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MF Husain 1915-2011
asily the most iconic artist of modern India, Maqbool
Fida Husain passed away in London on 9 June 2011. Husain was born in 1915
in Pandharpur, the famous temple town in Maharashtra. Bereft of his
mother’s presence since childhood, Husain grew up in the multi-cultural
milieu of Indore where his father had migrated around 1919. Indian
civilisation, in all its diversity, had been Husain’s basic
inspirational project. Since the year of Independence, through the
Nehruvian decades and thereon, cognizant of all the challenges involved in
nation-building, Husain had been steadfast in maintaining a most
affirmative relationship with the Indian peoples’ consciousness of their
national identity. Through him, we have learned to address a whole gamut
of issues pertaining to the interactive dynamic of modernity with the
country’s many-layered art and culture. He had made a signal contribution in reworking the
aesthetic traditions of India including especially the tradition of
iconographic innovation. He is among those few modern artists who had
focused on mythological and epic narratives, and, for over half a
century, he had painted themes from the epics in literally thousands of
paintings and drawings. This alone speaks of his passion for these
narratives and, further, of his understanding that their literary,
performing and visual form has changed through the centuries, and
therefore carries the mandate for new articulations within the
contemporary. Equally important, these series of Husain paintings
have been shown in urban and rural sites through unique modes of
public dissemination. And it speaks of the generous comprehension of this
project by viewers all over India, viewers who cut across barriers of
class and culture, that they have been received with the affectionate
regard and playful participation they require. Posterity will certainly name Husain as one of the most
prominent post-Independence artists to shape the contemporary in the
spirit of a living and changing tradition. More than any other modern
artist in India, he has understood how a syncretic civilisation and the
dynamics of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious nation have together prompted
these interpretations and empowered the community of artists to evolve a
uniquely modern language consistent with the complexity of these
civilisational narratives.
Faiz,
Ghalib and Iqbal. Painting by MF Husain Indeed, Husain was such an iconic figure that we could
use the very iconography of Maqbool Fida Husain, of the person himself, to
forward ideas about Indian visual culture in the framework of a dynamic
public sphere. Already, his life and work are beginning to serve as an
allegory for the changing modalities of the secular in modern India —
and the challenges that the narrative of the nation holds for us. It is unfortunate that this very aspect of his persona
led to a relentless campaign of vilification and calumny against him by
bigoted Hindu fundamentalist groups since 1996. After a decade of standing
up to threats to his person and vandalising of his art works in public
spaces, Husain went into a self-imposed exile in 2006. Four years later he
was offered and accepted the citizenship of Qatar. The artistic community,
secular and democratic opinion in the country however stood steadfastly
with him and had been urging the government to bring him back. We
believe that India will be the poorer if a proper monument to Husain and
his paintings is not created in the country for posterity. - Sahmat [Safdar
Hashmi Memorial Trust]
Pic by Gauri Gill
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