Husain Between The Covers

speakers on the dais included artist Vivan Sundaram,Kavita Singh,professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University,curator and author Gayatri Sinah,and Sumathi Ramaswamy,professor at Duke University,USA,who has also edited the book.

In the audience was art

historian-critic Geeta Kapoor,who came in her wheelchair. Her pivotal essay locates the late Progressive artist as an important modern artist and visionary. “Husain was an artist with a capacity for complex metaphors that gave way to a more popular

idiom; this is because he wanted to position himself as an icon with mass appeal,” observed Sundaram .

Ram Rahman,seated on a low stool in the audience,was seen thumbing through the paperback edition. His essay traces the activities of the Right Wing that opposed and attacked the painter in exile.

“This is an important inter-disciplinary book,one that will balance out the monographs that are driven mainly by the market,” said Singh. “Even though it is not a biography that tells us more about Husain the man,it takes up the issue of how the controversy surrounding the artist and his depiction of Mother India still needs to be addressed,” she added.

“One thing that remains painfully clear is that,had Husain been alive and present at the launch,things may not have gone as smoothly for the scholarly group gathered at the bookstore,” said Sundaram,hinting that the Right Wing might have turned up to attack the artist.