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28 March 2024

Significant art is always dangerous: MF Husain

Newly minted Qatari national Husain will attend Thursday's showing at the Capital Club. (ASHOK VERMA)

Published
By Keith J Fernandez

Legendary Qatari Indian artist M F Husain will set his famous horses against the UAE landscape in a landmark project celebrating the country's 40th anniversary, he tells Emirates Business.

"It is my tribute to the UAE," the 94-year-old painter says in an interview ahead of a show in Dubai this weekend – even as he ruled out a return to India within the next two or three years. "There is a famous story from the Arabian Nights – Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves – but I am painting Ali Baba and 40 horses."

He said the idea occurred to him after he met His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, at a reception ahead of last month's Dubai World Cup. Husain has often described the UAE as his second home and has been living between London and Dubai since 2004.

Born Maqbool Fida Husain in Pandharpur outside Bombay in 1915, the artist, whose works have sold for more than $2 million (Dh7.34m) at auction, has dominated headlines everywhere in the last few weeks, becoming almost a regular fixture on the news agenda since he accepted Qatar's offer of citizenship earlier this year.

Sensationalist journalists will tell you Husain, who is often referred to as India's answer to Pablo Picasso, was hounded out of India by events set in motion after by a set of controversial paintings depicting mythological deities in the nude.

The back story, as always, is deeper and more nuanced. The works in question, which some Indian art critics insist aren't really nudes at all, were actually created in 1970 and are in keeping with ancient Indian artistic tradition, but did not become an issue until 1996. The ensuing criminal complaints filed against him were dismissed by the Delhi High Court in 2004, but an organisation called the Hindu Personal Law Board nevertheless offered an $11.5 million reward for his death in 2006.

Husain, meanwhile, had already moved to Dubai in 2004, "two years before this whole trouble started," he says, seated across from me at the Capital Club, famously barefoot as always, but this time wearing a long Arabic kandoora, perhaps in honour of his new nationality.

"After working all these years I can manage myself, but I needed a sponsor to do the kind of projects I am working on, and I thought I won't be able to do these projects in India. It's a major thing, to do these paintings."

Including the horses for the UAE, he's working on at least half a dozen projects at the moment. One 200-canvas undertaking tracks India's history from the ancient Indus Valley civilisation of Mohenjo-Daro to Manmohan Singh, the current Prime Minister.

Another 99-piece set follows Arab civilisation back through the ages to ancient Babylon, documenting the contribution "of Arab Christians, Jews and Muslims", he says, while a third will document the history of Indian cinema over the past century, tapping into one of Husain's fervent passions.

"Now I am concentrating more on civilisation," he says, pausing to take a call on his iPhone. "At this stage in my life, I am not only painting to decorate apartments now, I am trying to paint history. But I'm not recording history; it's a painter's vision of history. Like Michelangelo did the Sistine Chapel."

Over the summer, he will strive to finish a series inspired by the ancient Sanskrit epic, the Ramayana, for a UK show this October. "It's a technique using LED lights, paintings on paper, but lit with LEDs from behind, very dim light," he says, excitedly.

Also in the works is a multimedia installation he wants to finish by next March. Five horses cast from Murano glass, all between six and eight feet tall, will be paired with five of his favourite cars (including a Bugatti Veyron and a Rolls Royce Phantom) on a rotating platform.

Also part of the piece will be sculptures of Leonardo da Vinci's flying machines and the ninth-century aviator Abbas ibn Firnas, as well as a 40-minute sound and light performance that brings the entire lot to life each evening. "I want to show how form follows function," he says.

And if all of that taken together sounds too ambitious (the sometime director is also working on a new film), Husain says he's got sponsors for every single undertaking, from a Russian oligarch to a series of wealthy expatriate Indians to Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned, Consort of the Emir of Qatar. "This is all for museums. I say, if you build [me] a museum, then I'll do it. Not otherwise."

But to judge Husain – of whom it's been said he would sell a blank canvas because his signature would fetch more than anything he might paint on it – as someone only interested in establishing an artistic legacy for posterity would do him a disservice.

His engagement with the media in Dubai comes ahead of an exhibition and sale of limited edition serigraphs, lithographs and digital art prints at the Capital Club on Thursday evening. "A print is for people with more taste than money," the show catalogue quotes him as saying.

To me, he says he's doing it to make his art accessible, something he first attempted to do in the 1950s with other members of India's Progressive Artists Group.

"Most art dealers have not realised the potential of prints," says this one-time painter of film posters. "How else can the middle class own art? And India has the largest middle class in the world. Why deprive them?" With prices beginning at Dh1,000, he's keeping it affordable.

"It reflects all the different periods of my work, my horses, Krishna, the elephants," he continues. "Together, I call these prints imprints of India. Each is numbered and signed with the seal and all that – in these days of digital graphics, that's important."

Equally important to his adoring public is his acceptance of Qatari citizenship at the expense of his Indian nationality. "I say this from a totally neutral standpoint on religion and I do not endorse the treatment meted out to him either, but it would have been nicer (I think) if he had stayed in India and righfully taken responsibility for his 'art' and stood up for his 'freedom of expression'," Dubai-based interior designer Pratyush Sarup posted on my Facebook wall yesterday.

Husain, however, maintains he just wants an easy life. He repeats to me what he told television journalist Barkha Dutt last month: "If I was 40 years old, I would have fought. Now I just want to be able to complete these four major projects; that will take at least five years," he says.

"There is no ban on me, I can return to India any time." He isn't running away, his lawyers are fighting the three cases the 900 have been reduced to, he says, but nevertheless, he will not return for at least another two or three years – despite having been invited back by the Indian Home Secretary. "I need to finish these projects first," he says, almost obsessively now.

So what of criticism that artists must respect public sentiment, that freedom of expression must not trample over religious belief?

"I was not painting religion, I was painting a vision," he says, gesturing passionately. "People know this very well, but it is the ignorance of the learned and they used the issue for political ends."

So, to give his critics space, would he take the same approach to Islamic themes as he did with Hindu deities? "Islamic tradition has never depicted humans and animals in religious art," he says, a breadth of folk tradition and centuries of artistic interpretation implicit in that statement.

There was a Danish cartoonist, I say. "That was mischief," he says dimissively.

Nor has he insulted India itself, he continues, although one painting of India featured a nude woman down the side of the country. "I called it the Map of India, I never called it Mother India as some people have said. There was not a single temple anywhere! And the Supreme Court cleared the cases in what was a historic judgement.

"Art is always dangerous. Significant art is always dangerous." As my time runs out, I can't help feeling Husain is enjoying the whole drama, relishing all the headlines. "Anjolie Ela Menon says, 'Husain likes the limelight'," I tell him. He smiles and looks down at the catalogue of prints in his hand. Did I just see him blush?

- M F Husain's Imprints of India is on show at the Capital Club, DIFC, from 6.30pm to 8.30pm on Thursday, April 8.

The many muses of MF Husain

The quick approach to achieving fame is by associating yourself with those who already have it. In MF Husain's case, breaking away from the social arts scene into the pop culture genre couldn't have been easier when he announced his fascination with nineties' Bollywood diva, Madhuri Dixit.

The reigning actress of her time caught Husain's attention in 1994 when the magnum opus Hum Aapke Hain Kaun! shot her to instant fame. Overnight, the 94-year-old declared her his muse, following it up with press interviews, portraits and even a movie, Gaja Gamini (2000), as tribute. The movie may have tanked, but Husain's popularity with Gen-Next only grew. As Dixit's celluloid appearances diminished, actress Tabu erupted onto his canvas. Needless to say, a movie in her honour was to follow, and 2004 saw Meenaxi: Tale Of 3 Cities being made.

With the movie failing and Tabu retiring to mostly arthouse cinema, it was not long beforemuse number three arrived in the form of Vivaah actress Amrita Rao. While no movie has been announced in her honour as yet, the possibilities for this painter are endless. (Bindu Suresh Rai)