The Timeless Modernist: Encapsulating M F Hussain's artistry

People thought I only painted horses 

and lately nudes but this is all 

wrong. I seek beauty everywhere. 

I am known as an artist because 

painting made me famous but 

there are many other aspects to 

my life. I am very involved in 

economics, science and technology. 

Art constitutes only 10% of my 

being the rest of me is spread 

in various other directions. 

—M.F. Husain 
 

Sitting by the atmospherically lit walls of DAG, now adorned with the grandeur of Hussain’s life-size canvases, a young man and woman replicates the  lines and forms in their little notebooks. The space, filled with people of all ages reminiscing the times and thoughts that reflected into the maestro’s strokes in varied mediums, becomes a time machine, a place of discourse for generations. 

This power of convergence is the success of M.F Hussain, appropriately termed by the exhibition as “The Timeless Modernist”. His works can be deciphered by all generations and sensibilities, a juxtaposition of this country’s past and present. His art that reflected life in all of its myriad meanings, of violence and peace, shaped by impulse and autobiography, contributed in an understanding of India that is deeply rooted in its colloquial identity, an antithesis of its colonial past. 

Born in pre-Independence India, Hussain himself becomes a symbol of the changing times and society; presenting the contradictions and tensions of past and present. Symbolism and metaphors, much like any modernist artist under an oppressive regime or tumultuous time, thus becomes a natural medium of expression for Hussain. Geometric forms, interpreted not only as a signifier as an artist, but with the meticulous calculation of a mathematician, found new meanings as he himself describes in one of his sketches: ‘cowumbrella plus lantern minus a shoe is equal to man plus woman.’  

With his profound sensibilities of forms, shapes, symbols, and at the forefront, the Indian-ness in his art, Hussain thus goes on to present a nation’s history in his own, semi surreal form. His willingness for freedom, which made him fin the Bombay Progressive artist’s group, to ‘unBritish Indian art’, creats vivid forms of significant national events, from the Nalli riots in Assam to the Emergency. Portraits of figures who made an impact in his life, from the Mahatma, to Mother Terressa to Indira Gandhi, everyday.

Objects, village and city lives, nude bodies, his paintings denote a quest to decipher identity in the artist’s own internal logic. Hussain eliminated and in a way, liberated forms and stories from abundance and extras; he focused on the aura, more than the realism. 
 
Going through his paintings, it is hard to pin Hussain on one singular identity. He was a painter of grandiose, yet he possessed subliminal ideas of minimalism. The sketches which he would create spontaneously on a restaurant napkin, calm and fluid, can be seen as a completely different entity of his artistry. The sketches often found their grand presence later when interpretated on a canvas.  

The female forms, which Hussain had been fascinated with from his days of owning a camera and photographing his maid’s daughter, Butul, finds their presence with depth and vulnerability. His concept of Shakti, which later formulated his sensibilities, making him create his controversial nudes of women, both regular and divine, presents his desire, as well his representation of violence . 

Hussain’s symbolism, has been of much coding and uncoding. His map contains the tensions of the nation-state. The promise of Independence, the bitter violence of Partition and the communal riots that followed,His horses, claimed by critiques as a bourgeoise element. Horses, being a symbol of the aristrocracy and the ‘other’, which is the oppressive. Yet, his work remains as a material of deciphering when one gets to know the history and upbringing, and ofcourse, his love for cinema which readily shaped his thought. 

In the seminal exhibition by DAG, “Hussain: the timeless modernist” presents the life of the creator and his changing sensibilities. The exhibition has excerpts from his life, his interests and desires, which is a treasure for any viewer to understand his work. From his days of billboard paintings in the Bollywood, to his poetry, both as words and sketches, to the canvases that depicted war, peace , religion, women and his horses, the exhibition is a capsule of changing sensibilities, time and development, of both a man and a nation.