Writers focusing on Kahlo’s infatuation offer contrasting accounts of her relationship. On one hand, Kahlo is described as an adoring apprentice Trotskyite, naive to the nuances of Trotskyism, but infatuated with the famous revolutionary. Richmond “suspect[s] that … she experienced a serious bout of hero worship.”74 In this case, Kahlo holds a stereotypically feminine, secondary role in relation to Trotsky. On the other hand, she is cast as dangerously manipulative and coy. Herrera claims that the painting is among Kahlo’s “most seductive self-portraits.”75 In essence, interpretations of the painting, and of the affair, construct contradictory character portraits of Kahlo; yet both fit squarely with gender stereotypes. In one instance, she submits to a subordinate relationship to the male revolutionary “authority.” In the other, as seductive mistress, she represents the dangerously coy and manipulative fallen-woman/whore persona. Interestingly, in both narratives Trotsky’s mythic status is nearly unshaken; his character largely maintained as the “great man,” the revolutionary hero.
Just as Trotsky’s sexuality has been exempt in discussions of the painting, there has been no consideration of Kahlo’s possible political sentiment. The dedicatory note begins, “For Leon Trotsky with love I dedicate this painting” and continues with a date, “the 7th of November, 1937.” The date marks the twentieth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, the essence of Trotsky’s public identity and a direct reference to his political stature. Yet because the painting exemplifies the prescribed style and subject matter of diminutive feminine art, the dedicatory note “with love” has obscured political intimations, thereby leading writers to discuss the artist’s sexual rather than political affairs. Considered in a public, political realm and in relation to the date November 7, her clothing holds political rather than sexual significance. Trotskyism generally defined itself as an international movement promoting the tenets of the Bolshevik Revolution through continuous revolution empowering the working class. Kahlo’s clothing is clearly not of a worker but of a member of the turn-of-the-century bourgeoisie, who prospered from exploitation of the working class. Thus it creates a disjuncture between herself and Trotskyism. Helland argues that Kahlo “disapproved of Trotsky’s internationalism” and only because Rivera admired him did she “befriend the exile” and invite him to stay in her childhood home.76 Thus her clothing, which was indeed a theatrical masquerade, as Richmond suggests, may be considered as politically rather than sexually significant. If the painting represents Trotskyist dedication—not by Kahlo herself, but by a fictional character constructed through Kahlo’s masquerade, who indeed attracts Trotsky politically rather than, or in addition to, sexually—it can be considered to instill critical commentary on the international movement. Accordingly, the painting mocks the fact that many supporters who “dedicated” themselves to Trotsky and Trotskyism were among the privileged bourgeois economic and social classes. Trotsky’s exile in Mexico was a bourgeois project, a political cause taken up by the “Mexican bourgeois intellectual” class, of which, Mulvey and Wollen remark, Kahlo was a member.77 The Dewey Commission, which presided over the proceedings resulting from Stalin’s charges against Trotsky, was itself an upper-middle-class, North American contingent of intellectuals. In a sense they, too, dedicated themselves to Trotsky, first by agreeing to oversee a significant international judicial proceeding and then by adjudicating in Trotsky’s favor. Yet, interpretations of Kahlo’s painting consider the politics of class, culture, and ideology to be irrelevant. Instead, she is categorically marginalized as a woman painter depicting impassioned expression.
The ambiguous setting depicted in Kahlo’s painting metaphorically represents the lack of distinction between women’s public and private social status. Kahlo is portrayed standing between drawn curtains that may be interpreted as a grand, private entrance into a domestic environment and/or a public stage which a broad audience may view. As with the juxtaposition in Henry Ford Hospital, Self-Portrait (Dedicated to Leon Trotsky) implodes the public and private. And interpretations of the painting that consider Kahlo’s association with Trotsky as purely sexual reinforce public discourses obsessed with monitoring women’s private lives and gender transgressions as a means to maintain a stable society. It is not surprising that Kahlo’s association with Trotsky has been cast as purely sexual while historical events beyond the artist’s private life have been given little attention, for a discussion of political content would be an acknowledgment that Kahlo crossed a gendered boundary by entering a masculine, political realm in addition to exhibiting aggressive sexual behavior and presuming to produce marketable works of art. Thus in addition to characterizing the nature of Kahlo’s personal feelings toward Trotsky, some interpretations of the painting exemplify how women are confined to feminine prescription, locked out of male-dominated critical, political discourse. The drawn curtains, in relation to interpretations of the painting, signify women’s sustained containment on an apolitical stage that serves to legitimate mythic masculine authority and virility. The painting’s original title was “Between the Curtains,” which, as Mulvey and Wollen assert, “gives the impression of consciously highlighting the interface of women’s art and domestic space, as though in her life (and in her dress) she was drawing attention to the impossibility of separating the two.”78 Acceding to Kahlo’s artistic success and political activism counters mythic gender dichotomy and therefore largely has been discussed separately from paintings upon which social prescription consistently is imposed.
During the late 1930s, Kahlo became an increasingly successful artist, unquestionably traversing a male-dominated domain by actively producing marketable art. Her paintings were exhibited, purchased, and commissioned. As she traveled to New York and Paris for exhibitions of her work, she interacted with well-known artists including Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamps, and André Breton. Her patrons included Edward G. Robinson, A. Conger Goodyear, and Clare Boothe Luce. The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Louvre each purchased one of her self-portraits. But reviews of her exhibitions persistently inscribed feminine illustration as Kahlo’s primary accomplishment. For example, one review of her 1938 exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, which introduced discussion of her work with the anecdote that she had been “too shy to show her work before,” noted that “black-browed … little Frida’s pictures, had the daintiness of miniatures, … and the bloody fancy of an unsentimental child.”79 With Henry Ford Hospital and other graphic, bloody self-portraits included in the exhibition, there is an obvious discrepancy between Kahlo’s unsettling displays of the female body and the description/interpretation of the paintings. Contradictory female stereotypes are inscribed. On one hand the artist (personified by her painting style) is dainty and delicate; on the other hand she is troublesome and untamed, analogous to the child who is not yet properly socialized. Though far less blatant than 1930s reviews, that incongruity permeates interpretations published five and six decades later. For example, Herrera characterizes Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair (figure 7) as a “rueful jest,” and Richmond suggests that it is a “vengeful picture” that portrays Kahlo’s “fantasy to maim her betraying husband.”80 Herrera and Richmond isolate Kahlo’s self-portrait from all social context beyond the interpersonal, arguing that the painting documents Kahlo’s emotions during her 1939 divorce from Rivera. Yet, they also insert stereotypes of the fallen woman, made even more menacing by a fury that further challenges the social balance between masculine and feminine ideals.
As Kahlo enjoyed increasing professional success, her marriage deteriorated. In 1939, when she returned to Mexico from Paris, Rivera asked for a divorce. It is difficult to determine exactly what precipitated his request. Kahlo’s brief, published comments were vague. She explained that “intimate reasons, personal causes” led to “difficulties” when she returned from Paris and New York and that she and Rivera “were not getting along well.”81 Although also enigmatic, Rivera’s comments submit that Kahlo’s celebrated success was a catalyst:
The image placed here in the print version has been intentionally omitted
Figure 7. Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair, 1940. Oil on canvas, 15¾″ × 11″. © Banco de México, Av. 5 de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, 06059, México, D.F. 1998. Reproduction authorized