Once more that life and soul of Indian art market, M F Husain, is under attack. Hindutva forces are now hounding that artist who more than anyone else is responsible for the success of our contemporary art market. They are not only harassing him but are threatening to cut his hands off.
Why are they doing this? Husain has evolved a rich and varied language of figuration that takes an irreverent peek at our ancient myths and legends and makes them relevant to our times. His Gupta style figuration can clothe a minor film personality like Madhuri Dixit with the eternal aura of a Gajagamini or create forms of goddesses easy to reach out to and touch, humanising them as pre-Hindutva Hinduism would want to. His Kunti is not a dull matriarch but a Nair princess without many lovers helping her to bear a brood of many fathers but only one mother. To see Kunti in any other light would kill the Mahabharata and reduce it to hypocritical text celebrating war.
Husain has saved our epics from being drowned in reverential formaldehyde. He has given them life. Condemn him and you are condemning a market that more than double itself in value every year because it visually stimulates thoughts. Collectors appreciate that and it is evident that despite the hysterical attacks on Husain, his works are over half in value in all sales in our contemporary markets. Moreover, the nude is no longer seen as a picture of naked body but as a form that may carry a message that is very different from the physical image. That is what collectors know it to be and that is what they pay for.
Let us take F N Souza?s drawing, Flagellation, a 1962 pen and ink on paper (lot 35), on sale at the Saffronart online auction of May 10-11, with four nude men beating up a Christ-like figure. He too is naked, but nudity does not strike one as that of the others does. They have in their bestiality lost their humanity and confront one as animals raw and bare. This insight is what caused the drawing to be sold at Rs 50,38,065 ($1,17,164) when the highest price expected of it was Rs 15 lakh.
A nude of Akbar Padamsee, a watercolour on paper (lot 41), was expected to fetch Rs 7,75,000, but actually went for Rs 10,16,950 ($23,650). This work is the naked body of a woman, but it is clothed in such a delicate light that even a muslin gown over it would seem crude. That is what art is about and the sooner our misguided moral brigades understand it, the better it is for them. The body is, as we see in the exhibition of D Ebenezer Sunder Singh at Pallet Art Gallery in Delhi, merely an object for experience and enquiry. Even when it is clothed or not visible as in the case of his painting (Other and His Cave Man) with a little boy with his hands in his pants, one realises that just as a nude may not look naked, so a clothed figure or an incomplete one may well appear to be a nude. This is what distinguishes the nude in art from lurid pictures.
From this perspective one realises that the nude in art can equally be the self or the ideal other as in the case of the Jain Tirthankara images. So it would appear to be a gross perversity to persecute Husain for something which our tradition clearly shows is not lewd. Also attempts to limit our tradition to very narrow forms of expression will impoverish it and end the richness that has given it importance in the world. The sooner we realise this and distance ourselves from such misguided elements, the better it would be for us.