Catering to foreigners' Fridamania

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A Day of the Dead exhibition honouring Frida Kahlo features her portrait and ceramic sculptures of Frida and Diego Rivera. (POSTMEDIA)

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Looking into La Casa Azul, you see Frida Kahlo's famous bed with the mirror on the canopy. (POSTMEDIA)

THE room is tiny. Still, a dozen people have gathered there. More are waiting their turn in the adjacent hallway.

All are trying to view the wooden, four-poster bed that is the most famous bed in all of Mexico. It was the bed of Frida Kahlo. The bed has a canopy made of wood. A large mirror attached to the underside of the canopy allows anyone lying on the bed to stare at their own reflection.

Actually, there is a head of sorts on the bed looking into the mirror. It's Kahlo's death mask, placed in the very middle of the bed, rather than on the pillow. A green shawl is carefully arranged around the mask, as if to give this body-less head a torso and shoulders. Poor Frida: She has been condemned to stare at herself, and nothing else, for eternity.

The bed is one of the star attractions at the first stop of a do-it-yourself, daylong Frida Kahlo tour in Mexico City. The bed is inside La Casa Azul, otherwise known as the Museo Frida Kahlo.

This is the home where Kahlo was born in 1907 and died in 1954, a week after her 47th birthday. The exterior of the house is painted a shocking cobalt blue and is in the sleepy, upscale district of Mexico City called Coyacan.

Kahlo's mother arranged for the mirror to be placed on the bed. Kahlo was often bedridden and the mirror allowed her to paint self-portraits, the artworks for which she is best known today.

Kahlo's health was damaged by two disasters. First there was polio, which caused Frida's right leg to be smaller than her left. (That's why she usually wore long peasant skirts.) Then, at 18, she was involved in a horrific collision between a bus and a trolley car. The accident broke several bones, including her spinal column. An iron handrail was driven into her abdomen and uterus, causing her endless reproductive problems and numerous operations later in life.

La Casa Azul is one of three major sites for Kahlo pilgrims to visit in sprawling Mexico City. The other two are Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo in San Angel and Museo Dolores Olmedo in Xochimilco. The three sites are far apart and none is close to a subway stop. Trying to take different taxis from one site to another could be complicated, if not downright dangerous, because some of the taxis prowling the streets are looking for tourists to fleece.

The solution is to hire a car and driver for the day. Most hotel front desks can line you up with a safe driver who will offer a reasonable hourly or daily rate and most likely speak some English.

For my recent Frida Kahlo tour, I booked a driver named Rogelio, who was recommended at the centrally located Hotel Fleming, which I have been patronizing for a decade. We negotiated a rate of 900 pesos (about $70), which would allow me to visit my three chosen sites, plus some other museums, if they could all be accommodated in seven hours.

The time it takes to visit anything by car in Mexico City greatly depends on how congested the traffic is -- and it is often very congested.

At precisely 11 a.m., as prearranged, Rogelio arrived in front of the Fleming. Traffic was still light. In 20 minutes we were at the Casa Azul. I entered and Rogelio went in search of a late breakfast that he described to me later in lip-smacking detail: Orange juice, fresh papaya, two eggs and chilaquiles -- fried corn tortillas topped with salsa and cheese.

The entrance fee to the Casa Azul is 65 pesos (about $5) plus another 60 pesos (about $4.50) for the right to take flashless photographs. The first few rooms offer dozens of drawings and paintings by Kahlo. They're not her best nor her most famous works, but visitors get a good idea of the kind of work Kahlo did as a teenager and later as she moved toward surrealism. Another room is filled with Kahlo family photographs and yet another with paintings by Diego Rivera, Kahlo's on-again, off-again husband. Rivera's status as Mexico's most famous artist is often eclipsed internationally (but not in Mexico itself) by Kahlo.

But Mexicans do love catering to foreigners' Fridamania. Reproductions of her paintings are sold on almost every street corner frequented by tourists. Every souvenir gift shop in Mexico carries Kahlo bric-a-brac, from dolls to fridge magnets.

Some Mexican art historians do not think much of Kahlo's work and see her celebrity as the creation of American and European feminists seeking an icon. What is certain is that the greatest creation by Frida Kahlo was Frida Kahlo, a walking work of art in brilliantly coloured peasant costumes and clunky jewelry, who flirted with communism, had an affair with Leon Trotsky (plus some women), was briefly the toast of Paris and became the most interesting Mexican of the 20th century. Her paintings, collected by such celebrities as Madonna, may just be the icing on the cake.

La Casa Azul exhibits various personal articles of Kahlo's, including her wheelchair, medically necessary corsets, clothing and kitchen utensils, along with a recipe for mole poblano (chicken in a spicy, unsweetened chocolate sauce). Most rooms face a tree-shaded courtyard. The busloads of foreign tourists and Mexican children can make it very crowded.

Just a few blocks from Casa Azul is Plaza Hidalgo. This is a great area to stop for late breakfast or early lunch. The plaza is surrounded by outdoor cafés but tastier and cheaper food can usually be found at restaurants a half-block or so off the plaza.

As we left Casa Azul, my driver decided we had enough time to make an unscheduled stop at Anahuacalli, a museum that looks like a pre-Hispanic pyramid, is built of volcanic rock and is filled with ancient indigenous art collected by Rivera. Quite spectacular.

Your ticket from the Casa Azul, just a few kilometres away, allows you free entry. Otherwise it is 20 pesos ($1.50).

Next, Rogelio took me to Museo Dolores Olmedo. This is a palace on acres of manicured gardens, complete with peacocks and xoloitzcuintle hairless dogs that were plentiful during pre-Hispanic times but now are almost extinct.

The fabulously wealthy Dolores Olmedo was Rivera's greatest patron and, some say, the artist's lover. Relations between Olmedo and Kahlo were understandably tense. Nevertheless, Olmedo ended up with the single greatest collection of Kahlo's art -- more than a dozen major paintings, including these on view that day: Self-Portrait with Monkey, 1945, The Broken Column, 1944, (showing Kahlo's spine as a broken architectural column), and A Few Small Nips, 1935, (graphically showing a woman bloodied by a man who drank too much).

The museum also has loads of work by Rivera, including some superb portraits of Olmedo and her daughter Irene. There are also rooms reserved for photographs of Olmedo hobnobbing with international politicians and celebrities. She died in 2002, well into her 90s.

By the time Rogelio and I left the museum, traffic was crawling. Finally, after about an hour, we arrived at Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo, two box-shaped houses joined by a rooftop catwalk. The larger, coral-coloured house is Rivera's. The smaller, blue one is Kahlo's.

Rivera and Kahlo constantly fought, so they opted for this type of living arrangement from 1934 to 1940.

The conjoined houses were designed by famous architect Juan O'Gorman.

The star attraction is Kahlo's tiny bathroom. Kahlo used to lie in her bathtub for hours, dreaming up surreal paintings. Now, this is where her disciples gather reverently, staring at the tub. I wish one of them would clean Frida's grimy sink beside the tub. The artifacts in the house are constantly being changed and don't necessarily have much connection to Kahlo.

In Rivera's house, his second-floor studio has been kept largely intact. His painting materials and other bric-a-brac are there. The room is dominated by several "judas" figures, three metres or more tall, that Rivera collected. These are demonic figures made of papier-mache, cardboard and cloth and filled with firecrackers that are exploded on the Saturday before Easter Sunday.

The ride back to my hotel took about 90 frustrating minutes. Everywhere traffic was at a standstill because two or three kilometres ahead there would inevitably be a dead car blocking a lane. We returned at 6 p.m., a seven-hour day, as Rogelio first predicted.

The next day, I decided to take a break from Kahlo and visit the new, Holocaust-dominated Museum of Memory and Tolerance. In the gift shop, among the books about the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela and other human rights icons were little packets of Frida Kahlo sticky notes.

Well, I had to buy them. They were overpriced at 120 pesos ($9) and, to top it off, made in China. But, what the heck, the notes will serve as a fitting souvenir of my Frida Kahlo tour.

-- Postmedia News

IF YOU GO

WHERE TO STAY: A charming centrally located hotel with colonial touches, a good restaurant and excellent drivers is the Hotel Maria Cristina, 31 Rio Lerma. Standard double rooms cost about $60. See hotelmariacristina.com

MUSEUMS: Most museums in Mexico are open Tuesday to Sunday (so don't plan a Frida Kahlo tour on a Monday).

MORE: For more on the three sites, see:

museofridakahlo.org.mx

estudiodiegorivera.bellasartes.gob.mx

museodoloresolmedo.org.mx

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 24, 2011 D4