An artist reminisces about late painter M. F. Hussain and his muses

27 January 1988I discovered only today when MF Husain came that what had upset him yesterday were the comments of two of his painter friends They had dismissed his attempt to interpret Bhimsen Joshis music through painting Immediately after the performance I had gone up to the stage but had fled when I saw Husain looking so irritable It was no stunt was Husains opening sentence as he walked in conveying his chagrin and his desire to clarifyHusain was deeply fascinated by cinema and music He made small paintings which when fed in a kaleidoscope narrated a storyI was putting forward a pictorial proposition or theorem which had to be resolved on the canvas I wanted to structure pure sound using colours for their own energy At the same time I wanted to transmute the abstraction inherent in Indian classical music through colour association hellip Painters would be the first to realize this I thought but they didnt Thats what has bothered meAs far as others are concerned I could have pleased them so easily Give me a canvas twice as large as the one I painted yesterday in ten minutes I can paint a complete picture Why one there are ten different ways I could have painted the same subject but that was not what I wanted to do Had I chosen a familiar image and even given it a new twist it would have met with the expectations of most Husain saheb saidMF Husain and Ila Pal in London 2008But you chose to do it this way Why To share with the viewers the adventure and the search that is painting What was interesting was that it became an event because it was Husain And because it was Husain the audience couldnt separate the person from the process that is the painting If VS Gaitonde Husains favourite painter and colleague had done the painting he might have been more successful Gaitonde was a profound listener and abstraction was inherent in his painting as it is in Indian classical music but neither Gaitonde nor any other significant contemporary painter would have undertaken to paint in public for the publicThat Husain was made differently is beyond dispute Imagine the adolescent Husain slinking out of the house cycling down to the city morgue sneaking in through a window left open every night through oversight to study the human anatomy In later years too he tested his courage by going to cemeteries and spending several hours there every nightThe late Hindustani classical vocalist Pandit Bhimsen JoshiIn the course of going through a life of hardship Husain developed not only a strong nerve but the capacity to work under trying conditions For years he spent the day working as a furniture designer and the night on the attic of his oneroom tenement halfbent painting Having conquered the fear of the dead the fear of being watched of making mistakes in public Husain had developed a grit that few possess Having learnt to handle a variety of materials and tools he had acquired perfect motor control matched only by his physical stamina and in isolating himself from the surroundings Husain perfected the art of alonenessWhen Husain painted the music at the Tata Theatre in Bombay he was no less alone Thats why he could dare to paint music The music of Pandit Bhimsen Joshi before a formidable gathering of painters ndash critics art dealers collectors and the elite whose feelings were a mix of curiosity and confrontation There was contradiction in the situation People expected Husain to react to the music not churn out the familiar At the same time they expected to see images they associated with HusainWhen Husain reacted he did so to the absoluteness of music its abstractness He used colours to convey the density of Bhimsen Joshis notes the purity of their brilliance It was inconsequential whether the painting was a masterpiece or just mediocre What was important was the validity of the method Husain followed and the attitude he adopted ndash but few bothered to examine thisIt was in 1968 that he first invited people to watch him paint in Delhi Looking back on that event Husain saheb said Although the critics in Delhi brushed it aside as a stunt my painting several canvases in full view of the public caused a lot of interest People came to see a painter paint some from faroff towns I spread out six canvases on the floor and painted them almost simultaneously one serene another stark the third simple and so on I worked for five days for two to three hours every day Not all the paintings were successful I was willing to let people see my failure as well Two of the paintings were unsatisfactory but I cannot trace the causeNo it was not inspirationhellip perhaps not even mood The exact moment when a creative energy gets transformed into the stroke of a pen or a brush determines its authenticity its force And this creative energy is a result of years of concentrated practice I like the word riyaaz used commonly in classical music A musician practises each note to perfectionhellip until it acquires the required depth and density One single note of such a musician can transform the atmosphere It can strike your being like an arrow Bhimsenji proved what I mean by thisExcerpted with permission from Husain Portrait of an Artist 2017 by Ila Pal published by HarperCollins Publishers