Frida Kahlo in Mexico City

I could live in Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul. Well I couldn't, because it's a museum, but the moment I stepped in off the street I knew it was going to be the sort of house I love. The place is painted in my favourite kind of colours (blue, obviously, electric and vivid, but also rusty terracottas and deep greens) and it has that sort of inside-outside layout - little buildings and rooms around a tropical garden - that really works in hot climates.

I also like Frida Kahlo - herself and her paintings - and, to be honest, this was why I went to Mexico City, to see where she and Diego Rivera had all those dinners, fights, reconciliations, friends, parties and times of intense creativity. I suspect they were often unpleasant to be around but I think they were also incredibly loyal to their friends - especially Trotsky, who, under constant threat of assassination by Stalin's agents, must have been hard work to have as a guest - and I would have loved to have been part of their world.

An ex-voto from Kahlo's collection. This man fell from
 his horse, which had been frightened by a snake. But, as the caption says,
he was up and about 60 days later

Inside, the house is chock-full of paintings and objects that Kahlo made or collected during her life. There's a nice randomness about what goes next to what and I really liked the pre-Colombian ceramics throughout the place and her collection of ex-votos, pieces of "peasant" art that are way more sincere and "art"like than some of the stuff we celebrate today in London. 

The kitchen

Upstairs in the "night bedroom" is her collection of dolls (childlike) and butterflies (a little freaky). Next door is the "day bedroom" and the bed on which she spent most of her waking hours. (The place is, apparently, pretty much as she left it when she died in 1954. She was 47, which shocked me. I need to get on with things.)

Self-portrait

Off one courtyard was a temporary exhibition of some of her dresses, organised by Vogue (you can take the boy out of Condé Nast...). Dresses on mannequins in cabinets don't really do it for me, but I'm glad I gave it a try. Kahlo had polio at the age of six, which left one of her legs shorter than the other, and was in a very bad traffic accident at 18, which resulted in multiple fractures, especially in her spine, pelvis and right leg. As a result, she spent most of her life in pain and was unable, though she was pregnant a number of times, to have children. In the cabinets were dresses, skirts and plaster corsets that she had to wear to support what she called her "broken" body. They are all beautifully decorated (by her) but cleverly decorated too - the long skirts, plainer than the tops she wore, drawing your eye up and away from her disabilities.

When I was studying (well, "studying") English at university, we were snooty about knowing anything about the author of a work of art - the "text" was all. But I think we were denying ourselves something there. To be in the house of a painter whose history, marriage, injuries and pain can be seen in so many of her works was a very special experience.