M.F.Husain: Heaven can't wait...

There's no looking back

M.F.Husain has taken off on his paint brush into the other world. Age 95. Dead. Obituaries are tricky. I think about the ceiling of his house; he had sketched stars – black on white. I sat on a chair waiting for him to turn up. He did not. His wife said no one knows when he comes and when he goes. I disliked him, anyway, and my conversation would not have been about him walking without shoes.

He was surrounded by women, the kind we rather disparagingly refer to as society dames. What could he find so entertaining, forget enlivening, about them? For them he was Fame. At one of their homes I saw a painting by him that was unspeakably sad. Fine crystal shone below it on a mantelpiece. I smirked. Then one day many years later I saw shards on the floor…and experienced the sadness of broken crystal.

Husain, for reasons I have been unable to fathom, continued to look like an arriviste, despite all the celebrity, the money and the artistic talent. We all perceive art in different ways – for me he was more skill than soul, and not many possess that kind of skill, the adhesive-like hold on the imagination of the artistic fraternity.

Curiously, I got a note yesterday from a person of the rightwing persuasion questioning me about his portrayal of nude goddesses that I had tried to explore in an earlier piece. This is what he became known for – not the works, not the ideas, but the controversies. He was restless, but not a gypsy. He was the nomad who had luxurious homes everywhere he went. It won’t be much different now.

duniya ne hum pe jab koi ilzaam rakh diya

hum ne muqaabil us ke tera naam rakh diya

ik khaas had pe aa gayi jab teri berukhee

naam us ka hum ne gardish-e-ayyaam rakh diya

- Qateel Shifai

- - -

Here is an old piece I had written in my Rediff column of October 27, 1997, well before they started stoning galleries where his works were displayed:

The unmaking of a maverick

M F Husain has a major problem. If we start with this premise it would be far easier to approach his persona. And the problem lies not with what he is, but what he is seeking to be.

Today, few talk of Husain as an artist – he is either the showman, the maverick, the risk-taker and, finally and conclusively, a product. His market value is under discussion rather than his palette's wild guesses and sometimes calculated conundrums. It is very likely that he feels trapped and is now seeking to assert his independence. No artist in his right mind would rush from one canvas to the other to show the onlookers the process of painting, as Husain claims to have tried to do. But, at this point in time, he is not in his right mind. He is on a binge to negate his art by harking to his hoarding-painter days of relative freedom. The days when he could paint the other icons of cinema, without having to worry about whether his unshod feet would gain celebrity status.

Husain' painting on the Mumbai blasts

The very concept of being a celebrity can be difficult to handle, its reality even more so. Husain's position as a product has to do with his being many other things. As a showman performer, he is expected to toe the classic 'I pretend, therefore I am' line. This includes massive image-building. But the man about whom it was made shows all signs of not being at peace with himself. The result is whimsical behaviour. The charitable will call it maverick moods.

But why would a man already on the pedestal want to be a maverick? It cannot be to get attention. Not a genuine desire for experimentation either, so the possibility of his sense of boredom at being 'known for being known' cannot be ignored.

To this end, the artist has begun taking risks, not so much with his work but with his reputation, which has been the cause of most of his ecstasy and all of his anguish. Kierkegaard put it beautifully when he analysed, "It lays a prodigious burden on a person to have to support the weight of everyone's eyes." Even a Husain work is merely a work of Husain. Snapping the chain with his offbeat acts, he has in effect put the ball in the court of his 'audience', the subliminal message being, "Since you have made me, you might want to unmake me. But before you can do that, I will do it myself."

Therefore, the new Husain is essentially the old one trying to come out clean, but not without attempting to kill two birds with one stone – by hankering after his freedom and at the same time (and perhaps because of it) making sure that the public does not run after someone else. This is the hallmark of a celebrity. Or an insecure man.

- - -

Updated in new post here