His epic works have brought him praise and protest
SALEM -- To the eyes of most visitors to "Epic India: M. F. Husain's Mahabharata Project," on view at the Peabody Essex Museum through June 3, the lithograph "Draupadi With Dice" is innocent enough: A ghostly white woman, her hips and breasts draped in a long scarf, tumbles amid colorful dice.
The print is just one of several works that have brought the popular Indian artist a heap of trouble. Since November 2005, right-wing Hindu organizations have spearheaded protests in the streets, in art galleries, and online against Maqbool Fida Husain, who is Muslim, and his depiction of Hindu deities.
One such group, Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (Hindu Awareness Forum), wrote to the museum before "Epic India" opened in November, urging museum officials to cancel the exhibition.
"Mr. Husain has a history of repeatedly and callously hurting Hindu sentiments by depicting Hindu Deities in lewd, compromising positions," the letter read.
Although no threats were made, the museum staff had reason to be apprehensive. They have received more than 200 e-mails protesting the exhibit, mostly sent from India and Great Britain.
Last June, protesters defaced two paintings with spray paint at a Husain exhibition at Asia House in London. That show was shut down. That same month, Hindu nationalists protested against Husain outside the Indian embassy in Washington, D.C. In India, several criminal complaints have been filed against him for "hurting religious sentiments." "Many people [made complaints], maybe in the hundreds," says Susan Bean , curator of South Asian and Korean Art at the PEM. "It was impossible for him to be there. He could be snapped up by a police officer."
Husain, 91, has left India and taken up residence in Dubai.
In January, the Indian Supreme Court directed that a single hearing be held to deal with all of the cases against the artist. That hearing has yet to take place.
Meanwhile, Husain remains an art star in India, as beloved by many as he is reviled by a few. In 2004, Husain was commissioned to paint a hundred paintings for more than $21 million for an Indian businessman -- believed to be the biggest art deal in India.
In America, where the market for contemporary Indian art has been red hot, the value of Husain's work has risen with it. Last month
The painter, printmaker, and filmmaker, known for his snow-white thatch of hair and beard and his penchant for going barefoot, has made a career out of exploring Indian iconography and consciousness in his art.
"As an artist, he has delved into Indian culture further than [into] his own faith," says Shashi Tharoor , the under- secretary- general for communications and public information of the United Nations, over the phone from New York. Tharoor, who is also a novelist and newspaper columnist, wrote a catalog essay for "Epic India." He collaborated with Husain on a coffee-table book, "Kerala: God's Own Country."
"His inspirations cut across Indian culture. Mother Teresa, myths, legends, all sources of Indian culture are equal to him," Tharoor adds. "Hindus like myself applaud that."
Tharoor is one of more than 100 prominent Indians who have signed a letter urging the president of India to award that country's highest honor, the Bharat Ratna , or "Gem of India," to Husain.
The Mahabharata project poetically illustrates scenes from the Indian epic, written in Sanskrit between 300 and 500 C.E. Husain was inspired to honor the Mahabharata in 1971, when he and Pablo Picasso were each given special exhibition space at the Bienal de São Paulo . Sharing such attention with the master inspired Husain to tackle an ambitious project.
"I thought, I must do the epic Mahabharata," Husain explains over the phone from Dubai. He's cheerful and chatty, but says he can't talk about the protests against his work or the charges against him, given that his case is pending in court.
It's no small irony that the paintings and prints in "Epic India" have fueled the fire of religious outrage against Husain. The Mahabharata tells the story of a legendary family split apart and ravaged by war. In the tale, intrigue, greed, and deception are pitted against honor and righteousness. It's timeless, as pertinent now as it was when Husain started the project, when the conflict between India and Pakistan was at a boiling point.
"I relate this work to our time," Husain says. "The whole world and its conflicts."
The 20 works in the show offer only tidbits from the epic, and it helps to have a working knowledge of the narrative. But even if you know nothing of the Mahabharata, the grace, strength, and generosity of Husain's art sweeps through the gallery, conveying the story's power.
The paintings are a fierce group, starkly composed. "Kauravas (Mahabharata 17)" depicts the Kauravas, 100 brothers who turned against the epic's heroic Pandavas brothers. Husain paints these enemies as one wretched figure, split in half. Both halves are fractured and jagged; one is red, the other black. The two halves struggle against each other over a lurid orange ground.
Locally, the Indian community has been supportive of the exhibition. Anju Nanda of Concord took her 6-year-old twins to see it. "It was fabulous," she says. "To see the Mahabharata on a grand scale was inspiring. Our son is an admirer of the Mahabharata, and for him to see this after the figurative stuff he sees in books -- it blew his mind.
"If people understand Husain's importance to India, and how as an artist he's raised our community," she continued, "they know he's not trying to use religion to make a point."
The Mahabharata is a national epic. "It belongs not to any particular community," Husain says. "It belongs to all of India."
It's not the first time Husain's work has caused public outcry.
"He ran into political hot water in the mid - '90s," says Bean. "He had an image, 'Goddess of Learning,' shown, in some people's estimation, without sufficient covering. Ruffians broke into Husain's flat and trashed it. A gallery was broken into and burned."
In March 2006, Husain offered a painting of Mother India to auction at a benefit for victims of the Kashmir earthquake. That, too, raised the ire of right-wing Hindus because the figure showed some flesh.
Neither Draupadi , a prominent character in the Mahabharata , nor Mother India, who, Bean says, was invented during the 19th-century nationalist movement in India, are technically deities. Yet they are symbols of Indian womanhood.
Goddess or symbol, it's not unusual, in Indian art history, to see nude or erotic work.
"In Hindu religious art the body is an important conveyor of sacred messages," Bean says. "There's plenty of nudity and scanty clothing in the history of Indian art. The bodies of deities are a very important part of how they're depicted."
"It's far more authentic to display in art Hindu goddesses without clothes than to impose a post-Victorian morality," Tharoor said.
The problem, Bean suggests, isn't what's being depicted so much as who is depicting it.
"Husain is a Muslim. He's very famous, a household name. . . . He likes being in the limelight," Bean says. "So if you object to him, you have a way of getting your issues out in front of people."
