What's
in
a
name?
Robbie
was
rightly
and
loyally
devoted
to
his
family
name.
When
he
accepted
a
knighthood
at
the
second
time
of
its
being
offered
to
him
I
asked
him
what
he
was
to
be
called-Robbie,
Robin,
Robert,
or
Theodore?
"Well,"
he
said,
"what
was
inappropriate
as
a
name
for
me
at
my
prep
school
might
now
come
into
use."
So
Sir
Theodore
he
became.
"Your
father
would
have
been
pleased,"
I
said.
"Did
you
know
my
father?"
he
asked.
I
did
not.
But
I
knew
that
as
Dr
Fortescue
Fox
of
Strathpeffer
spa
he
had
been
a
lifelong
hero
of
my
95
year
old
grandmother
for
long
after
she
had
been
able
to
pay
her
yearly
visit
to
him
for
treatment
of
her
arthritis.
Just
as
Dr
Fortescue
Fox
was
a
hero
of
my
grandmother,
so
his
son
Theodore
is
a
hero
of
mine.
Sir
Theodore
Fox
died
in
1989;
obituaries
were
published
in
the
BMJ
(1
July,
p
47)
and
Lancet
(1
July,
p
56).
Medical
imagery
in
the
art
of
Frida
Kahlo
David
Lomas,
Rosemary
Howell
Frida
Kahlo
held
her
first
solo
exhibition
in
New
York
in
1938.
Included
were
paintings
that
narrate
her
experience
of
a
miscarriage
six
years
earlier
in
Detroit,
where
she
had
accompanied
her
husband,
the
Mexican
mural
painter
Diego
Rivera.
Reviewing
the
exhibition
Howard
Devree,
an
art
critic
for
the
New
York
Times,
dismissed
Kahlo's
work
as
"more
obstetrical
than
aesthetic."'
Underlying
this
reproach
is
an
attitude
that
art
should
not
concern
itself
with
obstetrics,
a
view
that
any
cursory
glance
at
Western
art
would
confirm.
To
describe
artistic
creation
by
using
metaphors
of
gesta-
tion
and
birth
is
commonplace,
yet
to
depict
such
events
is
tacitly
proscribed.
In
Western
art
scenes
of
childbirth
are
rare
and
visual
accounts
of
abortion
or
miscarriage
non-existent.
They
have
remained
the
province
of
medical
texts.
Openly
flouting
this
conven-
tion,
Kahlo
produced
a
unique
body
of
images
such
that
Rivera
could
proclaim
her
"The
only
human
force
since
the
marvellous
Aztec
master
sculpting
in
black
basalt
who
has
given
plastic
expression
to
the
pheno-
menon
of
birth."2
In
the
culture
to
which
Kahlo
belonged
miscarriage
was
a
source
of
shame:
the
abject
failure
of
a
socially
conditioned
expectation
of
motherhood
and
a
travesty
of
creation
in
which
birth
yields
only
death
and
detritus.
No
rituals
exist
to
commemorate
the
loss
associated
with
miscarriage,
which
is
thus
relegated
to
a
private
domain
of
silent
grief.3
By
speaking
out
Kahlo
FIG
I
-HerFrosia,92CletinoDlrsleoMxcoCt
FIG
1
Heniy
Ford
Hospital,
1932.
Collection
of
Dolores
Olmedo,
Mexico
City
articulated
the
unspeakable
in
a
hybrid
language
derived
partly
from
artistic
traditions
but
also
from
textbooks
of
anatomy
and
obstetrics.
Kahlo's
medical
history
is
a
catalogue
of
misfortune.
She
was
born
in
1907
and
was
affected
by
poliomyelitis,
which
left
her
right
leg
withered
and
her
spine
scoliotic.
When
she
was
18
a
tram
accident
caused
devastating
injuries.
She
was
impaled
through
her
pelvis
by
a
steel
bar
and
sustained
multiple
fractures
of
the
spine,
pelvis,
right
leg,
and
foot.
In
subsequent
years
she
underwent
numerous
orthopaedic
operations
in
vain
atttempts
to
alleviate
pains
in
her
back
and
right
leg,
which
was
eventually
amputated.
Her
death
at
age
47
followed
soon
afterwards.
More
than
one
pregnancy
was
terminated
by
therapeutic
abortion,
and
she
had
two
(possibly
three)
first
trimester
miscarriages
of
uncertain
relation
to
the
accident.
Though
the
severe
penetrating
injury
may
have
caused
uterine
deformity,
her
debilitated
physical
state
manifesting
in
chronic
infections
and
anaemia
was
a
more
probable
contribu-
tory
factor.
Her
best
documented
pregnancy
was
proceeded
with
only
after
much
equivocation
and
weighing
of
the
potential
risks
of
a
caesarean
section.
It
ended
abruptly,
however,'in
a
miscarriage
in
1932.
Henry
Ford
Hospital
(fig
1)
was
painted
shortly
afterwards.
Kahlo
lies
naked
on
a
hospital
bed
in
a
pool
of
blood.
The
title
alludes
to
the
medical
setting
yet
her
bed
is
displaced
into
a
desolate
landscape
to
heighten
the
sense
of
isolation
and
vulnerability.
Superimposed
on
this
scene
is
an
array
of
objects
referring
to
the
miscarriage;
some
evoke
it
literally
while
others
allude
more
obliquely
and
subjectively
to
the
event.
These
are
depicted
in
a
larger
scale
and
a
contrasting
diagrammatic
idiom.
In
this
painting
Kahlo
is
the
hapless
victim
of
an
event
over
which
she
exerts
no
control.
The
impression
of
helpless
isolation
is
aggravated
by
the
lack
of
a
visual
language
to
express
her
trauma.
The
awkward
dis-
juncture
between
two
pictorial
modes-schematic
and
naturalistic-seems
to
gesture
towards
a
grief
that
is
representable
only
as
discontinuity.
Where
the
news-
paper
critic
recoiled
in
distaste
before
this
spectacle
one
sees
Kahlo
striving
to
render
visible
a
blindspot
of
high
cultural
vision.
Medical
imagery
helps
her
to
achieve
this;
immediately
after
the
miscarriage
she
began
foraging
in
obstetric
texts
and
evidently
drew
the
fetus
and
pelvis
from
this
source.
Yet
its
incapacity
to
evoke
the
subjective
dimension
of
her
response
is
indicated
by
the
sharp
discrepancy
between
these
prosaic
forms
and
the
snail,
a
private
allusive
reference.
Frida
and
the
Miscarriage,
1932
(fig
2)
has
a
similar
composition.
The
naked
body
is
central
and
once
again
surrounded
by
axially
arranged
forms:
a
fetus
(the
umbilical
cord
wrapped
like
a
bandage
around
her
damaged
right
leg),
dividing
cells,
and
growing
plants.
The
effect
is
harmoniously
balanced,
however,
where
formerly
it
was
disjointed.
Leaves
shaped
like
phalluses
Courtauld
Institute
of
Art,
London
WC2
David
Lomas,
MA,
postgraduate
student
Queen
Charlotte's
and
Chelsea
Hospital,
London
W6
OXG
Rosemary
Howell,
MRCOG,
registrar
Correspondence
to:
Mr
D
Lomas,
119
Swan
Court,
Flood
Street,
London
SW3
5RY.
BrMed3r
1989;299:1584-7
1584
BMJ
VOLUME
299
23-30
DECEMBER
1989
and
hands
echo
equivalent
shapes
of
the
fetus
opposite.
k.
.4_
The
mutually
excluding
worlds
of
female
procreation
and
masculine
artistic
creation
(Kahlo
holds
aloft
an
artist's
palette)
reunite
in
her
body,
which
is
assimilated
to
cyclical
forces
of
nature.
Tears
suspended
like
jewels
from
her
cheeks
become
raindrops
and
the
moon
;
weeps
in
unison
with
Kahlo,
who
no
longer
stands
utterly
alone.
Her
pictures
are
replete
with
wombs
and
lactating
breasts,
symbols
of
maternal
fecundity,
yet
Kahlo
departs
from
a
facile
stereotype
of
womanhood
to
register
a
more
complex
reality.
Pregnancy
was,
on
one
level,
much
desired
by
her
but
was
fraught
with
risk
and
brought
only
pain
and
distress.
Her
ambivalence
can
be
gauged
in
a
third
image
related
more
distantly
to
the
miscarriage,
My
Birth,
1932
(fig
3).
Painted
shortly
after
her
mother's
death,
it
conflates
two
chronologically
separate
events
by
representing
her
both
giving
birth
and
being
born.
A
picture
of
The
Mater
Dolorosa-the
mother
of
Christ
whose
grief
for
her
lost
son
is
shown
by
tears
and
flesh
pierced
by
daggers'-symbolically
substitutes
for
the
mother
4
.~
~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~~
x
FIG
4-The
broken
column,
1944.
Collection
of
Dolores
Olmedo,
Mexico
City
whs
ead
is
ominously
concealed
by
drapery.
The
spectre
of
death
and
loss
thus
hangs
over
the
very
moment
of
birth.
From
Henry
Ford
Hospital
to
Frida
and
the
Miscarmrage
Kahlo
undergoes
a
transition
from
/
pathetic
victim
to
serene
integration,
a
metamorphosis
in
which
myth
plays
the
leading
part.
Kahlo
found
solace
in
art
as
a
realm
where
meaning
could
be
salvaged
from
the
cruel
randomness
of
her
fate:
"My
painting
carries
within
it
the
message
of
pain
...
paint-
ing
completed
my
life.
I
lost
three
children....
Painting
rizi
i
imi
01
NW.
substituted
for
all
this.
I
believe
that
work
is
the
best
thing."
However
much
it
is
ostensibly
about
later
events,
her
operations
and
miscarriages,
on
another
level
Kahlo's
work
registers
-the
enduring
consequences
of
her
accident
and
reflects
the
mental
work
needed
to
Olmedo
Mexcoovercome
this.
Her
body
was
broken,
its
boundaries
cruptured
and
grossly
violated
by
the
steel
rod
that
pierced
her
pelvis
and
emerged
from
her
vagina.
"I
lost
my
virginity,"
she
plaintively
remarked.
The
resulting
scars
were
deeply
etched.
The
Broken
Column,
1944
(fig
4)
relives
that
first
trauma.
It
portrays
Kahlo
isolated
in
a
barren
fissured
landscape
that
'~~~
~mirrors
her
own
doleful
condition.
By
using
a
FIG
2
Frwda
and
the
micarage1932Colecton
Dolorestechnique
gleaned
from
medical
illustrations
her
body
.lltnof
D
is
shown
open
to
display
her
shattered
spine,
01medo)
Mexico
City
~~~crumbling
classical
column.
The
body
as
a
temple
has
been
desecrated
and
laid
to
ruin.
Kahlo's
ongoing
anxiety
about
her
body
surfaces
in
a
private
sketch-
book,
where,
above
the
image
of
a
frail
marionette
toppling
from
a
pedestal,
she
has
inscribed,
"I
am
DISINTEGRATION."
The
plaster
corsets
in
which
Kahlo
was
encased
and
illih
a
'-
~
~~~~~~which
she
painted
and
decorated
function
symbolically
_
<
Y
=
as
shields
or
armotr
warding
off
a
hostile
world.
A
defensive
posture
is
likewise
evident
in
Self
Portrait
_
with
Monkey,
1940
(fig
5),
in
which
her
face
is
blankly
mV
inexpressive
and
the
space
shallow
and
crowded
by
excessive
foliage.
The
picture
actively
rebuffs
either
psychological
or
visual
penetration
by
the
spectator
and
hence
may
be
related
back
to
the
initial
traumatic
event.
The
umbilical
cords,
arteries,
tendrils,
roots,
d
and
bandages
in
her
canvases
are
like
talismans,
_
signifying
connection
and
promising
to
heal
divisions.
FIG
3-My
birth,
1932.
Private
collection,
United
States
Her
method
of
working
suggests
analogies
on
an
BMJ
VOLUME
299
23-30
DECEMBER
1989
1585
imaginative
plane
with
the
surgery
that
aimed
at
4
restoring
her
disrupted
physical
self.
According
to
an
acquaintance,
"They
had
to
put
her
back
in
sections
as
if
they,were
making
a
photomontage,"'
and
it
is
in
the
form
of
piecemeal
collages
that
her
paintings
are
constructed.
In
Self
Portrait
with
Dr
Farill,
1951
(fig
6)
painted
as
a
thanks
offeri
g,
this
analogy
is
ex,plicit
as
her
brushes,
drippingred
paint,
evoke
surgical
scalpels.
The
incorporation
of
overtly
medical
iconography
into
Kahlo's
painting
has
thus
far
been
treated
as
an
incidental
element
subordinate
to
the
aim
of
articulating
.
her
experience.
Yet
its
importance
far
exceeds
this
.
Kahlo
began
using
medical
imagery
in
1932
just
as
Rivera
was
painting
the
Detroit
murals
that
include
a
panel
devoted
to
modern
science
and
medicine.
A
pamphlet
describes
him
painting
on
a
scaffold
l
"littered
with
specimens
of
the
objects
he
chose
to
represent.
Strewn
about
him
were
fossils,
crystals,
fruits,
vegetables,
books
on
anatomy.5
Kahlo
too
gathered
texts
of
anatomy
and
obstetrics
and
in
her
bedroom
kept
a
fetus
in
a
jar
of
formaldehyde-a
lugubrious
gift
from
her
friend
Dr
Eloesser.
Rivera
FIG
7
-
Letter
to
A
lejandro
Gomez
Arias
IX,
1946.
Private
collection,
Mexico
City
may
have
provided
the
initial
impetus,
but
there-is
a
'
~~~vast
disparity
between
their
use
of
medical
imagery.
In
1943-4
Rivera
painted
two
murals
of
the
history
of
cardiology
for
the
Instituto
Nacional
de
Cardiologia
in
Mexico
City.
His
brief
for
the
project
dictated
that
the
ascent
of
knowledge
be
represented
by
a
pantheon
of
"cmen
striving,
striving
in
an
upward
march."
The
murals
are
dedicated
to
Dr
Chiivez,
who
was
inspired
to
write:
"Science
was
not
born
today,
nor
yesterday;
it
has
been
gestated
painfully
through
the
centuries
in
the
thought
of
man.
The
pain
of
birth
and
the
Faustian
j'oy
of
creation
join
at
each
of
the
stellar
moments
of
scientific
history
when
an
idea,
a
theory
or
a
discovery
-comes
into
being."
The
florid
metaphor
of
gestation
and
birth
has
a
cutting
edge
as
only
a
single
woman
is
included-
a
patient.
FIG
5
-Self
portrait
with
monkey,
1940.
Collection
of
Otto
Atencto
Diego
depicts
the
birth
of
cardiology
while
-Frida
Troconis,
Caracas
paints
scenes
of
actual
childbirth.
Where
the
former
are
hugely
and
heroically
masculine,
the
latter
are
modest
in
scale
and
unheroic
and
speak
of
female
experience.
In
the
murals
artistic
modernism
reinforces
AL
the
theme
of
medical
progress;
art
and
science
are
locked
in
a
mutually
uplifting
embrace.
Kahlo,
by
.mcontrast,
uses
medical
imagery
in
a
disruptive
way
as
a
foreign
element
that
causes
one
to
question
the
boun-
daries
and
exclusions
enforced
by
art.
Ironically,
as
an
adolescent
Kahlo
had
embarked
on
a
course
of
study
leading
to
medical
school,
but
her
accident
prevented
her
from
pursuing
this
career.
Yet
as a
patient
she
later
overcomes
her
dependency
on
medical
authority
by
pastiche
and
appropriation
of
its
-language.
In
a
letter
written
after
her
operation
for
spinal
fusion
in
1946
she
encloses
a
casual
sketch
(fig
7)
in
the
distinctive
style
and
format
of
medical
notation
to
depict
the
wounds
on
her
back.
Furthermore,
it
adopts
the
doctor's
viewpoint
to
scrutinise
her
body
from
a
position
that
was
physically
denied
her
as
a
FIG
6-Selfportrait
with
DrJuan
Farill,
1951.
Collection
of
Gallery
patient.
By
this
inversion
she
negotiates
a
degree
of
Arvil,
Mexico
City
autonomy,
at
least
within
the
field
of
visual
representa-
BMJ
VOLUME
299
23-30
DECEMBER
1989
1586
tion.
A
similar
strategy
can
be
discerned
in
other
images.
In
My
Birth
Herrera
notes
that
the
scene
is
examined
from
the
position
of
a
medical
attendant,'
a
viewpoint
often
used
to
depict
childbirth
in
obstetric
texts.
Here
the
device
also
heightens
the
shocking
candour
of
the
image.
The
knowledge
Kahlo
sought
about
her
body,
"Who
knows
what
the
devil
is
going
on
inside
me,"
was
illicit:
her
biographer
recounts
that
after
her
first
miscarriage
she
begged
staff
to
give
her
textbooks
with
illustrations
of
the
event
but
was
refused.'
A
complement
to
this
knowing
and
ironic
mimicry
to
a
forbidden
medical
genre
is
her
parody
of
gender.
The
Self
Portrait
with
Cropped
Hair,
1940,
best
known
of
her
many
portraits,
was
painted
while
estranged
from
Diego.
In
it
she
mockingly
dons
an
oversized
suit
belonging
to
Rivera
as
if
to
deflate
his
mythical
larger
than
life
bravado.
The
significance
of
Kahlo's
appropriation
of
medical
imagery
is
bound
up
with
the
contradictory
predica-
ment
of
a
female
intellectual
in
the
1930s.7
Because
of
her
association
with
Rivera
she
gained
entrance
to
an
emancipated,
secular
milieu
of
artists
and
intellectuals
where
scandal
was
courted
and
that
afforded
her
considerable
latitude
to
confroflt
and
affront
conven-
tional
mores.
Maybe
she
was
able
to
exploit
the
privileged
status
of
medical
imagery
to
expose
parts
and
functions
of
the
body
that
decorum
normally
hides
and
thus
sidestep
the
strictures
of
a
chauvinist,
Catholic
society.
In
Henry
Ford
Hospital
Kahlo
dared
to
display
not
only
her
naked
body
in
public
but
her
soiled
linen
too.
The
foregoing
images
openly
declare
their
medical
sources
to
underline
the
act
of
appropriation.
In
contrast,
Self
Portrait
with
Monkey
contains
a
more
veiled
reference
to
the
medical
texts
Kahlo
so
assidu-
ously
scoured,
but
which
is
none
the
less
integral
to
the
pictorial
effect.
The
red
ribbon
that
winds
round
her
neck
confers
an
air
of
foreboding
and
surely
refers
to
obstetric
images
of
cord
strangulation,
in
which
the
lifeline
of
a
fetus
becomes
the
instrument
of
its
death.
Beneath
the
lavishly
painted
surface
and
behind
her
seemingly
impassive
mask
lurks
a
sense
of
impending
doom.
Small
wonder
the
surrealist
poet
Andre
Breton
would
describe
her
art
as
a
ribbon
around
a
bomb.8
Thus
one
is
returned
to
Kahlo's
self
portraits.
The
frank
intimacy
of
her
painting
almost
inevitably
dictates
a
biographical
reading.
Against
the
grain
of
allegorical
painting
she
stridently
asserts
the
validity
of
her
concrete
experience
as
a
subject
for
art.
The
presence
of
a
particularised
subject
in
Frida
and
the
Miscarriage,
where
an
anonymous
female
figure
would
usually
appear,
exemplifies
this.
While
the
events
she
depicts
are
intensely
personal
the
language
of
their
expression
is
not.
It
is
a
paradox
that
given
her
avowed
rejection
of
Catholicism
Kahlo
constantly
draws
on
its
rich
visual
traditions;
the
tears,
wounds,
and
broken
hearts
are
those
of
the
Mater
Dolorosa,
whom
she
repeatedly
invokes
to
symbolise
her
plight.
What
seems
at
first
|~~~~~~~~~~~~~r
sm
,
NO
~~~~~~~~~~~~~..
|
l~~~~~~~
~~~~~
~
...1
:..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~1*S
Frida
Kahlo
and
Dr
Farill
in
1952
sight
a
spontaneous
outpouring
of
raw
emotion
is,
in
fact,
distanced
and
mediated
through
culture.
Rivera,
who
believed
passionately
in
the
political
mission
of
art,
insisted
that
her
painting
was
"individual-collec-
tive."2
Her
body
is
a
site
where
wider
political
concerns
intersect:
the
issue
of
Mexican
nationalism
versus
dependence
on
a
technologically
and
medically
superior
North
America
informs
the
juxtaposition
of
motifs
drawn
from
these
disparate
sources.
In
pictures
such
as
Frida
and
the
Miscamage
medical
anatomy
converses
on
an
equal
plane
with
myth
and
popular
Mexican
beliefs
about
the
body
and
illness;
each
is
affirmed
as
a
legitimate
source
of
meaning.
Kahlo
used
medical
imagery
to
record
her
own
singular
history.
The
paradox
is
that
in
doing
so
she
exploded
preconceptions
of
what
is
permissible
in
high
art
and
proclaimed
a
message
"individual-collective"
in
its
many
resonances.
1
Herrera
H.
Frida.
A
biography
of
Frida
Kahlo.
New
York:
Harper
and
Row,
1983:50;142;148;157;231.
2
Rivera
D.
Textos
de
arte.
Mexico
City,
1986:
282-93.
3
Hall
RC,
Beresford
TP,
Quinones
JE.
Grief
following
spontaneous
abortion.
Psychiatr
Clin
N
Am
1987;3:405-20.
4
Warner
M.
Alone
of
all
her
sex.
The
myth
and
the
cult
of
the
Virgin
Mary.
London:
Weidenfeld
and
Nicolson,
1976:206-23.
5
Anonymous.
The
Diego
Rivera
Frescoes.
A
guide
to
the
murals
of
the
garden
court.
Detroit:
Detroit
Institute
of
Arts,
1933.
6
Chavez
I.
Diego
Rivera:
sus
frescoes
en
el
instituto
nacional
de
cardiologia.
Mexico
City:
Sociedad
Mexicana
de
Cardiologia,
1946.
7
Franco
J.
Plotting
woman.
Gender
and
representation
in
Mexico.
London:
Verso,
1989.
8
Breton
A.
Surrealism
and
painting.
London:
Macdonald,
1972:141-4.
Meuse
nr
Dinat
by
John
Horder
BMJ
VOLUME
299
23-30
DECEMBER
1989
1587
