Sunday, August 22, 2021

Did Frida Kahlo Use Marijuana?

Itzcuintli Dog with Me (detail)
“They will say I smoked cigarettes and marijuana, cursed hoarse as a crow in all my languages, and loved morphine and Demerol and tequila and pulque, women and men."
    –Kate Braverman, The Incantation of Frida K. has Kahlo saying, 

I have been for years trying to track down any reference to Frida Kahlo using marijuana. The closest I have is a reference (via Errol Flynn) that Kahlo's husband Diego Rivera used it, and shared it with others.

Judy Chicago in her book Frida Kahlo: Face to Face says that the cigarette Kahlo holds in a holder in her 1938 painting Itzcuintli Dog with Me is a marijuana one.*

Elsewhere it’s assumed it’s a tobacco cigarette Kahlo holds in her paintings (e.g. Portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States, 1932; Me and My Parrots, 1941). She was often photographed holding a cigarette, even in her wedding portrait.