Carole Maso - Beauty is Convulsive: The Passion of Frida Kahlo

Beauty Is Convulsive is a biographical meditation on one of the twentieth centurys most compelling and famous artists, Frida Kahlo (19071954).

At the age of nineteen, Kahlos 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, Mexicos most famous painter, was impressed by the force of Kahlos 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, Fridas 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 Kahlos biography, her letters, medical documents, and her diaries with language that is often as erotic and colorful as Kahlos paintings.

We hope youll 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!

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 youve 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 shes 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 flameimaginevastness 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 alegra 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 alegra 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 shes 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 screamingVen, 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 fathers 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. Dont tear her Alejandro because she is very pretty an ideal type.

She draws a cat and laughs. Another ideal type.

Ven, Alejandro. Lets peel, lets 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 freeanswer 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 itthe way color shape. Diego! Diego Rivera!

Whos there?

She soaps the stairs. And shouting from nowhere, insolent child, watch out fat man your wife is coming! Youll 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.