The 17th September marks the hundredth birthday of M.F. Husain,one of India’s best modern artists. Google has also released a Doodle to mark the event.
India’s modern artist Maqbool Fida Husain, better known as M.F. Husain, died on the 9th June 2011, in a London hospital. Known as the ‘Picasso of India’, the artist was 95 and was not in good health for quite sometime.
The artist had been living in exile since 2006, ever since one of his paintings created a controversy associating religion and obscenity. A district court in Haridwar had issued summons for him, which when not met, led to his properties being attached and a bailable warrant issued against him. Undoubtedly Husain had a yearning to return to India. It was in 2010 that Qatar offered him a citizenship and he shuttled between Qatar and London.
However despite the 2008 Delhi High Court’s observations that a painter of his age deserves to be at home and the desire shown by the judge for his return, the painter had to stay away from home. The observations of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul that the aesthetic quality of the painting dwarfs the idea of obscenity and therefore nudity is easily overlooked, didn’t help the painter much.
The bearded artist who started his career as a Bollywood billboard artist, brought vividness with colors unbounded by religion and caste. His life brought into focus the confrontation of art with life and religion. How far can bashing of sentiments be justified on the grounds of art?. How far can artists be allowed to give life to their passions at the anguish of a notable section.
The painter had in an earlier interview said that he opted for exile because he didn’t want to disturbances in his work and that he would have fought the elements had he only been about 40 years of age. The painter who walked barefoot had, had according to the BBC, painted until two weeks before his death. He had been painting in exile, with a grief that he couldn’t be at home.
The life and death of Husain would always remind developing and future artists of the prospective threat their unique ideas could raise for them. The ideas of an artist would from now be within the realms and approval of the greater public. Would that facilitate the development of art or whether that is the right way, would always be a topic of debate. However when mistakes and breaches are pointed out, artists need to apologize, because the confrontation here is between the new aspirations of a single artist and traditional expectationss of a society.
The Times of India quotes Sayed Haider Raza, the only living member of the Progressive Artists Group, (which Husain joined in 1947), as having opined that Husain should have apologized and explained himself. Raza was not sure if Husain did that. However the BBC notes that the painter had indeed in 2006 apologized publicly for his Mother India painting. He had also promised to withdraw the painting from a charity auction. It is unfortunate that despite these efforts the old painter couldn’t turn the tides against him.
When Husain is finally laid to rest, a chapter in Indian art history, comes to an end. The artist and his work would be something India would pride upon in the times to come, ironically forgetting that it once pained him and kept him away, when he longed for it.
