La Casa Azul - Frida Kahlo in Her Own Words And Photographs

Friday, 1 July 2016, 11:23 am
Article: Howard Davis

Frida Kahlo (1907 - 1954) was born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón, the daughter of a German photographer and a Mexican mother, on the outskirts of Mexico City. Her life began and ended in in her home at Coyocan, known as 'La Casa Azul,' or the Blue House. Indigenous Mexican culture and tradition were central to her work, which has sometimes been characterized as naive or folk art. Although she also had much in common with the Surrealists (Andrew Breton described her painting as a "ribbon around a bomb"), Kahlo rejected the Surrealist label, insisting that her work reflected more of her reality than her dreams.

Kahlo had a tumultuous marriage, which somehow survived multiple mutual infidelities, with the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. After contracting polio as a child and enduring a horrific traffic accident in her teens, Kahlo had difficulty walking. She was wracked with pain from a number of botched operations and zonked out on Demerol and morphine in her final years. Recovering from her injuries isolated her and this seclusion clearly influenced her works, most of which are self-portraits. Kahlo suggested, "I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best." Two shows in New Zealand illuminate some of her deepest obsessions and influences - a play based on her diary entires and other writings at the Circa Theatre in Wellington, and an exhibition of her photographic collection in Palmerston North's Te Manawa.

Kahlo the person is almost as fascinating as her paintings, and it's her literally and figuratively fractured life that Sophie Faucher's play 'La Casa Azul,' translated by Neil Bartlett, focusses on. Presented as a collage, it depicts snippets of Kahlo's tempestuous relationship with Rivera. Although her emotional mood swings were volatile (often communing intimately with 'La Pelona' - death), this didn't prevent her from traveling widely in both Mexico and America, as well as taking numerous lovers, both male and female, including Leo Trotsky when he came to live with her and her husband.

A member of the Circa Council first told Rutherford about the original London production, and when she and Harman attended the opening of the photographic exhibition they met Hilda Trujillo, director of La Casa Azul, now a museum dedicated to Kahlo's work. In a recent Dominion Post interview, Rutherford recounted how "I kind of grabbed her, because I thought I really need to meet this woman and how incredible was it that she was in New Zealand and I was doing a play at La Casa Azul? She told me about a secrets about Frida Kahlo that no one else would know, and I've included some things subtly. She saw some of our images and she basically gave us her blessing. I got a real sense that she felt we were creating a story and that Frida Kahlo would love what we are doing."

Inspired by Kahlo's 'Intimate Diary,' and directed by Lindee-Jane Rutherford, this is essentially a Powerpoint production, a necessarily truncated version of her life, reduced to snapshots. This abbreviated approach is perhaps inevitable - how to summarize an extraordinary life into an hour and half? Rutherford gets some innovative help from Ian Harman (Set designer and Costume Designer of the Year at the 2015 Wellington Theatre Awards) who overlays historical events with paintings, diary entires, masks, puppetry, and vivid imagery.

Taking on the role of Kahlo is the delightful Kali Kopae, 2015's Actress of the Year. 'It was one of those tingles up the spine, welling up in the eyes, kind of moments," says Rutherford. "Kali was instantly Frida Kahlo, and I thought … this is the right person." Kopae says she feels privileged to play such as fearless woman and not only does she look the part, but the physicality of her limp and her internalising of the character allow her to inhabit fully Frida's outlandish persona. Gavin

Rutherford's Rivera complements Kopae's performance, capturing all the emotional turmoil he both caused and endured, while Bronwyn Turei (TV2's 'Go Girls') makes her Wellington stage debut rounding out numerous other characters with varying degrees of success.

As well as being a story about pain and tragedy, 'La Casa Azul' is also a love story, intermingled with glimmers of sardonic humor, and presents a disturbing insight into the troubled mind of Kahlo, who once said "I took my tears and turned them into paintings." In lieu of dialogue and conventional character development, the production substitutes a series of vividly-realized tableaux that sketch out the dramatic highlights of Kahlo's complex and conflicted life.

The exhibition at Te Manawa further fleshes out our appreciation of Kahlo's legacy. It provides an illuminating insight into the wide-range of influences, collaborators, and lovers in her life: from her mixed German and Mexican ancestry, to her unfailing admiration for the Russian and Mexican Revolutions, through her association with photographer Edward Weston and his radical assistant Tina Modotti, to friendships with Leon Trotsky, Man Ray, and many others. The most intriguing aspect of the exhibition is a small interactive module which allows viewers to trace the direct connection between some of the photos she collected and the paintings she produced.

For those interested in a more comprehensive account of Frida Kahlo's turbulent life and work, check out Hayden Herrera's definitive 1983 biography and/or Julie Taymor's 2002 film biopic, starring Selma Halyek, Alfred Molina, and Geoffrey Rush.

ENDS

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Howard Davis

Scoop Arts Editor

Educated at Cambridge and UCLA; worked on several major Hollywood feature films and as a Kundalini Yoga instructor in Los Angeles; currently enjoying life in Wellington.

Contact Howard Davis

• Email - howard@scoop.co.nz