The intermedial aspect of the diary of Frida Kahlo

The article attempts to provide a comprehensive intermedial analysis of the diary of Frida Kahlo. Neither the Russian nor the foreign literary scholars did this analysis before. The diary of a Mexican painter had been stored in personal archives for a long time, therefore readers and investigators had no access to it. In recent years, the diary is studied not only by art critics, but also by psychologists, historians, cultural scientists and literary scholars. There is no equivalent to Frida Kahlo’s artwork in literature: it has a complex structure and contains different genres and forms of expression. It is a hybrid medium that represents a synthesis of arts: literature, photography and the visual arts. The photographs in the diary are parts of collages, they coexist with painting, graphic arts and literature and form compound images. The drawings and the text are complementary, there is a dialogue between them and also the text is able to make the static pictures «alive». Moreover, Frida Kahlo appeals to synaesthesia to transmit her complex sensations and to enhance reader’s perception and aesthetic response. Colour plays an important part in the diary: it conveys the meaning and it cannot exist without the text. Visual and verbal codes in Frida Kahlo’s diary constitute a single organism. The analysis of their relations allows to find hidden meanings that the artist intends to deliver.