May 1, 2002
The Love Embrace of the Universe
by Heide Gottner-Abendroth
"The Love Embrace
of the Universe, the Earth, Me and Diego" by Frida
Kalho
Another marvelous painting infuses this theme with cosmic dimensions to mirror matriarchal mythology in its totality: The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth, Me and Diego. A black-andwhite, atmospheric, cloudy face of a woman appears in the background. Her great hands - one is black, the other white - appear in the foreground, and in her arms she holds everything in the center of the picture. She is the universe, the cosmic goddess, in whose white half hangs the red glowing ball of the sun and in whose black half hangs the bright sphere of the moon. She lovingly embraces the smaller goddess, the Earth goddess, who is enthroned as a compact, brown stone figure in the center between the moon and the sun and is the image of Kahlo's wet nurse. She is the Indian Earth goddess, whose breast drips with milk, on whose shoulder grows a tree at a river's edge, and whose sides overflow with lush Mexican vegetation. On one side it is colorful in the heat of the sun, and on the other side it glows in the silver of the moonlight.
The enthroned Mother Earth in turn holds in her arms the enthroned Frida Kahlo, who appears in the three colors of the daughter of the earth, of the Triple moon goddess: Kahlo has black hair and wears a purplish red dress billowing in snow white rays of pleats. Kahlo's breast, too, drips with milk, but her eyes shed tears because she has no children of her own - she was unable to have children as the result of a serious spinal injury that had confined her to a wheelchair since her youth. Kahlo nevertheless holds a child in her arms: her husband, Diego, as a large male baby. Her gesture is identical to that of the Egyptian goddess Hathor as she holds on her lap the adult by baby-sized Pharaoh, her son and husband.
In the matriarchal world the man is at once son, husband, and hero and completely embedded in the universe of women, who lovingly direct everything. The association of the childlike Diego figure with the hero is established through the third eye on his forehead (reminiscent of Mexican gods), and his association with the sun is created through the bundle of flames he holds in his hand. Even Kahlo's shaggy dog is included in this embrace: he is sleeping peacefully under the maguey on the black arm of the Goddess of the Night - an odd Anubis, watchman of the underworld.
from The Dancing Goddess by Heide Gottner-Abendroth, pp. 84 &endash; 85