Rubbing elbows with the high society folk
who bitched like large-breasted matrons
in uppity street cafes over the bitter necrosis of morning coffee
about the uncouth, capitalist Americans
whose only redeeming value was industrialization
which turned cities into mills of children
who worked like hopeless slaves,
who turned young women into mistresses of the boss
to escape the unending grind of the sewing machine,
and who made high society folk rich, greedy, and thankless.
Surrealism was our attempt at depicting the human debauchery
without protesting in the street.
We drew, painted, and sculpted the ugliest facets of society,
and because it was art they did not throw us in jail.
The surrealists of Paris were shamelessly critical
of the Americans
because Paris had become the pinnacle of antiestablishment sentiment.
Artists dressed in barrettes and suit jackets smoking rolled cigarettes
and drinking wine late into night until no one was walking home.
Yet these brilliant intellectuals never stopped to ask
how France might improve.
The only issue I had with it
was their superior attitude.
Snotty, haughty, and dismissive,
they would have thought my beloved Mexico primitive.
And by association that made me primitive, which is why I went on display
wearing the traditional Mexican dress and hairstyle.
To show that while Mexico was not as savvy as the French,
being a Mexican was nothing to be ashamed of, either.
I was a Mexican surrealist painter
and my country did not exploit women and children,
nor did it sit around spouting its bushwa.
Mexico asked to live as it had for eons, simply and respectfully.
And for that my art was called quaint by some critics.
So, countries who lived with industrialization were criticized,
and countries like Mexico who lived without industrialization were also frowned upon.
And no city felt more superior than Paris, France.
With Love,
Frida
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