Vol. 12 (2011): Fall 2011 Volume XII

The image for this issue is a painting by Frida Kahlo, titled “Alla Cuelga Mi Vestido
(My Dress Hangs There)”, initiated in New York City, but finished in México City in 1933. When viewing
this painting, one is drawn to the top half of the painting depicting some of the symbols of New York City
such as factories, skyscrapers, the port, Manhattan Island, and the Statue of Liberty, depicted in the
style of a tourist postcard. As one glances to the lower half, it becomes evident that the painting is not
celebrating New York City as an industrial/commercial power house and touting its tourist ‘wonders’ ,
but portraying a city of decay, depravity, alienation, squalor and destroyed human dignity, beneath the
illusion of the city’s touted industrial and economic prosperity This is indicated by: the overall dark
nature of the painting as seen in: the garbage bins, one with apparent remnants of human body parts;
the toilet and the trophy on the pedestal; and the robot-like silver pipe being part of the factory in the
right upper corner. In the center is Frida’s traditional Mexican dress featured without her, indicating
that her body is in New York, but her anima (her creative soul) is in México, longing for the vibrancy of
México City and México itself; signifying that she also felt personally alienated in New York. Overall, the
painting represents a powerful criticism of the American industrial city; whose characteristics have been
magnified in New York City.
(The painting is physically located at The Hoover Gallery in San Francisco, California. The image was
found on the website of “Museum Syndicate”
(http://www.museumsyndicate.com/item.php?item=2929 ). Further interpretation of the painting can
be found at on the website of the “Frida Kahlo Fans” (http://www.fridakahlofans.com/c0120.html .) )
Kahlo’s painting clearly transmits the message to its audience that cities have an inherent dichotomous
nature. In her painting, it is one of the one of the modern industrialized city juxtaposed against its
associated depravity. In the same manner, cities can be considered places of excitement, discovery,
creativity, prosperity and enlightenment, but at the same time, they can be places of poverty, crime ,
decay, desperation, alienation, congestion, pollution and societal unrest. These ‘ying and yang’
relationships in cities have been the most apparent since the development of the modern industrial city
in the early 1800s, but were also present in the pre-industrial era cities, but not as pronounced. The
disparities in urban areas do not remain eternally rotating in an intertwined vortex but become the
impetus for new urban policies seeking to ameliorate them. Urban areas represent places where
phenomena emerge as the result of major changes in the meshed forces of technology, politics and
economics which have positive and negative effects. When the negative impacts/externalities of these
emerging phenomena become overwhelmingly apparent (such as poor housing and sanitation problems
among the working population in cities experiencing rapid industrialization and population growth),
there have emerged urban critics (such as Charles Dickens) and subsequently social protest to bring
awareness of these injustices to the public and later specific policies to alleviate the negative effects of
the phenomena. In reaction to the negative effects of industrialization in cities in developed countries
there have emerged child labor laws, minimum wage, housing projects, building codes, institutionalized
urban planning, water/sewer services, public hospitals and myriad other foundations that make up
modern welfare states and their cities, which we now perceive of as necessary to the operation of the
city. This progression of thesis and anti-thesis has been manifested in cities throughout its history and
will continue to be an intergral part of its continuing development.
Clashing dichotomies is again is on ‘the stage of the theater of the city.’ Major ‘world class’ cities and
smaller urbanized areas are becoming the focus of global unrest concerning the increasing disparity in
income distribution, the influence of major multi-national corporations and financial institutions over
local, state and national politics, economic stagnation, corruption, and elitist rule. These inequities are
now at the forefront in the urban population around the world. The center of initiation of these
protests, as in earlier times, is the squares/plazas of cities. The leading and most vocal protests are
occurring in New York City around Wall St and London near St. Paul’s Cathedral, which are the primary
control points for the global economy. The precedents for these protests were those in Tarih Square in
Cairo (Egypt) which is the major gathering place in the city. The results of these self-organized,
leaderless and spontaneous protests in Cairo were responsible for the overthrow of a ruling class in
Egypt which had been in power for over fifty years. In our interconnected and scale-less world, actions
in one city are no longer are restricted to their impact on a specific city or nation, but have transnational influence. This global movement, centered in cities, is causing an international discussion on
how ills of the global political and economic system can be addressed. “On the table” is the
concentration of economic and political power of the multi-national and the ‘economic elite’, income
disparity, participatory democracy, affordable housing, job creation, fair wages, environmental
degradation, sustainable energy and other issues. Despite an effort by some critics to discredit this
emerging movement’s message by proclaiming that it is not universal but has been propagated by the
‘dregs of society’ or from the ‘usual suspects’ (fanatical Communists and Anarchists), it is unlikely that
these issues will dissipate because they are linked with political and economic structural problems, not
with periodic economic fluctuations.