In some recent reading I ran across this hilarious passage written by Frida Kahlo to her long-time affair and lover, the photographer Nickolas Muray. In 1939, Kahlo was in Paris trying to get a show when she got sick and had no help from André Breton. She was rescued by Marcel Duchamp, who she called “a marvelous painter…who is the only one who has his feet on the earch among all this bunch of coocoo lunatic sons of bitches of the surrealists.” She goes on:

I have decided to send every thing to hell, and scram from this rotten Paris before I get nuts myself. You have no idea the kind of bitches these people are. They make me vomit. They are so damn “intelectual” and rotten that I can’t stand them any more. It is realy too much for my character. I rather sit on the floor in the market of Toluca and sell tortillas than to have anything to do with those “artistic” bitches of Paris. They sit for hours on the “cafes” warming their precious behinds, and talk without stopping about “culture” “art” “revolution” and so on and so forth, thinking themselves the gods of the world, dreaming the most fantastic nonsenses, and poisoning the air with theories and theories that never come true. Next morning, they dont have anything to eat in their houses because none of them work and they live as parasites of the bunch of rich bitches who admire their “genius” of “artists”. Shit and only shit is what they are. I never seen Diego or you, wasting their time on stupid gossip and “intelectual” discussions. that is why you are real men and not lousy “artists”. Gee weez!

Sound like anyone you know?

Read more:

• Frida Kahlo, Paris, France letter to Nickolas Muray, New York, N.Y., 1939 Feb. 16
• Frida Kahlo, Paris, France letter to Nickolas Muray, New York, N.Y., 1939 Feb. 27