Controversies in art: India
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
From Souza, 1949, to 2025 Feb
Neelam Raaj, Feb 9, 2025: The Times of India
No photography is allowed in this room,’ read a sign posted outside a gallery at Delhi’s Bikaner House, which recently hosted the Francis Newton Souza centenary exhibition. Anyone who is familiar with the famous Indian modernist’s erotic explosions on canvas can probably guess why. That’s the room that housed his signature nudes, including the iconic ‘Birth’. The painting that shows a heavily pregnant woman, at once desirable and a source of life, set a world auction record in 2008.
In March last year, Souza’s ‘The Lovers’, a tender painting of a (fully-clothed) woman resting her hand on her partner’s chest, sold for Rs 40 crore, establishing a new record at Christie’s in New York.
But million-dollar prices and international acclaim haven’t stopped the modesty police. In Oct, Bombay high court had to step in to stop the customs department from destroying a shipment of Souza drawings and a work by his contemporary, Akbar Padamsee. If the Goa-born Souza, who went on to become a feted artist in Europe but had few takers at home, were alive, he probably wouldn’t have been surprised that the prudes were outraging about his nudes — again.
Souza’s first brush with ‘obscenity’ charges came in 1949 during one of his early shows in Bombay. Ironically, it wasn’t even a woman’s naked body but his own absent knickers in a self-portrait that had the cops in a twist.
Souza, who was one of the founders of the influential Progressive Artist’s Group which gave independent India a new visual language, packed his bags for London soon after the police raids on his studio. “It may not have been the only reason he moved, but it was a factor,” says Conor Macklin of London-based Grosvenor Gallery which partnered with auction house Saffronart to curate the show displaying some of Souza’s best works. Even in 2025, the tut-tutting of moralisers hasn’t stopped, and more disturbingly, it’s going from hushed ‘haws’ to FIRs and court cases. Earlier this month, a show by DAG (formerly Delhi Art Gallery) intended to celebrate the iconic M F Husain got mired in a controversy after a lawyer complained of hurt religious sentiments. The magistrate dismissed the application for registration of FIR, but it does raise concerns about whether art fairs and galleries in India will become more squeamish about displaying anything that might be construed as risqué. After all, even Michelangelo’s magnificent David had to sport a fig leaf to placate the clergy in 16th century Italy.
While there are no fig leaves here, the India Art Fair (IAF), one of the capital’s biggest art jamborees, will have discrete curtains for the more explicit art. “We are mindful of the fact that a lot of minors visit the fair,” says IAF director Jaya Asokan. Fair enough, though last year, T Venkanna’s erotically charged drawings were hanging out and proud. Venkanna, whose exploration of bold themes reminds one of Souza, has never danced around the bush though he has painted them. “People say (my work) is about sex and, of course, it is,” he declares.
And his collectors know that. Mumbai-based architect Rooshad Shroff, who did a furniture line with Venkanna for last year’s art fair, points out that the ‘maid kya sochegi’ attitude is changing. “As the market grows, inhibitions are disappearing,” Shroff told this reporter. Despite the controversy his gallery had to deal with, DAG CEO Ashish Anand too feels Indians are not prudish. “This is a country of Khajuraho, of fertility goddesses like Lajja Gauri, of naked sadhus revered at the Kumbh. It’s just certain fringe elements or people who are not sensitised to art and culture who are creating these problems,” says Anand, who also held a successful show of Kali paintings recently which drew many visitors, as did the Husain show.
What those who cry obscenity miss is that both Souza and Husain’s modernist language was strongly rooted in India. In Husain’s art, one can see the earthy, sensuous colours of India and his nudes draw on the legacy of temple statues. “In 1948, Souza and Husain went to see a show at the National Museum in Delhi. They were gobsmacked because they had never seen Gupta sculpture or Madhya Pradesh’s temple art. And they thought, this is what we need to incorporate into our art. For Souza, it was almost like it was a rebellious act, and he then incorporated the Indian nude into modernity. The rounded breasts and hip swagger remind you of classical sculptures, but those thick black outlines are very modernistic,” says Macklin.
Over the years, Souza’s nudes changed — almost mutated — but remained his enduring obsession. He painted the prostitutes of London and his own varied assortment of lovers. “The nudes were almost like his little black book of dalliances. You could tell who he was with,” Uday Jain, director of Dhoomimal Gallery, told this reporter in an earlier interview.
Back home, the stuffed shirts kept him on the margins of Indian art for a long time. “Very few Indians were comfortable with hanging his art in their drawing rooms,” says Macklin. Today, they vie for his paintings at auctions. While Husain faced several court cases and threats in his lifetime, which eventually led to his exile, there have been several (thankfully uneventful) exhibitions of his works in India after his death in 2011. In April last year, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art staged a spectacular immersive production paying homage to the barefoot genius on the sidelines of the Venice Biennale.
As DAG’s Anand says: “Obscenity is in the eye of the beholder.” Maybe it’s time to change the gaze.
