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Lot 49

 

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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, for example, 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" (Dr. Daniel Herwitz, Husain, Tata Press, Mumbai, 1988, p. 26).

This particular Buñuel film tells the story of Mathieu, a middle-aged Frenchman, who is continually deceived and rejected by Conchita, a younger Spanish flamenco dancer, who he is in love with. 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. The present lot, then, represents Husain's philosophical engagement with Buñuel's masterpiece, rather than a direct response to the film.

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