Art and Rebellion

Few people know this about me, but I used to be a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America – back when I had long hair, poet glasses, and a spine. Mind you, the DSA is not the Socialist Party, but still, it plays pretty near the foul line in left field. Like full-on socialists, DSAers are very much about limiting corporate power; the big difference is that DSAers still want their 401 k plan and full medical and dental.

The point is I’ve always focused a little more on the “red” in “red, white and blue”. So naturally I was excited about visiting the house of artist Frida Kahlo (my favorite Marxist Mexican woman with a mustache), and the Mexican home of Leon Trotsky (my favorite Bolshevik revolutionary to be assassinated by an ice axe), during our recent visit to Mexico City. The two homes-cum-museums are just a few blocks away from one another in Coyoacán – a peaceful neighborhood in the south central region of the city. (There hasn’t been an ice axe attack reported there in over 70 years; property values have risen nicely.)

We started out at Frida’s house – where the incomparable artist was born and where she lived the majority of her life, painting away the pain of bones that shattered in a bus accident at the age of 18. Whenever she was not covering a canvas with graphic yet gorgeous depictions of her broken insides, she used it to portray the power and the plight of Mexican workers and indigenous peoples, or to obsess over her beloved, Diego Rivera, who, on any given day, gave her more artistic inspiration than most could ever hope for and more heartbreak than most could ever bear.

We stood next to the bed where Frida would lie motionless in traction one hour, and the next paint masterpieces – relying on a mirror above her while she lay supine. We stared at the desk upon which still lie the decaying tubes of paint that Diego would mix to immortalize his models before pouncing on them. We walked through perfectly maintained rooms where these two mad radical artists ate, slept, screwed, and screamed in oils and agony.

Miranda was so moved and impressed by Frida’s talent and mystique, she has since decided to take up either painting or photography, and to do everything in her power to grow a uni-brow. And me, I was so awed by Diego’s talent and mystique, I have since decided to do everything in my power to get Miranda to let me wear a smock and hang out with nude women.

As alluded to earlier, when not painting – and even while painting – Frida and Diego immersed themselves in progressive communist politics. Hence, when they found out that comrade Trotsky – a man they deeply respected and admired – was in exile from Stalinist Russia, they offered their home to him and his wife, Natalia. Naturally, Trotsky was extremely grateful for such hospitality, and to express his sincere gratitude he had an affair with Frida.

From Russia, with love.

The temptation of having Frida in the other room distracted poor Trotsky from his manifesto writings; thus he decided to rent his own house. The decision to move sat well with Trotsky’s wife, who had suspected that something was going on between her husband and Frida after noticing the beard-burn on Leon’s chest.

When you first step into the Trotsky house/museum, it’s shocking to see how modestly the man lived while in exile. I mean, this cat was the founder and former commander of the Red Army, and there he was in Mexico living in glorified servants’ quarters: A tiny kitchen with very basic utensils; a bathroom that doubled as a clothes closet; a drab bedroom practically devoid of natural light; and a small study.

Ah, the study. The scene of the fatal blow. The place where a single swing of a pick-axe by an assassin – an avid supporter of Stalin – took a lethal chunk out of one of the most brilliant and fearless brains of the 20th century. It’s one thing to sit through a college lecture on Trotsky’s death; it’s quite another to stand in the very spot where the legendary Ruskie got lobotomized without the benefit of anesthesia.

It was all so sobering, and made me wish that Miranda and I had reversed the order of our house visits – to end with revolutionary art instead of a revolutionary’s murder. Nonetheless, I walked out of the Trotsky house feeling not leveled but lifted. We had just spent several hours with two heroes who dedicated their entire existence to revealing – each in their own way – as much truth and beauty as they possibly could; two people who lived extraordinarily authentic lives, defying conformity and convention until they reached the grave.

On the way to lunch, I thought back to my DSA days, back to when I was hell-bent on shaking shit up, railing against greed and injustice, and extending an arm to help the fallen stand. I remembered that I once swore I would use my pen (okay, my keyboard) to push limits and pierce souls, not to pander to corporate giants. While pondering all of this, I felt a fair amount of self-disgust over the compromising man I had become, and promised myself that I would get back to my pseudo-socialist, artistic roots. I could sense that Miranda had been moved as well; that she, too, after brushing against such creative and indefatigable icons, was ready to reinvent herself.

Of course, such momentous transformations don’t just happen overnight. It’s going to take some time for me to grow my hair out again and re-memorize quotes from Mao Tse-tung. But we are making small strides. Miranda has been reading fewer magazines, and her uni-brow is coming along beautifully. And me, well, I may not have pierced any souls with my words yet or conspired to take down any multinational goliaths, but I did win at Scrabble the other night and later used my corporate Amex card to pay for a non-business dinner.

The revolution, my friends, will not be televised.