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Lot Essay
"One of the most revealing aspects of an artist's work is his sense of the past: his capacity to assimilate in his mind and being the consciousness of his race, and his ability to direct the totality of that awareness through the filter of his creative imagination into an engagement with the contemporary situation. This instinctual absorption of the past is a measure of his cultural rootedness and also of his artistic originality [...] Originality consists in the artist's capacity to confront the present through the collective vision of his country's past, and to bring to it the total experience of history in such a way as to open up new perspectives of thought and feeling." (E. Alkazi, 'The Modern Artist & Tradition', M.F. Husain, New Delhi, 1978, p. 3)
In his body of work, Husain often highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary practices in the arts, particularly the close relationship between painting, classical music, ancient sculpture and dance in India. Influenced by the Sanskrit notion of rasa or the aesthetic evocation of emotion through the arts, the artist believed that in order to create a painting, one must first embrace the basic principles of form, movement and music among other disciplines.
Deeply impressed by the folk traditions and rituals of his country, Husain portrays the beauty and simplicity of a vernacular ceremony accompanied by dance and music in this monumental painting. In an intense camaïeu of deep blues and emerald greens, the artist reveals a procession of musicians and dancers, organically assembled like a bas-relief carved frieze. The horizontal composition of this painting, inspired by traditional Indian art and craftsmanship, enables Husain’s figures to acquire a hieratical stature.
In this joyful scene, the viewer can distinguish a sitar player on one side, her head turned towards the percussionist, and several dancers nimbly swaying to the beat with what appear to be jars balanced on their hips and heads. The colors are delicately assembled, driven by the assured eye of the master colorist and an economical dark line delineating the sensual bodies. The gracefully distorted bodies of the dancers and the expressive hands of the central musician underscore Husain’s knowledge of classical Indian sculpture and his attention to the plasticity of the movement and its depiction. A sense of exhilaration radiates from the painting, emphasized by his skilled use of shadows subtly distilled in the corners of the bodies.
In his body of work, Husain often highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary practices in the arts, particularly the close relationship between painting, classical music, ancient sculpture and dance in India. Influenced by the Sanskrit notion of rasa or the aesthetic evocation of emotion through the arts, the artist believed that in order to create a painting, one must first embrace the basic principles of form, movement and music among other disciplines.
Deeply impressed by the folk traditions and rituals of his country, Husain portrays the beauty and simplicity of a vernacular ceremony accompanied by dance and music in this monumental painting. In an intense camaïeu of deep blues and emerald greens, the artist reveals a procession of musicians and dancers, organically assembled like a bas-relief carved frieze. The horizontal composition of this painting, inspired by traditional Indian art and craftsmanship, enables Husain’s figures to acquire a hieratical stature.
In this joyful scene, the viewer can distinguish a sitar player on one side, her head turned towards the percussionist, and several dancers nimbly swaying to the beat with what appear to be jars balanced on their hips and heads. The colors are delicately assembled, driven by the assured eye of the master colorist and an economical dark line delineating the sensual bodies. The gracefully distorted bodies of the dancers and the expressive hands of the central musician underscore Husain’s knowledge of classical Indian sculpture and his attention to the plasticity of the movement and its depiction. A sense of exhilaration radiates from the painting, emphasized by his skilled use of shadows subtly distilled in the corners of the bodies.