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Lot 26

 

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Throughout his artistic career, M.F. Husain has been enamoured by the idea of 'cinema' and everything it stands for. The artist's own associations with the genre range from his early days in Mumbai as a cinema billboard painter and the personal friendships he forged with directors like Roberto Rossellini, Ingmar Bergman and Pier Paolo Pasolini, to the several films that he made himself, including 'Through the Eyes of a Painter', which won him a... Throughout his artistic career, M.F. Husain has been enamoured by the idea of 'cinema' and everything it stands for. The artist's own associations with the genre range from his early days in Mumbai as a cinema billboard painter and the personal friendships he forged with directors like Roberto Rossellini, Ingmar Bergman and Pier Paolo Pasolini, to the several films that he made himself, including 'Through the Eyes of a Painter', which won him a Golden Bear at the 1967 Berlin International Film Festival.

It is not surprising then that several of Husain's works are influenced by films and actors that moved him. The title of the present lot, a monumental painting that recalls the scale of the billboards Husain used to paint in Mumbai, has been borrowed from a 1977 film directed by the famous Spanish director Luis Buñuel, whose surrealist and almost abstract imagery Husain greatly admired.

"Certain of Husain's series [of paintings] have been born as responses to films. Perhaps the most important of these, and among the most important of any of Husain's works, is his That Obscure Object of Desire. Ranking Buñuel as a filmmaker of the highest importance, Husain began work on this series immediately after having viewed the Buñuel film of the same title. He states: 'I had been working on the Mahabharata series with its conflicts and I saw the Buñuel film. I decided immediately to turn to contemporary things'. The connections between Mahabharata and That Obscure Object of Desire are not overt. That Obscure Object contains none of the plot of the Mahabharata. Nor does it overtly exhibit many of the traditional symbols that pervade other of Husain's works. Its pictorial look is bold and cinematic, with the look of film posters...Their cinematic qualities extend to the colors which are uniform, brilliant, unbrushed and unbuilt-up in the manner of color in films" (Dr. Daniel Herwitz, Husain, Tata Press, Mumbai, 1988, p. 26).

This particular Buñuel film tells the story of Mathieu, a middle-aged Frenchman, whose love for Conchita, a younger Spanish flamenco dancer, is continually deceived and rejected by her. While the themes of desire, conflict and violence have influenced much of Husain's work, it is almost impossible to directly connect the imagery of his series of paintings with this title with anything that can be recalled in the film itself. Thus, the present lot is more of a representation of Husain's philosophical engagement with Buñuel's masterpiece than a direct response to his film. On the right, three male figures appear to be engaged in solemn discussion. They are separated from a couple walking into the distance by a desolate grey building on the verge of toppling over. Husain also paints another miniscule figure, poised to dive off the top of the building, adding to the grim imagery of the painting.

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