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Journalism of Courage
Roped in for a massive project to create 99 paintings on Arab culture by Qatar royal family, eminent painter M F Hussain, in self-exile after drawing the ire of Hindu outfits for his works, insists that art is India’s ‘soul’ and has the depth that is lacked by the West which has only ‘junk culture’ to offer.
In the last 60 years, India has emerged as a major force in many fields, including art, the 92-year-old artist said after inauguration of an exhibition in Omani capital Muscat.
In India, art has a unique position. “It is our soul, a part of our culture that was suppressed under foreign domination. It was almost killed. There is a tremendous depth to Indian art that rises from its ancient civilisation.
“Maybe art in China has that depth but nobody in the West has it. What can you expect from the US whose history is just a few hundred years old except junk culture,” he said.
Unfortunately, in the present world, art is judged by its price tag, said Husain, whose painting titled ‘Battle of Ganga and Jamuna: Mahabharata’ was sold for a whopping USD 1.6 million at Christie’s, setting a world record for contemporary Indian art.
“But we in India have good art, of great substance. We have sold at par with Western artists and that is a great achievement,” he told Oman Daily.
On the controversies sparked by his paintings back home, he said: “I am only concerned about the language of painting. I create the same spiritual feeling in my painting as, say, when you see a head of the Buddha. The feeling is there. The rest is public imagination.”
