Frida + Diego: poems, pictures / pinturas, poemas

Today in Toronto, at the Art Gallery of Ontario, a first-time-ever exhibition in Canada opens:  “Frida and Diego:  Passion, Politics and Painting”.  Combining the divergent artworks of México’s famous bohemian ‘power couple” of the twentieth century, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera – an odd yet charismatic pair of artists/soul-mates.

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Diego Rivera (1886-1957) put México on the map internationally for his enormous public murals depicting Mexican history with a distinct Marxist perspective – and by placing Indigenous people front-and-centre in his work.  Arguably, fellow muralists José Orozco and David Siqueiros were superior artists but Rivera’s vast energy and robust national/historical vision place him at the forefront.  Though in his smaller painted canvases (some of which may be seen at the A.G.O. show) Rivera is wildly uneven as to technique and intellectual perspective – he can be cloying and  mediocre – still, he is an exceptional figure for his vitality alone.

A maverick originality defines Frida Kahlo (1907-1954).  In her short gutsy life she altered people’s perception of what it meant to be a woman painter.  Though her small-size – and they are almost always small – canvases lack painterly finesse , nonetheless they are deeply affecting for their self-absorbed even disturbingly raw subject matter/point of view.  Here  was something new in a female painter – and Kahlo has been embraced by Surrealists, Feminists, champions of “Mestizaje”, Disabled and Chronic-Pain Activists, Body Self-Modifiers, and dedicated Non-Conformists.  All have found what they needed in the work and life of this complex artist and woman – one who continues to fascinate a new generation now discovering her.

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We present three poems in translation from Spanish by young poets who have meditated upon the “meaning of” Diego and of Frida…

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Hoy en Toronto, el 20 de octubre, se inaugurará en La Galería de Arte de Ontario una exposición centrada en obras de los artistas Frida Kahlo y Diego Rivera – y titulada:  Frida y Diego: Pasión, Política y Pintura.  Es la primera vez que están en Canadá las pinturas de estos “compañeros” lo más famosos del arte mexicano del siglo XX.

Y para celebrar este hecho – las reflexiones de tres poetas…

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Eduardo Urueta (pseudonym)

“Poem for Diego Rivera” (December 2011)

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México:

The wet-nurse that breastfed you,

Who gave you your icy tone in love,

And who drew you, with his plump hands, as

Black women, soldiers on fire, Communists, kids;

México misses you –

this place is a fountain of the dismal…

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So pronounced is your brow – like your temper.

So easygoing – so bearable – these mummy-like buildings.

The México of your tree-of-awareness is – like you – dead.

They’ve got skeletons – ‘at par’ now.

We are grey dust – smog – save for

Guanajuato which keeps on with its brightly-coloured houses in the hills and its

Streets smelling of oil paints – almost kissing us.

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The buckets which by you got filled in two days

And by the third became big round chests or trunks-ful,

Were:

1. a nude portrait of (audacious poetess) Guadalupe Amor

2. a transvestite you never wanted and who ‘rouged’ you with his bearded cheeks,

And

3. your dead son by your first wife, Angelina Beloff.

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So much matrimony to satisfy your hefty body,

So much travel to make ‘bug out’ those toad-eyes of yours,

So many kilometres of walls

To fill this country UP with History.

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You are in debt.

You await – you hope for – a novice urbanization.

You have to hope – always – that the

Wall of memory (painted by you)

Bears the weight of – can hold up – the sky for you.

People will continue to love

The “Bellas Artes” fresco,

and that staircase mural decorated by your hands

– until the thing collapses and falls down…

.     .     .

Eduardo Urueta (Seudónimo)

“Poema para Diego Rivera” (diciembre 2011)

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México:

la nodriza que te amamantó,

quien te dio tu gélido acento de amor,

y quien te dibujó, en las manos llenas,

mujeres morenas, soldados en combustión, comunistas, niños;

te extraña

– es una fuente sombría.

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Tan pronunciada tu frente, como tu genio

Tan llevadera la momia de los edificios.

El México de tu árbol-conciencia,

como tú, está muerto.

Se hicieron a la par esqueletos.

Somos polvo gris,

excepto Guanajuato que sigue con casas de color en sus cerros

y sus calles huelen a aceite de pintura, a besos.

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Los cubos que en ti cupieron dos días

y al tercero se volvieron un baúl redondo,

fueron

Un retrato desnudo de Guadalupe Amor,

Un hombre travesti que nunca quisiste y que ruborizaste de rosa

sus mejillas de hombre barbón,

y tu hijo muerto de Angelina Beloff.

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Tanto matrimonio para llenar tu cuerpo gordo

tanto viaje

para llenar tus ojos de sapo

tanto kilómetro de muros

para llenar de historia al país

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En deuda estás.

Te espera el blanco de la novicia urbanización

Te ha de esperar, siempre

el muro de la memoria

te ha de sufrir el cielo

por sujetarte el peso.

Te seguirá amando Bellas Artes

su escalera adornada de tus manos

hasta que se derrumbe…

José Pablo Sibaja Campos

“To Frida”

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Today, when inexorable Time has shown us

How many calendars have gone up in smoke;

Now that the leaves have begun to fall from the trees;

Only just today when the sky seems to be transforming itself into a violent sea;

I – pausing before your face and its glance – have got to say:

Frida Camarada Kahlo,

That which you painted at one time or another as if wanting to speak to me;

The same fixed glance with which you have turned yourself into a nereid, a sea-nymph,

from that murky sea  many people wanted to conquer but which few have achieved.

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To be sure, Frida, there are those who look for you under the shade of some Rivera painting;

Others, naïve ones, find you within the shuttered corridors of a dream

– Poor them! – sad…blind.

They don’t notice that you live in your paintings, your paintings live in you.

Come, Frida, rise up and walk, as if you were the biblical Lazarus.

Show yourself again and let us once more call you:

Woman, Artist, Revolutionary.

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José Pablo Sibaja Campos

“A Frida”

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Hoy que el inexorable tiempo nos ha enseñado

Cuantos calendarios ha quemado ya.

Ahora que las hojas han empezado a caer de los árboles,

Justo hoy que el cielo parece convertirse en un mar violento,

Tengo que decirlo, me detuve ante tu mirada

Frida Camarada Kahlo

Esa que pintaste una y otra vez como queriendo hablarme,

La misma mirada con la que te has convertido en la nereida

Del turbio mar que muchos quisieron conquistar

Pero que pocos han logrado.

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Es cierto Frida algunos te buscan balo la sombra de un tal Rivera,

Otros ingenuos,

Te hallan en los postigos pasillos del sueño

Pobre de ellos, tristes…ciegos.

No se dan cuenta que vives en tu obra y tu obra en ti.

Ven Frida levántate y anda, cual si fueras el Lázaro bíblico

Muéstrate de nuevo y déjanos llamarte una vez más;

Mujer, Artista, Revolucionaria.

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Hellen Chinchilla

“Between transgression and normalcy”

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Why?

Why do you have to be along that line where there are no lines – no horizons?

Why are you not the same as all the others?

Why must you be seen as transgressive and not as normal?

Where is that fine line that keeps you apart?

Apart to be what you must be!

Forced by life, by decision, and by pain to be in that line off to one side,

where the others, even though they wanted not to be there,

are leaving behind the boundaries of the hetero…

Oh, you knew how to love…

You – different Woman,

Woman-transgressor,

Normal Woman – and then some.

Woman.

Hellen Chinchilla

“Entre la transgresión y la normalidad”

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¿Por qué?

¿Por qué debes estar en la línea dónde no hay líneas?

¿Por qué no eres de las mismas?

¿Por qué tienes que ser vista como transgresora y no como normal?

¿Dónde está esa delgada línea que te mantiene al margen,

Al margen de ser lo que debes ser?

Obligada por vida, decisión y dolor a estar en la línea de al lado

En donde las otras, aunque quieran no pueden estar

Dejando atrás la frontera de lo hetero…

– Supiste amar…

Mujer diferente,

Mujer transgresora,

Mujer normal – o una más…

Mujer.

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Traducciones del español al inglés / Translations from Spanish into English:   Alexander Best

“A Frida” y “Entre la transgresión y la normalidad” y “Poema para Diego Rivera”

©  José Pablo Sibaja Campos, Hellen Chinchilla, Eduardo Urueta

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Retratos de Frida Kahlo:  dibujos hechos por unos adolescentes y niños en Toronto, Canadá, otoño de 2012: