish making communication easy. 

Frida's most profound experiences on the west coast would occur north of the city. When neighbor and sculptor Ralph Stackpole and his girlfriend Ginette whisked the two away to Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio, 70 miles north, she was in awe. Though off limits to women, Stackpole would have been able to get Frida in as a guest. She wrote her mother that she felt reverence when she stepped onto the grounds, in the presence of thousand year old sequoia redwoods.

Frida and Diego at Luther Burbank's Gardens

LUTHER BURBANK'S INFLUENCE

Shortly after that adventure, Stackpole and Ginette took them to Luther Burbank's house in Santa Rosa. Though the horticulturist had been dead four years, his widow Elizabeth discussed at length her husband's legacy. Burbank had created more than eight hundred varieties of hybrid fruits; he had been inspired by Charles Darwin, writing, "Nature selected by a law the survival of the fittest...the fitness of the plant to stand up under a new or changed environment."

Luther Burbank by Frida Kahlo

They walked his gardens to feel his presence. The grounds were "magical," Frida said. Already an avid admirer of alchemy, "Luther must have seemed an alchemist, transforming existing varieties of plants into new ones," wrote Stahr. Back in her studio, Kahlo's mind went to work painting Burbank. Her 1931 Portrait of Luther Burbank shows him partly as soil and partly human, a major departure from any of her paintings up to that time. Many art scholars consider this work to be her creative breakthrough.

PERFECT STORM

Scholars also say that by living in a foreign country as she was beginning to define her artistic path, she was being exposed to a kaleidoscope of new sights, experiences, artists, and ideas. Her encounters at the Bohemian Grove's ancient redwoods and viewing Luther Burbank's gardens had a profound affect on her, along with the weekly creative experimentations she enjoyed with her women artist friends. Though her art drew upon a vast body of knowledge rooted in her Mexican upbringing, she synthesized it with new experiences she'd gained in California. It was the perfect storm for a creative-inventive-intuitive like Kahlo. Not only did San Francisco have the right stuff, but so did Frida Kahlo. 

Part 2 of Frida in America explores the next step in their U.S. journey as she and Rivera head to New York and Detroit.

*Frida lived in Mexico which is North America. The author Stahr's Frida in America refers to the United States of America.

If you enjoyed this post, check out my other works, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. It's available on Amazon with tales of expat life and living within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites. Also, check out my website at www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are available on Amazon where you can find my overview of the 2012 Maya calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed—Demystifying the Prophecy. 

    

MAYA ARTIST AND SCHOLAR MERLE GREENE ROBERTSON'S IMPACT ON THE MAYA WORLD

Dos Pilas, Stela 16

Merle Greene Robertson was an artist, scholar, and Maya explorer, but these are merely labels. Her entrance into the study, portrayal, and exploration of the Maya culture was a catalyst for introducing the ancient Maya to the modern world through art, photography, and exploration of numerous Maya sites. After reading her autobiography, Never in Fear, she well could have been the glue that stuck it all together, and with fellow scholars, shaped an understanding of the Maya civilization. She galvanized others—as an organizer, planner, dynamo. She knew everyone in the field, from Eric S. Thompson and Alberto Ruz to Michael Coe, George Stuart, and anyone and everyone who came after.

INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN YUCATÁN

Her enthusiasm and limitless energy in regard to Maya culture made her a fulcrum at the very moment the Maya re-emerged on the world stage after an unduly long absence. The first European and American explorers who stumbled onto these pyramid sites in the 1840s were floored by what they saw. A blockbuster bestseller in 1846, Incidents of Travel in Yucatán, written by John Lloyd Stephens with drawings by Frederick Catherwood, two explorers who entered Maya sites at Uxmal, Chichen Itza, and Copan for starters, literally blew the collective mind of the world. No one had any idea that intricate stepped pyramids lay hidden, covered by centuries of vines and foliage, deep in Mexican and Central American jungles. Before the release of Stephens' and Catherwood's book, the word "bestseller" had not yet been coined. 

Frederick Catherwood Drawing

Incidents of Travel in Yucatán, Vol. One

The world clambered for more knowledge of this mysterious unknown civilization, hidden in southern rainforests of North America.

Stephens' concise writing along with Catherwood's magnificent drawings assisted in shaping the identity of one of the world's great civilizations—the Maya. Previously unknown, they were now in an iconic limited club along with other greats such as Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, India, and Persia.

ROBERTSON AND HER WORK

Robertson is nearly indefinable, so interwoven was the role she played with her Maya work over the past 50 years—from assisting in breaking the Maya hieroglyphic code, to co-founding the Palenque Roundtable talks, trekking to and exploring scores of pyramid sites in Mexico and Central America. Not to mention the body of work she left of an ancient archeological rubbing technique using Japanese ink on rice paper.

Robertson created beautiful reproductions of countless stela, columns, tombs, sarcophagus lids, often produced in the most unfavorable circumstances—trekking through rugged terrain and dense rainy forests crawling with snakes and bothersome mosquitoes, including the occasional close call with grave robbers. A life of leisure was never to be hers. She wouldn't have wanted it. Not unlike Frederick Catherwood's drawings, Robertson's sublime rubbings brought the Maya to the world visually.

Ixkun Stela 1 (Merle Greene Robertson)

ANCIENT TECHNIQUE

Finished Rubbing, Stela 16, Dos Pilas

Merle Greene Robertson was a legend in the world of Meso-American studies and Maya epigraphy. With over five thousand rubbings to her name and thanks to a generous heart, many of these gems have landed in museums and universities throughout the world. She not only explored these faraway Maya sites but shared her knowledge with others. Many expeditions included lucky students who accompanied her in what for each of them would no doubt become the experience of a lifetime.

As an anthropology student at New College of Florida, Carol Wheeler, anthropologist and writer from Guadalajara, Mexico, spent summer, 1977, in Palenque to prepare her undergraduate thesis. A former art major, she planned to do field drawings at the site. She explains how she met Robertson along with artist, author, and Maya scholar, Linda Schele. 

"Both Linda Schele and Merle Greene Robertson were in residence that summer," said Wheeler. "I followed them around like a puppy dog, earnest and annoying as only undergrads can be. They were so kind and gracious about it. Linda listened to my questions and explained their work in her Texas accent and Ms. Robertson invited us to her cottage in the afternoons for lemonade... In my mind, Howard Carter had nothing on these brilliant women."

Never in Fear

NEVER IN FEAR 

With a career that spanned close to 60 years, it will be impossible in this single post to condense all that Robertson accomplished. In reading her autobiography, Never in Fear,  I didn't expect to be so wowed—but I was. Turning page after page of her many accomplishments and explorations, it seemed she lived her life in warp-speed.

So, do we shape our lives, or are our lives shaped by our experiences and those we meet along the way? After stumbling onto Robertson's autobiography, it seems her future unfolded while she was growing up in rural Montana where she developed an interest in Native American culture.

EARLY BEGINNINGS

A Doubtful Handshake, Charles Russell 1910

Born in Great Falls, Montana, she lived on land flanked by the Rocky Mountains. Her interest in Native American culture was ignited when her father took her on visits to see Blackfoot Indian chiefs. She was also influenced by nearby Montana neighbor Charles M. Russell, one of the greatest western artists of the US. Both Russell and her father encouraged her interest in art and drawing. The duo of meeting Blackfoot Indians and watching Russell paint may have shaped her future early on. 

Eventually her family moved to Seattle. She attended university in California and graduated with a degree in art. Later she attended the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where she studied watercolors, oils, photography, and mural painting for three summers before earning her MFA from University of Guanajuato.

Afterwards she went to Tikal, Guatemala, to work on a University of Pennsylvania project where she made architectural drawings of the Central Acropolis. At that time she also started recording monuments by means of rubbings. The technique is an ancient one, with earliest known rubbings taken either from Buddhist texts on wooden blocks in Japan, 8th century, or from rubbings practiced in China, 2nd century. But Robertson brought it to an art form. Her perfection of the technique showed how rubbings could be a means of documentation of Maya relief sculpture.

SUMMER EXCURSIONS TO MAYA COUNTRY

Central Acropolis, Tikal (Afar)

Robertson's working life was as a teacher at Robert Louis Stevenson School in Pebble Beach, California, where she met her second husband, Lawrence "Bob" Robertson. In the summer of 1960 they began taking students to Guatemala and Mexico for summer vacation. The main purpose of the jungle trips was to record in photos and rubbings the magnificent monuments on which the ancient Maya carved. Even as early as the 1960s, the looting of Maya sites was becoming common and Robertson's desire was to record as much of the Maya civilization as possible before it was hacked to pieces or sold off to private collectors.

PALENQUE AND PACAL'S TOMB

Though Tikal initially stole her heart since it was her first jungle excursion, once in Mexico, Palenque replaced Tikal as her number one site. Her documentation of the site was revolutionary. She started with the Temple of the Inscriptions. In order to photograph it before beginning her rubbing, giant scaffolding needed to be constructed of mahogany beams and planks for her to stand on. Nothing she did was easy. Her rubbing of Pacal's sarcophagus lid, Palenque's greatest ruler, took super-human tenacity.             

Sarcophagus Lid of Pacal, Palenque

In her words, "The first thing I started on was the Sarcophagus lid, down in the crypt of the Temple of the Inscriptions. A rubbing had never been done before and for that matter, it had never been photographed head on, only at an angle, by Alberto Ruz...I worked locked in with only a lantern to see by. It was quite a trick getting myself on top of the lid. It took seven sheets of rice paper (1 x 2 meters) to do the rubbing. Also, I had to use oil paint instead of sumi ink; there could be no way I could work on so much space and keep an inked area from running into the sheet of paper next to it. After two weeks of working on the Sarcophagus rubbing, doing several parts of it over time, I felt that Pacal was not only my friend but a long lost relative."

After the lid, she began on the side. "I was ready to do the glyphs around the edge of the Sarcophagus lid...Standing in the water on the floor of the tomb, trying to do the rubbings and not getting the paper wet was no small feat, especially since the space between the walls of the crypt and the sarcophagus was barely wide enough for me to stand. All of the rubbing equipment had to be kept on top of the sarcophagus, making it difficult to reach when standing on the floor.

THE SCULPTURE OF PALENQUE

"Inch by inch, as different features of the ancestors of Pacal emerged, it was as though I was speaking with these dead kings—I now knew them, could call them a name. Being alone in the tomb was like being in their world long ago."

Temple of Inscriptions, Pacal's Burial Site

The results of her Palenque work in the 1970s was documented in a series titled The Sculpture of Palenque, in which she precisely detailed how the intricate structures were built, layer by layer. She searched out pigment sources in that region to exactly duplicate the colors used by Palenque artists, all those centuries ago. The impressive collection of Merle's rubbings represents a major archive of Maya stone monuments throughout the Maya world and has been a major resource for scholars studying the culture.

At Palenque, she met Moises Morales, head guide and major domo of the site. Her friendship with Moises and the Morales family would be a staple in her and Bob's lives for decades. At first they rented a room from him and later built a house next to his in the La Cañada compound in the 1970s.

Temple of the Sun
Reconstruction Painting

Merle and Bob worked together on the Maya projects—she as artist and he as jack of all trades, performing behind the scene duties that greased the wheels. Their presence in Palenque became an interest to traveling scholars and even tourists, and their house, Na Chan-Bahlum in Palenque, became a meeting place for every archeologist working in Chiapas, the Yucatán Peninsula, and Belize as their door was always open. Palenque is where Linda Schele and Merle met and became fast friends.

A MAYA ROUNDTABLE IN PALENQUE

 In 1973, much was beginning to gel in the Maya world. Through conversations initially with Linda Schele and soon with other Mayanists, an idea emerged, the story goes. Why not have a gathering of like minds? They put together a list and in September, sent out feelers for a get-together. Soon after the letters went out, Merle heard from famed archeologist Michael Coe. He suggested that December would be a good time. Not much notice. But the idea struck a nerve and the first Maya conference took place mere months later, mid-December, 1973, and through discussions, lectures, late nights, and visits to the pyramid structures footsteps away, it served as a beginning to breaking the Maya hieroglyphic code and figuring out just who the ancient Maya were. The conference was named Primera Mesa Redonda de Palenque.

The topics on the table ranged from art, history, chronology, iconography, early explorers, inscriptions, sacrifice, trade, and the surrounding area. Word soon got out and everyone came: guides, archeologists, scholars, artists, students. Fourteen universities from the US, Mexico, and Canada came and everyone was asked to have a paper ready to give as a lecture on the art, architecture, or iconography of Palenque. The second year, 1974, the governor of Chiapas, Gobernador Dr. Manuel Velasco Suarez, opened the ceremonies in Palenque's Municipal Auditorium, it had grown that much. The first had convened in Merle and Bob's house in Palenque, Na Chan-Bahlum.

Temple of the Inscriptions (Merle Greene Robertson)

BREAKTHROUGH AT FIRST CONFERENCE

That first year's highlight was the discovery of the names of Palenque's rulers by Floyd Lounsbury, Linda Schele, and Peter Mathews. The second year's highlight along with the governor presiding was the attendance of archeologist Dr. Alberto Lhuillier Ruz, famous for his discovery of the Tomb of the Temple of the Inscriptions where Pacal's sarcophagus was buried.

Eventually, through the melding of minds, the Maya hieroglyphic code was broken, the turning point being the first Roundtable in 1973. But that is another story. 

Robertson was asked to do The Florida Project and finished it in 1976—beautiful reconstructive color paintings of the Temple of the Sun and Palenque trade, six feet in height each. Other panels accompanied these as well.

Rubbing from the Platform of the Eagles and Jaguars, Chichen Itza

Bob and Merle lived in Palenque and helped host Mesas Redondas until Bob's death in May, 1981. Merle went on to do many more Maya rubbings in the Yucatán, specifically at Chichen Itza, where at Hacienda Chichen, Robertson was given her own suite which became headquarters for her crew. After the Chichen Itza project, Merle traveled the world, visiting other archeologists, artists, and friends while painting and walking ancient ruins everywhere on the planet. 

MAYA SITES VISITED

During her time studying and recording the Maya, these are some of the pyramid sites she worked at: Tikal, Sayaxche, Dos Pilas, Aguateca, Itsimte, Naranjo, Tamarindito, Ixkun, Ixtutz, El Peten, Seibal, Yaxchilan, Lubaantun, El Baul, Bilboa, Jimbal, Uaxactun, Lamanai, Caracol, El Palmar, Calakmul, Copan, Palenque, and Chichen Itza.

Merle Greene Robertson died at her home in San Francisco in 2011. She was 97 years old. 

If you enjoyed this post, check out my other works, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. It's available on Amazon with tales of expat life and living within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites. Also, check out my website at www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are available on Amazon where my overview of the 2012 Maya calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed—Demystifying the Prophecy, can also be found.