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Magazine
... the `Master' speaks
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This year has seen two small, but important, exhibitions of M.F. Husain's new work. Both shows were on display recently, in succession, at Mumbai's Pundole Art Gallery. A review by UMA MAHADEVAN-DASGUPTA.
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"Husain in Oils 003 -- VI" - warmth and life.
"M.F.Husain, Where Art Thou?" asks the title of the recent memoir of the octogenarian painter, co-written and transliterated by film writer and filmmaker Khalid Mohammed.
The answer to that is that Maqbool Fida Husain is very much here and now, in Mumbai, India, in the 21st Century and he is as central a figure as he has always been in the world of Indian contemporary art. This year has seen two small, but important, exhibitions of Husain's new work. In one, "The Thief of Baghdad", he makes a caustic comment on the attacks against Iraq; in the other, a show of his recent oil paintings, he shows us the utter simplicity, grace and felicity of colour that he can discover anew in oils, after painting in acrylics for decades. Both shows were on display recently, in succession, at Mumbai's venerable Pundole Art Gallery, situated in the heart of the city's busy Fort area.
Creatively, of course, Husain has always been a pioneer — from his now well-known start in life as a painter of cinema billboards and banners, to painting canvases and creating a new language for Indian painting as an early member of the Bombay Progressives, with Ara, Souza and Raza, during the Independence years. Husain's journey has been closely intertwined with the journey of Indian contemporary art.
Born in Pandharpur in 1915, and growing up in Indore, Husain acquired, early in life, another form of discipline when he copied out verses from the Koran. Living in the city, painting billboards, sometimes working overnight to complete deadlines, and being paid a few annas per square foot, Husain learned to paint swiftly and with bold, sure strokes. He acquired a sense of huge scales and proportions. Decades later he would climb the scaffolding again, several times — now to paint huge canvases in different cities for an art event as a tribute to Satyajit Ray, now to paint a four by six feet canvas while Pandit Bhimsen Joshi sang before a spellbound audience.
"Husain in Oils 003 -- XIII".
He has continued to forge a new idiom for Indian art, taking elements from folk, myth, history and mysticism, from the Indian traditions ranging from temple sculpture to miniature paintings, as well as cinema and popular culture and synthesising a visual language that is a seamless fusion of the old and the new, the traditional and the modern.
If it has sometimes been hard to take Husain seriously, it has been harder to take him lightly. He has been intrigued by Sufi thought, and amused by the paradoxes of the Raj. He has experimented with installations; one recalls "Shvetambari", where he covered the entire gallery space with swathes of white cloth and crumpled-up newspaper on the floor; and then the production where he painted goddesses for several days before a curious, and enthralled, audience, only to overpaint them all with white on the seventh day.
And he has been drawn to the possibilities of cinema — with not only the award winning late-1960s "Through the Eyes of a Painter" but also the recent "Gaja Gamini" and latest "Meenaxi", in which he has cast Madhuri Dixit and Tabu respectively. He has famously painted contemporary icons, ranging from Mother Teresa to Madonna. He has won awards, national and international, has travelled extensively, and has been a member of the Rajya Sabha. What, then, does Husain have to say when, approaching 90, he has said so much already? Much remains, evidently. This year, in "The Thief of Baghdad", a series done in poster-format, Husain uses the Douglas Fairbanks-Mary Pickford starrer from Hollywood as a starting point to tell the story of a land besieged. Depicting a story of war, aggression and greed, he takes a sardonic look at the reality of this entire production. "Hollywood Motion Picture's Proud Production", says one poster which depicts the stars, with the male figure depicted in military fatigues and wielding a rifle, the female figure in diaphanous dancing-girl costume, clutching an oil barrel.
If "The Thief of Baghdad" was a look at the world around, then Husain's recent oils, quietly on display at Pundole, were a look within, through the inner eye of the painter. Abandoning the energy and speed of acrylic for the slow, measured subtleties of oil, Husain has once again shown us — through these not-large paintings, 14 by 18 inches, 20 by 30 inches, oil on canvas board — what an exquisite life of colours, what beauty lies around us in the world. Sensuous nudes, warm sensuous colours, the unique play of mother and child, Indian body and Indian skin, are all celebrated in these lovely, lovingly wrought canvases. Human forms, huddled together in a dark corner, glow with warmth and life.
Light spills into corners, bringing life. A mother holds her child playfully across her elbow. Paint plays its hot, careful dance upon the canvas. Pigments wrap themselves, form folds, crinkles and ridges, blur and merge like layers of fabric, and cover the canvas. The forms are zen-like, engrossed in their business of living; the backgrounds move with a restless energy of their own. And the entire canvas glistens with life and colour. From these little moments of daily life, and after decades of his own living, Husain manages to pull out these epiphanies. And that is something magical.
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