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| Portrait by K.N. Raghavendra Rao |
IT TOOK two days in 1980. And
two rolls of Kodakcolor film. And a Nikon camera with a wide-angle lens. And
the vision of an artist of international repute who had his beginnings in the
world of film hoardings. An exhibition was born.
Maqbool Fida Husain’s camera
juxtaposes massive cinema hoardings in Madras
with street life in an exhibit titled Culture
of the Streets (Sarala Art Centre and Stage-1, April 20 to May 9, 1981). Of
the blow-ups, none have dodged what the eye saw through the viewfinder. Except
for a few collaged prints, none were cropped or altered for effect.
Interspersed with the photographs are derivative drawings in which the same
larger-than-life figures loom in almost caricatured forms in the Madras series and
photo-prints of a set of Bombay-based line drawings.
What did Husain’s camera eye
register? Women queue up outside a marquee that features an outsize Tamil
mega-star Rajnikanth… The lurid figures of a poster for ‘Lonely Girl’ are juxtaposed against tattered illustrative papers
upon a shoddy wall… Two giant faces from Richard Attenborough’s ‘Gandhi’ loom large over a family sipping
tea on the footpath… A set of erotic film posters, some peeling off the brick
walls, while a forlorn mother wanders by with her child over her shoulder on
the road… The gigantic, grinning matinee idol rears his head among the trees,
while a cycle-rickshaw pedals by… A couple silhouetted against a huge head on a
poster. Close by, people throng the streets, waiting for the right bus…
Graffiti on a street wall, as a boy idles in a corner…
Husain is a man compulsively
caught in the artistic whirlpool. Earlier this year, he exhibited water-colours
at Baroda. This
was followed by paintings on wood icons hinged in triptych shapes, displayed in
Cochin in
late January. March brought a show of large canvases ~ Man Suspended ~ in Montreal.
Culture of the Streets, first
exhibited at the Art Heritage gallery in New Delhi
in February, next came to Madras.
It is scheduled to reach the Tate Gallery in London next year. It is the first time
Husain’s photographs have been on show.
The catalogue for this
photographic exhibition contains an introduction by the noted US-based
collector of Indian art, Chester Herwitz, who writes, “Although these cinema hoardings may be seen
by some as garish, indeed much of the cinema promoted by the hoardings may be
seen by some as vulgar, both contain authentic folk art elements or even
reincarnate some Indian forms of devotion. For the detached observer, the scene
takes on an anonymous force and order…”
What does Husain recall of
the poster experience of his past?
“Once, I had to create 11 hoardings in five days. I had no time to draw
the squares (of a reference grid). I did it all freehand. One large face was 10
feet by 5 feet. After a few days, I did all the paintings freehand,” he
narrates.
Faced with a man so prismatic
in his talents, we decided to explore how the artist felt about his new medium
when we met him at a preview of his exhibition in Madras. How does Husain respond to the camera
as his brush?
“In the 1930s, the camera was
considered the first enemy of the painter. In the beginning, there were many
misconceptions about it ~ that the camera was only a machine with nothing
creative in it. It has been accepted only recently. Painters are now using the
camera. It is a great help. It is an apparatus like the human body. Instead of
the brush, I use the camera. What is important is the image, whether by hand or
the camera. I supplement my drawings and paintings through photography,” he
explains.
That brings Husain to an
anecdote about another contemporary giant. “Picasso once said, ‘I like using
modern technology. I want to paint in Tokyo
while sitting in Paris.’
Others objected. ‘It won’t be your painting if you use mechanization.’ To which
he replied, ‘What is important is who presses the button.,’ ” he says, his
hands evoking images in the air.
The thought makes Husain
break into cascades of laughter through the white aureole of his beard and
hair, a recurrent motif throughout our hour-long interview:
Did you have an early yen to be a
photographer?
I’ve always been fascinated
by the camera. When I was 17 or 18 and studying at school, I took an interest
in the darkroom. As a child, I remember my father had a studio portrait with
his arm resting on a pile of books. It made him look very scholarly and
impressed me very much.
In 1937, a friend and I
bought a box camera and set up a street studio. We had backdrops, curtains,
even a bookshelf. We were doing quite well… but my partner ran away with the
camera.
What drew you to the Madras cinema hoardings as a subject?
Over the last two or three
years, I wasn’t happy about the several photographs I had taken. I wanted a
theme. I wanted to have something to say.
The posters here are very
Indian in feeling, colour and form. Poster painting is very hard work. What I
saw here is very competently done. Very unique and realistic. The scale is
enormous ~ a figure can rise 150 ft. or more. And they don’t use mechanical
devices. Their use of colour is so indigenous, so typically Indian.
In one of the photographs you
can see a queue of ladies. The oranges, maroons, blues, greens, reds of their
synthetic sarees reflect the colours of the hoarding behind… (Smiling) In Bombay, the figures on the hoardings are so
incongruously westernized. But in Calcutta,
there is sophistication even in their cinema posters.
Are your photographs a humorous look at
life or a social comment?
(Spontaneously) In a subtle way, it is a social comment, even a
judgement. Especially the graffiti. Or maybe it is a reflection of present-day
reality. Today, film hoardings are the only bit of entertainment left to the
common man. All others are so elitist. Only 10 per cent of the people are conscious
of a religious front to these posters, but they take that with a pinch of salt.
A small group of people may want to bring up their children in a certain way.
But what about the other 99 per cent? We can’t ridicule them.
Nowhere else in the world is
this work done so well. I was searching for a way to both capture it and focus
it ~ both for the people who see it and for those who are not aware.
How do you view the lot of the hoarding
painter?
The film industry treats them
so shabbily. Their plight is similar to that of the artists of the 9th
and 10th century in Europe, before
Giotto. (Passionately) They are
considered as artisans, not as individuals or creative entities.
Can you recall your days as a hoarding
painter?
Yesterday, I went to see the hoarding
painters here. They had huge boards and buckets of paint. I had an impulse to
pick up a brush and join them.
I began as a poster painter
in Bombay. I
painted hoardings for four years. It gave me tremendous confidence. You have to
work very fast. There is no time to be afraid. No time to sit and think.
(Ruminatively) That old habit remains. I still sit down and paint on
the floor at one go. It gives me a different optical perspective.
How do you view yourself as a
photographer?
Photography captures the
reality from life. In our country, there has been a tradition of narrative
painting ~ the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the church paintings… Photography and
film have a more direct appeal than painting. I have dabbled in films and still
photography, but I still don’t know all about the numbers of lenses.
Last year, in just two days,
I went around Madras
with two rolls of film. It was all sheer chance. This exhibition is the result.
I tried to compose exactly within the rectangle of the viewfinder. No trimming.
In some cases, I’ve joined two frames, used the whole space. The effect is
horizontal, almost two-dimensional. I haven’t tried to achieve any other
perspective. There are images and figures in the foreground. But I was most
concerned with the poster design ~ that it shouldn’t verge on the vanishing
point.
What of your experiences as a
film-maker?
In 1967, the Films Division
invited a number of non-professional film-makers to make films as an
experiment. I was the first victim. I decided to go to the laboratory and see
for myself. What is important is the vision. It doesn’t matter if the technique
is faulty or the camera jerks.
I made a 20-minute film. It
had a shoe, an umbrella and a lantern. And just background music. The Films
Division rejected it. I took it to the Museum
of Modern Art in New York. They wanted to buy it. (Chuckling) The Central Government then
sent it to the Berlin
film festival, where it won an award.
Why has your life been so
threaded through with controversy? Remember your deification of Indira Gandhi
during the Emergency and the hue and cry over the Bangladesh war series?
I keep reacting to
happenings. I am not a politician. Plunging into controversy doesn’t bother me.
There is a certain habit or conviction to it. I am really concerned with true
Indian culture. It is not fundamentally Islamic or Hindu, but secular. It is a
composite culture that has evolved over the centuries.
Today, there is a distinct
communal element to it. Mrs. Gandhi was the first to ban the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and the Jamiat-i-Islami. That should have been done
long ago.
Is it essential for an artist to have
religious moorings?
Artists are concerned with
humanity itself. And religion should have a humanistic basis and not be dogmatic.
Salvation or nirvana should not be
proclaimed as the only way out. At the same time, I’m not an atheist.
(Ponders awhile) Perhaps I’m
an agnostic. The trouble begins when artists assume the roles of philosophers
and saints. But it is passion that drives one. From the 1920s to the 1940s, I
never wanted to do anything but paint.
As a person who’s been
considered a one-man art movement, do you have an explanation for the
mediocrity of current Indian art?
Today, the opportunity is
immense. But the artist has to make what he does relevant to his environment.
Tackling existing problems is part of the contribution of the individual. The
days of a Van Gogh-like struggle are gone.
Much depends on the man. Very
few have the integrity and dedication to steer clear of the onslaught of
commercialism. Fewer still are enlightened in the spiritual sense. Out of ten,
only one or two try to find their identities. Most are followers. And the
widespread economic and political hardships only add to the difficulty.
The atmosphere today is not
congenial. We are living in a mediocre society. Not only in India, but all
over the world, we find only mediocre leaders. Fifty years ago, there were
brilliant leaders in all countries. Therefore, paintings today are the result of
a mediocre society.
How do you view the future as an artist?
I’m pessimistic at the
moment. We are passing through this phase. We are stagnating. Maybe we’ve
reached saturation point and a collapse must follow.
(With intensity) What we need is Shiva doing the tandava nritya for destruction. In a
sense, Picasso did that. He destroyed all the old values in art. But somebody
must come along to create. There is nobody in sight.
Let us hope for a miracle.
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