Carole Maso
Beauty is Convulsive: The Passion of Frida Kahlo
About the Book
Beauty Is Convulsive is a biographical meditation on one of the twentieth century’s most compelling and famous artists, Frida Kahlo (1907–1954).
At the age of nineteen, Kahlo’s life was transformed when the bus in which she was riding was hit by a trolley car. Pierced by a steel handrail and broken in many places, she entered a long period of convalescence during which she began to paint self-portraits. In 1928, at twenty-one, she joined the Communist Party and came to know Diego Rivera. The forty-one-year-old Rivera, Mexico’s most famous painter, was impressed by the force of Kahlo’s personality and by the authenticity of her art, and the two soon married. Though they were devoted to each other, intermittent affairs on both sides, Frida’s grief over her inability to bear a child, and her frequent illnesses made the marriage tumultuous. This prose poem is typical Maso — vigorous, daring, always original. She brings together parts of Kahlo’s biography, her letters, medical documents, and her diaries with language that is often as erotic and colorful as Kahlo’s paintings.
We hope you’ll enjoy this e-book edition from Hol Art Books. Following the text, you'll find:
A biography of the author and a listing of her books
Other fictional Fridas
A social network special offer, and more
Good reading!
Beauty is Convulsive: The Passion of Frida Kahlo
For Catherine Murphy and Harry Roseman
Votive: Vision
She draws. She draws a door — of breath — breathes on the pane the glass and draws — a door — an O spells polio. Six years old.
She draws. She dreams. Walks with her father again. River of glass. To the river of — collecting bits of this and that to examine later under the microscope. To hold. Shells and plants and stones to draw. All is
votive: vision.
Drawn to the swirling. Live your life.
And her beloved papa photographs her and she adores — makes love to the lens even then.
Live your life.
Embrace the life you’ve been given.
Your grave image. Even then. All is
Votive: desire.
And Tina Modotti will photograph you. And Lucienne Block will photograph you. Edward Weston. Nickolas Muray. Lola Alvarez Bravo.
And you make love freely to the lens and your life opens and your life widens like the river. Your grave reflection in the glass — small boats. And the air makes love to you and the heat.
Listen: the drums. And you leave the frame.
Incessant. Your life — just a girl — opening—
Adore.
She loves the sun clanging and she’s drawn. Drawn to the swirling. The way color keeps coming and going. The way color. Drawn to the longing.
Her teacher holds an orange and a flame—imagine—vastness — the planets—
She dreams the orange over — solar system — drawn — to the spinning — She stands in awe.
She draws
Each mark a door.
With her finger in the dirt she makes a three. She dreams….
You are the alegría girl, your lucky numbers are 3, 7, 9.
And I am just trying to keep up. She closes her eyes just a child and touches her dreamy thigh — before—
Before the accident.
Mischievous one. Cheeky. Cheeky one. Climbing trees. Prankster. Anarchic in the afternoon. Already her dark dares — her fierce pursuit of pleasure. Her refusal to refuse joy.
Votive: courage.
You are the alegría girl ferocious child of fire and I am standing next to your heat and light — for all these years.
Aura halo aureole
You leave the frame searching looking Fulang Chang!
Childish pranks. Monkey business. Monkeys hanging. Clinging to your neck Fulang Chang! you shout. Monkeys clinging her sexual—
Sunflower, halo, fire. Setting off firecrackers. Throwing sparklers — light, even then. Hanging from a tree upside down. The sun clanging monkeys children clinging to her neck and she’s drawn. She calls her monkey, Fulang Chang! she shouts.
Irresistible one — taking, asking, begging — looking — looking harder — watching through the window just a child. She sees her face in the glass. Draws — river of. All is
vision
The sun clanging, Fulang Chang! All is light. Drawn to the way color keeps coming and going. The way color
In the public gardens in the whirling of her — drawn.
Aura, halo Alejandro, dreamboat. Teenage Frida screaming—Ven, Alejandro, pink petals — the open fruit — giving up — soaked, juicy pulp and swoon and seed. Need and lush Ambrosia. The soft dark nub.
Votive: cup.
Oh you are a curious one.
In a knapsack Frida carried a notebook with drawings, pinned butterflies and dried flowers, colored pens and philosophy books from her father’s library.
And I am writing after her — just trying to keep up.
Elusive — fleeting beautiful one. And I am left again with everything that escapes the page—
Listen: the judgments. And you leave the frame.
In the margins of her love letters she draws a woman with a long neck, pointed chin, enormous eyes. Don’t tear her Alejandro because she is very pretty — an ideal type.
She draws a cat and laughs. Another ideal type.
Ven, Alejandro. Let’s peel, let’s peel back (24 hours of incessant drumming on Good Friday) together gently — watch as I do it — a little bit of skin, my love, my love, just — oh you are a curious one — a little — to reveal (you tease) and later to paint. Fruit spread on the earth. Dripping. Fruit now opened, peeled back beneath an open sky.
See how she—
Free. A little free.
Translucent gleaming.
Sun-drenched
Mischief maker see how she
lit by roses
Incessant dreaming
And she learns to swear. In the square on the days she skips school. Already her dark dares her pursuit of pleasure love letters
Alejandro: Answer meAnswer meAnswer meAnswer me “ “ “ “ “ “ “ “ “ “ “ “
Her extracted heart in her hands — her refusal to refuse pain, posing even then.
Unstoppable — ribbons of light — set me free—answer me.
And she leaves the frame.
Answer me.
The girls say they are dying in the formal European. In the corridor of rules. In the diminutives — in the diminished.
In the regulations. The girls say. Bored with their pedestals.
Their Europe of thorns and decorum. Dark courtyards and order.
Looking. Looking harder.
Watching through the window the child sees her face escape — in the glass and follows it. All is vision. Dream. She draws. Her breath on glass.
The two liked to loiter in the public gardens — drawn — to the light. Green.
Eye and dream.
Look! Oh look!
Watching him on a scaffold at the Preparatoria. Incessant painting. Drawn to the debilitating, the promise — drawn to the fat man Diego Rivera, painting in the air Creation — can you feel it—the way color — shape. Diego! Diego Rivera!
Who’s there?
She soaps the stairs. And shouting from nowhere, insolent child, watch out fat man your wife is coming! You’ll be caught, face of a dog, face of a frog (his hundred clandestine affairs) Just a girl.
My only ambition is to have a child by Diego Rivera, the painter. And I am going to tell him someday.
Frida you are crazy.
Just a girl at the Prepa.
Incessant dreaming: a fat man with a palette
on a scaffold casting
beauty, casting appalling
possibility on her—
childish pranks — to dispel the strangeness.
Her sexual halo even then. You must have been an angel. He mutters from the height.
Heat and light.
And one day she shall marry it.
But for now. And you return to the frame. And posing is like freedom some — sometimes.
Her dreamy teenage dreamboat, Alejandro — who will leave her—sorry — loose, promiscuous one.
Incessant drumming dreaming
Answer me.
Voracious in the afternoon.
The girls say they are dying — incessant dreaming — asked to conform. In the thorned courtyard — exhausted — by all the tired forms.
Asked to believe those.
Assume those.
Revere those.
(Draw a blue door)
Preposterous sexual stances of modesty and silence—
A little free, a door. The girls liked to kiss in the shadows….
Smooth and perfect thigh tonight
World tonight
Voracious, irreverent — assume those postures of I’m sorry and silence — curious one, self-indulgent, mischief maker. Fulang Chang! she shouts with glee.
Answer me.
Who’s there?
Drawn to the vision.
Partially revealed. Voracious: microscope, lens, window, eye.
The girls say they are in those rooms of judgment and pronouncements, dying. In the hedges. And they leave the frame.
Sparklers. And she draws a blue door. Dips her hands in the
Votive: chalice
The girls liked to—
kiss sometimes and other things
The two girls loved to dance
Her charms and secret numbers — setting off sparklers. Fetish, altar, free a little—venga—Come to me. Blue world, magenta, red. The way color keeps opening flower chalice. Just a girl.
Mischief maker … drinking tequila like a real mariachi.
The girls say they are.
The two girls loved to loiter in the public gardens of the university district where they would listen to the organ-grinders and chat with truants and newsboys. The two girls loved. And the bells.
Tolling miraculous cup. Sun drenched. She dips her hands.
Beauty is convulsive, as Breton will say. As your friend André Breton will say someday—or not at all—
Incessant dreaming Answer me.
She is the alegría girl — the way beauty keeps coming — the way color vibrates — convulsive — drawn
to the swirling
drawn
to the light.
She is the alegría girl — incessant dreaming — sparklers—come to me—already on fire.
ACCIDENT
“… A short while ago, maybe a few days ago, I was a girl walking in a world of colors, of clear and tangible shapes. Everything was mysterious and something was hiding; guessing its nature was a game for me. If you knew how terrible it is to attain knowledge all of a sudden — like lightning elucidating the earth! Now I live on a painful planet, transparent as ice. It’s as if I had learned everything at the same time, in a matter of seconds….”
Votive: Diego
Nothing is comparable to your hands and nothing is equal to the green-gold of your eyes. My body fills itself with you for days and days. You are the mirror of night. The violent light of lightning.
The perfect flame of you.
Smell of oak essence, memo-
ries of walnut, green breath
of ash tree. Horizon and land-
spaces I traced them with a kiss.
Oblivion of words will form
the exact language for
understanding the glances of
our closed eyes.
==You are intangible
and you are all the universe which
I shape into the space of my
room. Your absence springs
trembling in the ticking of the
clock, in the pulse of the light;
you breathe through the mirror. From
you to my hands, I caress
your entire body, and I am with
you for a minute and I am with
myself for a moment. And my
blood is the miracle which
runs in the vessels of the air
from my heart to yours.
My Prince sapo-rana. Idol-mountain. Fountain flower. Child. My fingertips touch your blood.
ACCIDENT
it is coming. my hand. my red vision.
ACCIDENT
Red covers the page. And a kind of glitter.
Look.
~ ~ ~
The visible wings of the misshapen angel.
Votive: Child
Because I wanted you with all my blood but it was not to be — because I wanted you with everything — little monkey, melon, swallow — color, color
Heart, I would have given you every color
but it was not to be….
In a 1930 drawing of herself and Rivera, she drew and then erased a baby Diego, seen as if by X-ray vision inside her stomach: the infant’s head is up, his feet are down.
Three more times she shall try to have a child
Frida had all kinds of dolls: old-fashioned ones, cheap Mexican dolls made of rags or of papier-mache. Chinese dolls are propped on a shelf near her pillow. Beside her bed is an empty doll bed where she once kept a favored doll, and three little dolls are enclosed with her baptism dress in a vitrine in her bedroom. One that she treasured, a boy doll that had been given to her by a cachucha (probably Alejandro) shortly after her accident, when she was hospitalized.
Because I wanted
The earth is a grave and the earth is a garden poor child rest there, poor child play there forever. The earth holds the tiny hands, the eyes, the little genitals, rest.
Its birth certificate filled out in elegant scroll His mother was Frieda Kahlo
take this sorrow: child
I would give you fistfuls of color
if only
alegría
I would have given you.
Because I wanted you come to me
the cupped butterfly, painted black.
The city and bay are overwhelming. What is especially fantastic is Chinatown. The Chinese are immensely pleasant and never in my life have I seen such beautiful children as the Chinese ones. Yes, they are really extraordinary. I would love to steal one so that you could see for yourself.
The central Frida is armless
the useless umbilicus
darling one: small votive, flickering in the dark—
I weep flowers, I weep song, I bleed
the ballerina was broken
the mute blue testimony. She sits at the end of the bed smoking utterly alone. Beside her a grinning doll — together on a child’s bed. Misery without end.
My painting carries within it the message of pain…. Painting completed my life. I lost three children…. Paintings substituted for all of this. I believe that work is the best thing.
votive: faith
You paint the dead baby, all dressed up with nowhere to go. Poor child, poor Frida. Feet first, the soles of his feet facing us — the milky eyes, the dribble of blood, Christ flagellated on his pillow — poor tiny loser, impossible, the never to be, poor thing. Holding a last gladiola. Dressed up for Paradise.
Begging Dr. Eloesser for a fetus in formaldehyde. Because I wanted—
House for birds
Nest for love
The only thing I bought here were two old-fashioned dolls, very beautiful ones. One is blonde with blue eyes, the most wonderful eyes you can imagine. She is dressed as a bride…. Both are lovely, even with their heads a little bit loose. Perhaps that is w
hat gives them so much tenderness and charm. For years I wanted to have a doll like that, because someone broke one that I had when I was a child, and I couldn’t find it again. So I am very happy having two now. I have a little bed in Mexico, which will be marvelous for the bigger one. Think of two nice Hungarian names to baptize them.
The women pray
Accident: 10 Our Fathers, 10 Hail Marys, 3 Glory Bes.
The limping lacerated Mexican saint
She watched other people’s children. Because it was not to be.
Pray for us sinners.
The useless petitions
3 Not to Be’s
black umbilicus
paint
an umbilical cord emerges from the placenta — the large red
vein paint
paint
even the moon is weeping
paint
heartbreak all the bleeding children
ACCIDENT
The doll asleep in the lacquered box.
ACCIDENT
¡Que venga: la bailarina! ¡La bailarina!
The dancing disembodied torso.
Because I wanted you (O Mexico)
On the cracked earth — against mountains — an agitated Mexican sky, her prickly pears — states of ripeness, states of fecund — split, delicious, splotches of blood
O Mexico
She cradles a sugar skull and croons
Tonight I will get drunk
Child of my heart
Tomorrow is another day
And you will see that I am right….
And at the Salón México, Frida watching with pleasure the women dancing. The little flask of cognac she carried. Her coctelitos
fuck. love.
cradling a sugar skull—
drawn to the swirling she draws
Muertes en Relajo. Yes, the dead having a fling. Blood mutilation and sacrifice, give the dead a little life. The gringos are so glum!
dance, dance!
leaving a foot at the fetish altar.
She laughs
O you are broken
drinking tequila
One cigarette after another