Truth is Self-Knowledge

In the Introduction, Carlos Fuentes explains that artists seek truth and that Kahlo is no exception. Kahlo equates truth with self-knowledge and according to her, this is the subject that she knows best. So many of the figures in Kahlo's diary pages are depictions of herself and many of her poems, doodlings, and cryptic phrases are ways to explore her own personal universe.

Unfortunately for Kahlo, this means paying particular attention to pain and the nature of her own mortality, given her long history of surgical procedures stemming mostly from a near-fatal streetcar accident she suffered in 1925. She has conflicting feelings about death. For example, she paints jubilant and dancing skeletons in one page, mocking and trivializing death, but in the next painting she draws roots underground as flames that consume a coffin, demonstrating her fear of death. Kahlo vacillates between inviting death where it brings...