Well, I'm all excited that my mother will be visiting from SF, but now I've discovered that there is a fabulous show,
Mexico as Muse: Tina Modotti and Edward Weston at the SFMOMA! Since I doubt I can sneak away before the show ends Jan 7, I will have to make do with this
delightful interactive program, and look for this book in the library:
Patricia Alber's Fire, Shadows,Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti. Albers uncovered a cache of letters and photographs which almost doubled the known number of photos by Tina Modotti. As with Frida Kahlo, for years Tina Modotti was primarily known for her beauty as a model for painters and photographers, for her love affairs, as a figure of scandal. The work of feminist art critics and scholars brought new attention to Modotti as an artist and photographer. The 1996 Tate Gallery show pairing Tina Modotti's work with that of Frida was a part of the revival of interest in the lives and art of both women, and in the Mexican artistic and intellectual world of the twenties and thirties.
Because Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera began their courtship at her parties, she appears in the film
Frida in her "femme fatale" version, Ashley Judd dancing the tango with Salma Hayak. There are several biographies of Modotti, but she remains a controversial figure, and biographers are
still having trouble seeing how the pieces of her life fit together.
The real Tina Modotti (1896-1942) was born in Udine, in the north of Italy. Her family was very poor, and Tina had to leave school to work in a factory when she was a child.
Like so many Italians at the turn of the century, her family sought to survive through immigration, first to Austria and then to the US. Her father came over in 1906, and brought the family in stages later. This is more or less the story of both my great-grandfathers on my mother's side, who were stone masons working in Greenwich, Conn, and who brought my grandparents over when they were young children in 1905 and 1906. North Beach in San Francisco (my home town) was where Tina arrived in 1913 as a teenager. She worked in a shirt factory, and then as a seamstress but also joined the community of artists, acting in theater. My mother has a friend who has collected the oral histories of elderly Italians who lived in North Beach. I wonder where Tina lived in San Francisco?
Tina married an artist, and they went to Los Angeles where she acted in silent films, often having to supply her own costumes, typecast as the exotic femme fatale. She wanted to learn photography, and began taking lessons from Edward Weston. They became lovers. When her husband went to Mexico City, he wrote about the
excitement and artistic ferment there. She was to join him, but he died before she arrived. Weston joined her there, and it was in Mexico- the "
Mexican Renaissance"-- that she produced the body of her photographic work. Elena Poniatowska, author of a novelized version of Tina's life, writes about how Tina was scandalous to Mexicans, even among the scandalous Mexican artists and revolutionaries, because she lived with a man without marrying him, posed nude for artists, and went out with men to bars. When I first went to Mexico City, there were still signs prohibiting women from entering bars, and it was assumed that any women who did go in were there to do business of some kind.
Weston and Modotti were partners; in exchange for learning to be a photographer, she ran his studio, and eventually they were doing jobs together. Then she began getting her own jobs, and displaying her own work
. Almost all of her pictures were taken while she lived in Mexico City. Albers was able to gain access to a set of photos and documents that were among the things kept by her husband's family; the number of her known photos has grown from around 250 to 400.
This photo, of a puppeteer's hands, is on display in the Minneapolis Institute of Art. To look at more of her photos, check out
this set of links on the
OCAIW site.
After Weston's departure, she became involved with the Cuban
JulioAntonio Mella, journalist, political organizer and communist party founder. One night as they were walking together, he was gunned down. Was he killed by Cuban dictator Machado's operatives, as is still claimed in Cuba today? Was he a victim of anti-Trotskyite purge? Was Stalinist agent Vittorio Vidali, whom Tina was later to marry, involved in his death? Tina herself was accused of Mella's murder, but the press attacked her as much for her sexual freedom as for her politics, publishing nude photographs taken by Weston, and she was forced to leave Mexico after a sensationalistic trial. In Europe, she stopped taking pictures, and worked as a spy/agent for the Soviet Union. She married Vidali, known to be a Soviet thug, and he apparently was abusive to her. This part of her life is subject to intense debate. She met La Pasionara in Moscow, and went to Spain during the Civil War she worked as a nurse with an ambulance crew. Forced to leave Spain after the defeat of the Republican cause, she returned to Mexico, where she died shortly after in circumstances that were surrounded, once again, by scandal and mystery. She was apparently quite ill, but others have claimed she was killed.
I've read many conflicting accounts.
This article by Peter Byrne seems to me to synthesize quite well the the dilemma faced by the biographer of Tina Modotti: getting the history right while doing justice to the amazing drama of her life.
He points to one of Diego Rivera's mural panels ,often called "In the Arsenal," as a symbol of this tension. That's Tina, in the corner, looking at Mella, while Vidali in the black hat looks at her.
Frida's in the middle, handing out ammunition.
We had a wonderful birthday party (a surprise!) after the last performance of the play. Hopped up on cake, the kids improvised costumes and filmed each other imitating Madonna talking in a fake British accent about how she stole a baby (!). Good thing I still have a password on this computer, or the stuff would end up on YouTube. R. is twelveteen.
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