Contemporary painting and Indian politics

[Guest]

[url="http://www.hindustantimes.com/Ravi-Shankar-flays-Husain-for-nude-painting/H1-Article1-516673.aspx"]Ravi Shankar flays Husain for nude painting[/url]

Spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar on Monday expressed surprise over the "hue and cry" over painter MF Husain's move to give up Indian citizenship and chided him for painting Indian gods in the nude.



"While India has a policy of free expression, one cannot accept blatant insult to the heroes of its land. It is the intention behind a man's creativity which is questionable," Ravi Shankar said in a statement.



"In one of Husain's paintings of Mahatma Gandhi, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein and Hitler, he painted only Hitler nude and said that his way of humiliating a person is to paint him nude.



"No one has ever sculpted Rama and Sita as nude. Creative expression is always welcome. No country has been as liberal as India... Any nude woman could have been painted by him but calling the women Sita, Lakshmi (and) Saraswati shows his perversion and hatred.



"Will MF Husain show the same creativity and the same spirit with Islamic heroes and would he, then, be able retain his Qatari citizenship?



Double standards, bias and hatred do not go well with men of excellence."

[Husky]

Sorry, this is entirely off-topic. But I refuse to be misunderstood.

[quote name='ramana' date='10 March 2010 - 12:25 AM' timestamp='1268160422' post='105005']Husky, I am never afraid to change my position based on evidence and truth. I dont make flat out axioms.

[/quote]Ramana, where in my post did I imply otherwise? The whole point of my (multi-para) satirical exaggeration at the end of that post - wherein I ridiculed only myself note - was expressly to indicate that you would not make 'flat out axioms'. (In fact, my hyperbole alleged that you were ultimately incapable of doing so and that I alone had that 'talent'.)



You can't possibly take offence. How could you, when I have given you no reason.



[quote name='Husky' date='06 March 2010 - 12:34 PM' timestamp='1267858614' post='104894']Never mind, Ramana. I will train you to be as expert as I am in making impossible statements. The first thing you need to lose is your total innocence in erring: you must commit them blatantly and willfully. Next, you should quit making rare, minor, insignificant inconsistencies and focus on frequent, impossibly large and fundamental errors like I do. "The world is flat. Don't argue with me" type thing.

With constant practice over the entire rest of your life, you may perhaps one day reach a level, still comparing very infavourably with mine, but much improved from .... No, it's no good. I'm misleading you. You'll never get there: it's a gift only I possess.[/quote]

This is getting ludicrous. One isn't even allowed to make fun of oneself on this forum anymore for fear others will totally misconstrue things to then feel slighted themselves. I demand the right to be the butt of my own ridicule as much as I feel like it. And no one who *wrongly* (and incomprehensibly) feels addressed by silly insults that I direct at my own person shall stop me. :melodrama: <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

(^ Ramana: note how I made fun of me again and not you.)

[ramana]

You are free to make fun of yourself. However your long post looked like you were saying things to me. My incomprehension I suppose.





FromPioneer, 23/3/2010...

EDITS | Tuesday, March 23, 2010 | Email | Print |





Hussain must not get away



A Surya Prakash



Maqbool Fida Hussain has always been a hero for the pseudo-secular crowd in India. That is why sections of the English media are aghast at his decision to migrate to Qatar and have been blaming Hindus for “hounding him”. Since some television anchors have been screaming their heads off over Hussain’s decision to give up his Indian nationality but are unwilling to tell the people the truth about his artistic licence, the time has come to place some cold — or shall we call it ‘hot’ — facts on the table.



What has prompted Hussain to flee India? Mr Prafull Goradia and Mr KR Phanda, the authors of Anti-Hindus, published in 2003, provide us some valuable clues and answer this question substantially. This book not only reproduces a Press release issued by Mr DP Sinha of Sanskar Bharati but also photographs of some of the most repulsive paintings of Hussain. The Press release is indeed a comprehensive charge-sheet against the painter, because it provides a graphic description of eight of Hussain’s paintings — each more vulgar and reprehensible than the other.



Here is the list of the eight objectionable paintings and the accusations made by the organisation. ‘Durga’, in which the goddess is shown in sexual union with a tiger. ‘Rescuing Sita’, in which the artist shows a naked Sita astride a naked Hanuman’s tail — “Hanuman’s tail as a phallic symbol crosses all limits of decency.” Lord Vishnu is generally painted with four hands holding a shankh, a padma, a gada and a chakra, but the hands of Vishnu are shown as amputated and his legs have been cut off — a maimed, mutilated and exhausted Vishnu reclines on his spouse Lakshmi and his vahan Garuda. “Should the cutting of hands and legs of Vishnu be regarded as creative freedom or deliberate affront to Hindu sensibility?” Saraswati, whom Hindus regard as a goddess draped in a white and pure garment (ya shubhra vastravruta) is also shown naked. Goddess Lakshmi is shown naked and perched on the head of Ganesh, “a posture highlighting unmasked sexuality”.



Hussain’s ‘Hanuman-V’ shows a three-faced Hanuman and a nude couple — “The identity of the woman is not in doubt. The erect genital of Hanuman is bent in the direction of the female. The obscenity is too obvious.” Another painting, ‘Hanuman -13’, shows a stark naked ‘Sita’ sitting on the thigh of an equally naked ‘Ravan’, while a naked Hanuman is shown attacking the latter. In ‘George Washington and Arjun on the Chariot’ Washington replaces Lord Krishna in the famous chariot scene from the Mahabharat! Hussain replaces Lord Krishna with Washington because “in his eyes Lord Krishna is no god and stands denigrated and reduced to the level of a mere human being — George Washington”.



But, is Hussain’s iconoclasm uniform? Far from it. Hussain is the very epitome of reverence when it comes to non-Hindu subjects. He paints Fatima, Prophet Mohammed’s daughter, as “the embodiment of serenity and grace” and fully clothed. The artist takes no liberties here. He takes no liberties also while painting his daughter and mother. His painting of Mother Teresa is “an outstanding piece of art” which brings out the compassion of the Mother, says Mr Sinha. If this be so, why does he depict Hindu gods and goddesses in such a repulsive manner? The answer lies in yet another painting — a panel depicting Einstein, Gandhi, Mao Tse Tung and Hitler, in which only Hitler is naked. Can we then conclude that characters about whom Hussain feels repugnant are depicted in the nude by him?



While reproducing these obnoxious “works of art” and the detailed Press release by Sanskar Bharati, Mr Goradia and Mr Phanda describe Hussain as a “sexually perverse person”. The photographs of these paintings originally appeared in a book that was designed by Hussain himself. The authors add three more to the eight accusations made by Mr Sinha. These relate to paintings which show a bull copulating with Parvati while Shankar looks on; a naked Hanuman with his genitals pointing towards a woman; and a naked Krishna with his feet and hands cut-off. The authors draw the distinction between nudity, pornography and perversity: “When pornography or perversity embroils deities, it is sacrilegious.”



As Mr Goradia and Mr Phanda point out, it is simply not possible to give him the benefit of doubt. The panel portraying Einstein, Gandhi, Mao Tse Tung and Hitler is the clincher, they say. The first three have clothes on but Hitler is naked. “Does that mean that he painted in the nude all those he hated? ... Can any self-respecting Hindu forgive Maqbool Fida Hussain?" they ask.



The answer is obviously a big ‘No’. So, what do Hindu citizens who feel offended by Hussain’s art do? Barring a few vandals who took the law in their hands and disrupted a couple of the artist’s exhibitions, the reaction of the large mass of Hindus was what it ought to be in a democracy. They moved courts and lodged criminal complaints against the artist. They drew on the Indian Penal Code that prohibits citizens from offending the religious sensibilities of other citizens.



There were no death threats or absurd pronouncements like the Muslim politician in Uttar Pradesh who, not very long ago, offered a prize of Rs 51 crore for the head of the Danish cartoonist accused of lampooning Prophet Mohammed. Yet, if you go by the shrill posturing of some television anchors, the Hindus deserve no marks for this lawful, democratic response to the worst form of blasphemy. If this pseudo-secular fringe is to be believed, Hindus deserve to be condemned for “hounding” Hussain with court cases.



Whatever Hussain’s friends and admirers may say, the truth is that after taking such obnoxious liberties with Hindu sentiments, he became a fugitive from the law. He has been on the run ever since the cases were filed. Many Hindus who are aware of Hussain’s vile art rightly see him as a ‘Qatarnak’ painter. So, one supposes that Qatar was the logical destination for him!



But, if we value our secular traditions, we must not let him go. The long arm of the law must reach Qatar. We should seek his extradition and prosecute him for hurting the religious sentiments of 800 million citizens.

[ramana]

Hindu article on Raja Ravi Varma:



Artist extraordinaire



[quote]

Artist extraordinaire

K. C. Chitrabhanu



Self-portrait of Raja Ravi Varma





April 29 is 162nd birth anniversary of Raja Ravi Varma. What is it that makes the legendary artist popular even today?



Every year, April 29 is a day of celebration for art lovers in India. It is on this day that legendary artist Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906), considered to be the father of modern Indian art, was born.



The life and career of Ravi Varma signifies a disjuncture with the past, placing him in the forefront of the movement of modern art in India. He was one of the first painters to introduce the European medium of oil paint and use it quite successfully and consistently. His paintings received appreciation from the then ruling British and Indian princes alike. He had an extraordinary ability for capturing the character and imparting grace to the model's personality.



Ravi Varma's paintings were strikingly different on account of his novel approach. From the vast repository of Indian classic literature, Ravi Varma selected themes that evoked an emotional response in the viewer. Placing figures towards the centre of the pictorial area in the narratives enabled him to introduce a dramatic element in the paintings. This compositional device also enabled him to draw the attention of the viewer onto the expressions, gestures and postures of the figures in the paintings.



Mythical characters and situations depicted in his paintings approximated those in real life, thereby succeeding in formulating a new vision which had the power to recreate the glories of a lost past. Balendranath Tagore appreciatively commented on Ravi Varma's art as thus: “ability to balance the naturalistic rendering of faces, anatomies, colours and scenes with the full tenor (rasa) and expressive eloquence (bhava) required of the themes.”



Choice of themes



Ravi Varma's success also lay in his choice of themes. Often he chose situations/episodes such as ‘Shakunthala writing love letter,' which had hitherto not been depicted in Indian art, either in miniatures or wall paintings. As such he painted several versions of the Shakunthala theme. Ravi Varma's paintings also often drew inspiration from Kathakali attakathas. Painted narrations of ‘Krishna as envoy,' ‘Nala deserting Damayanthi in forest,' ‘Keechaka and Sairandhri' are good examples.



He was also inspired by Marathi and Parsi theatrical performances in Mumbai. Many of Ravi Varma's paintings appear like a tableau staged in the proscenium of a theatre. Classical theatrical forms of Kerala and drama productions of Mumbai enlightened Ravi Varma's vision and his artistic endeavours contributed to theatre and cinema in later periods.



Raja Ravi Varma is known to have learnt the technique of painting mostly by watching artists visiting the court of erstwhile Travancore. But it was mainly through his arduous efforts and perseverance that he became a master of the art of painting.



The medium of oil on canvas as well as the use of ‘illusimistic' technique with light and shade and spatial perspective enabled him to emulate the real world. Ravi Varma's venture to make mass productions of his own paintings was also a significant event in the history of Indian art. As the demand for his paintings became overwhelming, T. Madhavarao, the then Dewan of Baroda, requested him to make prints of his popular works. Accordingly a printing press was set up at Thane near Mumbai with German machinery and German technicians. The oleographs prints that came out of the press were based on his paintings featuring scenes from the epics and many depicted Gods and Goddess. Prints became very popular, especially the ones portraying Goddess Lakshmi and Saraswathy. Even a century after his demise, the influence of his art remains as popular as ever.



(The author is an art historian and former lecturer at the College of Fine Arts Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram.)

[shamu]

[url="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html"]Modern art was CIA 'weapon'[/url]

[dhu]

Comedian Patton Oswalt is fretting about the culture-destroying age of "Everything That Ever Was—Available Forever" ("etewaf"). Which is what philosopher Martin Heidegger meant by "Gestell" as the "essence" of technology. (This means Patton Oswalt is a Nazi.) More..

[url="http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/ff_angrynerd_geekculture/all/1"]Wake Up, Geek Culture. Time to Die, Part1[/url]

[url="http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/ff_angrynerd_geekculture/2/"]Part2[/url]



A few interesting points in this piece by a western comedian.



1.Authenticity of experience is same as sharing an inside joke (or a wink) with a few.

2.Sharing the same with all trivializes the experience.

3.The latter is "selling out" in the western dynamic.

4.The "excavation" and cataloguing of such experiences is not nostalgia but quite integral to the dynamic of western creativity. When the various niches are considered together as a phenomenon, the dynamic appears to be all-consuming.

[ramana]

Telegraph reports:



http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110108/js...408792.jsp

Glare on spy role on Husain



New Delhi, Jan. 7 (PTI): The Central Information Commission has told the home ministry to reveal if it had sought a report from the Intelligence Bureau on M.F. Husain’s nude portraits of religious deities and, if it had, what was the decision it had taken.



Information commissioner Sushma Singh said the Right to Information Act exempts the contents of intelligence reports from disclosure but binds the ministry to disclosing its actions on the basis of such reports.



Home ministry officials agreed before the commission that the bureau was involved in the matter but did not specify in what capacity. They told the commission that they would check the ministry’s records and send a formal reply to RTI applicant S.C. Agrawal.



The officials also said the law ministry was not consulted on Husain’s paintings.



The case relates to an RTI application filed by Agrawal, who had asked the home ministry about the role of the IB, reports, recommendations and other related issues regarding the Husain’s paintings.

[ramana]

Google cache of M.F. Hussain dead





For me good riddance to bad rubbish and a perverted person who took advantage of artistic freedom in India to attack Hindu religious icons.





He used and abused the tolerance of Hindus to attack their beliefs and icons just as Muwaiyya took advantage of Ali's goodness.

[ramana]

EDITS | Saturday, June 11, 2011 | Email | Print | | Back





Vanvaas from Ram's India

June 11, 2011 12:47:55 AM



Ashok Malik



In the end, Husain lost to the mob. The gutter rhetoric on the streets kept him away from India. But the anti-Husain constituency has won a pyrrhic victory.



There is something downright disquieting about intellectual sensibilities in India. Even in his death Maqbool Fida Husain, India’s best-known contemporary artist, has been subjected to abuse and only grudging praise from the Hindu Right. A BJP spokesperson argued Husain “should have come back, respected the law and people’s sentiments and merged his breath and body with Indian soil”. Instead, he got “got distanced from Indians”. For good measure, “his caricature of Durga and Bharat Mata was obnoxious and unacceptable”. It was unnecessarily convoluted phraseology, out of place at the time of departure of a titan of Indian creativity. <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />



On Internet forums, the criticism of Husain was far worse. He was labelled ‘anti-Indian’, ‘anti-Hindu’, ‘anti-national’ and all the favoured cuss words of the Internet Hindus — a shorthand phrase for those who, while representing a minority of Hindus on the Internet, make up perhaps the most bigoted social media community anywhere on Earth. <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />



It was left to Balasaheb Thackeray, chief of the Shiv Sena, to bring closure that was appropriate: “MF Husain was as strong-willed as he was fantastic. There are differences over his art, but he did not give up his obstinacy … An artist has his peculiar style, and Husain pursued his modern style wilfully. He only slipped up on the depiction of Hindu gods and goddesses. Otherwise, he was happy and content in his field. If his demise is a loss for modern art, then so be it. May his Allah give him peace.” :rotfl: {Bal Thackery was slamming the guy and this fool thinks he was praising him faintly!}



The Shiv Sena founder’s nephew Raj Thackeray, who now leads a breakaway party, was even more forthright: “He was an asset to the country. His passing should put an end to all the controversies surrounding his paintings.”



{This is incorrect. His work lives beyond him and now that he is dead will get proper critique and judged for its merits or demerits de-linked from MHF's religion and leanings.}





Husain was not perfect. The films he made were an embarrassment. :mrgreen: It was sometimes felt he courted controversy as a sort of publicity tool. His eccentricity was both genuine and on occasion cultivated. When he walked into a club barefoot, he knew what he was doing: Aiming for the next morning’s headlines.



{Make up your mind!}



Even so none of this is unusual. Creative people anywhere, artists and writers, actors and even television anchors — 9.00 pm generalissimos for instance — often acquire affectations and mannerisms or merely say, draw and write things to attract attention to themselves and their craft. It is possible Husain’s recent problems lay in one of these experiments having gone horribly wrong.



{No kidding!}



That aside, his choice of refuge from India was decidedly strange. Dubai and Qatar were scarcely domains of free expression, even if Husain made them his home. If he had migrated to, say, Paris, India’s embarrassment would have been much more acute.



{i]{That region is the right place for it harbors Indian criminals and shelters them with visas and police protection. It exploits Indian lobor. If India were more developed economically no India would go to those places. I worte after he took up Qatari citizenship that Indian elite were flummoxed at his choice. I was not for it showed the true roots of his denigrating paintings of Hindu religious icons. It was Islamist pure and simple. He was a reverse water melon. An Islamist masquerading as a Communist/Leftist protestor. }[/i]



However, the anti-Husain constituency has won a decidedly pyrrhic victory. It kept him out of India but invited ridicule upon itself. By reacting churlishly to the great man’s death and refusing to acknowledge he had been punished much more than his so-called sin merited, the extreme fringe of the Hindu Right — its influence largely limited to the Internet — has isolated itself even further.



{In whose eyes? Eyes of deracinated wannabe Wasterners?}



Why didn’t Husain come back to India and submit himself to court scrutiny? Why didn’t he answer his opponents from behind a courtroom post? The questions may seem disarmingly simple. Yet those who ask them — people such as the BJP spokesperson who now stresses Husain should have “respected the law and people’s sentiments” — are either innocent of the fundamental decency of a democracy or are plain disingenuous.



The hate-Husain brigade filed some 900 cases against him. Could a man past 90, past 95 when he died, be expected to run from one mofussil court to another, up and down the country? If India’s most famous artist had actually subjected himself to this torture, his health and mental peace would have been shattered. More than that Indian democracy and commitment to artistic liberty would have come out looking like a caricature. Paradoxically, in not coming back to India, Husain did the Hindu right a favour.



The cry-baby Hindutva brigade — the type the members of which post replies on Internet forums using pseudonyms because a deep-seated inferiority complex prevents them writing under their real names — will no doubt point to Salman Rushdie, The Last Temptation of Christ, the Danish cartoons episode, The Da Vinci Code. The defensive (and defeatist) contention would be that if it is fine for (some) Muslims and Christians to take offence too easily, then it is fine for (some) Hindus to take offence equally easily and copy those they claim to loath.



{All those people criticised or depicted their own religion. Rushdie criticised Islam and got a Shia fatwa. Dan Brown mocked Roman Catholics. He didnt eget any stricture. Hussian however mocked Hinduism. If he had mocked even once Islam, I will grant him his liberal status. The reason why DIE support MF Hussien is he was doing their job for them. In other words his attack were their attacks. Plain and simple. Hence the empathy for their foot soldier!}





This is flawed logic. For a start, no seriously democratic country — other than India — has placed prohibitions on almost any of the artistes or works of creativity cited above.{Note selective creativity. BTW India banned Salman Rusdie's book Satanic Verses, in case the writer is too young to know! And India censored Da Vince Code.} Second, the international assault on Rushdie was led by a crazed Ayatollah in Iran. Does the Hindu Right see itself in the same league? Third, state-specific restrictions and clumsy attempts to censor films like The Da Vinci Code are abominable, but do not constitute the systematic targeting of a venerable artist by manipulating and misusing the Indian legal system.



In the end, Husain lost to the mob. The gutter rhetoric on the streets — now adopted by the Internet Hindu on Twitter and similar networks — kept him away from his beloved India (and make no mistake he loved this country deeply).{Which India did he love? The muslim India of the Bahmain kings?} It gave the mob an inflated sense of its strength. Today, more than ever before, books, films and paintings are subject to clearance by arbiters who cannot rise above the lowest common denominator. Politicians attempt to justify this by citing “people’s sentiments”. What they mean is the noise of the rabble.



Of course, this rabble is not exclusively Hindu. Even so the competitive hysteria of Hindu and Muslim self-appointed censors is nauseating. The banning of The Satanic Verses in 1988 and the driving out of Husain constitute the bookends of an extremely disturbing period in India’s democratic discourse.



Husain’s death so far away from India, and the fact that he has been laid to rest in distant London{Its free will. he wanted to be buried in London. Does the author propose re-burial in Mumbai or Hyderabad?} — rather than amid the smells and sounds of the Mumbai he so cherished — shames us all. How different is it from the British Government sending Bal Gangadhar Tilak to far-off Mandalay simply because it considered his ideas and writings dangerous? Can disagreement with an artist’s sense of graphic description — and that right to disagree is no doubt legitimate — lead to such extraordinary expulsion? Can the land of Lord Rama be blasé about Husain’s vanvaas?



These are troubling, even poignant questions. I suspect they won’t get answers; they will meet still more Internet Hindu poison.



malikashok@gmail.com



[/quote]



I think the poor writer should have him self checked into therapy for above article is full of hyper ventilation and imagined liberalism. Not only that he has got his story wrong.



It was Ram who went into vanvaas, where Ravan abducted Sita.

MFH derogatory depiction of Sita is a similar act of intellectual abduction.



Unfortunately the writer is not even fully Macaulayised. Only half baked.

[dhu]

Ashok Malik needs to ask why are the Hindus upset?

Is it one or two portrayals or is it because such denigration has been unrelenting and systematic over past 900 years by the monotheists.

Hussein indulges in a very sophisticated iconoclasm.

And now, After having destroyed or appropriated so much of india's and indeed the heathen's cultural heritage, the cultural serial killers now feign the mantle of culture.

But what else is to expected from those whose basic culture is Orientalism with no alternative possible.

[Husky]

On declaring MF Hussain - or however that kadaver's name is spelled - an artist:

I think this is where the attempts at social engineering visibly fails.



- Except for a bunch of people who don't know what art is - don't know to work it out for themselves - and who will thus parrot others who they have allowed to determine for them what is "actual art" (and so imagine MF Husain has any skill let alone artistic expression or ability to envision forget capture beauty), the masses can visibly see the difference between aesthetics/what's truly attractive & beautiful, and puerile junk. And anyone who is remotely honest (and not literally blind) will admit that Husain's ... output is not remotely attractive no matter how you hold the paper (well, I suppose if you turn it over and can't see it anymore, it's a vast improvement). And that's as concerns his "better" (decent) works. Then there's his deformed profanities on christoislamic themes: christoislamic characters copulating in christoislamic circumstances. Less than worthless, as anyone without proclivities to extreme sleaze will allow.



- To imbibe the inverted notion of "art" (let alone aesthetics) that the social engineers want to instill, one has to first read and read and read a zillion people's worthless opinions, analyses and reviews of works of "art" and what constitutes "art". And one will need to Understand such things first and then Internalise the same. In other words, one has to take a big shard or two from the Snow Queen's all-perverting mirror and poke it into one's own eyes before a *sane* person will share such opinions.

The heathen masses won't do that: the effort required to program them into this is too much. Instead, if the heathens and other unsubverted ever come across Husain's WC-papier they'll just see it for what it is: junk. And conclude the inevitable: christoislamics can only "create" crap. (Don't blame christoislamics, it's their christoislamism that artistically, and in all other ways, stunted them so.)



- Make the same Hindu heathens look at the skillfully and authentically crafted GR sacred imagery (or even GR art), not to mention E Asian paintings and vigrahas, and instantly, the Hindoo - without knowing the tongues of the GRs and E Asians, as this language is a visual medium - will see the beauty jumping at him. (In this case: Divine beauty, whose purpose is not art at all but religion - same as with carnatic music, bharata natyam etc. They are not art, but religious practice.) What to say of Hindus viewing their own people's art, and the fashionings and likenesses made of the sacred of their own religion.



- Among ancient populations, aesthetics was recognised as a natural driving force in art and the appreciation of it: it could appeal to the masses as well as those who deemed themselves to have a more particular, more refined eye for beauty. But it was still understood that anyone born with sight would in all likelihood have the ability to appreciate visual art. Certainly, there were rules and guidelines (from golden ratios, to how to fashion rooftop edges and why, to how to draw the Gods, what materials to use, what - sole - events to depict and to have displayed) and those educated learnt the reasoning behind them and would likely choose to work with those guidelines. But there was a good deal of aesthetics governing it all.



In contrast, among India's cliquey social engineers of our times, art is elected by them for their purposes - just as the gifting of various Indian national awards now are - and it is defined to be what they declare is art. It is made so cliquey (culty) that it is verily the inverse of what has universal appeal and warrants universal appreciation.



What the social engineers attempted - the power they sought - is to tell the masses what is art. And this is where the poison failed to go down: without heathens even knowing the story of Des Kaisers Neue Kleider, the unsubverted* can see through the nonsense for themselves. Automatically. Because ugly is ugly. Scrawls are scrawls. And profanity (well, where one can see make out the scrawls) remains profanity. That it's but more christoislamic ineptitude born of the ever-low christoislamic mind does not mitigate the perception of it as junk (i.e. no special consideration for people with the self-inflicted disabilities owing to mindviruses).



* As stated above, it requires years of brainwashing to make people see beauty where there is hideousness and see profundity where there is profanity. It's only the miseducated/subverted kind that has learnt/been taught to rationalise to itself that the ugliness declared "art" that its eyes sees is "cleverness", "meaningful" or even "beauty" instead, and has frequently also unlearnt the natural ability to recognise, appreciate and value true beauty. It's the self-inflicted wound with the Goblin's mirror fashioned for Die Schnee Koenigin. Their punishment is to live with themselves - I can't imagine anything worse <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' /> (There's nothing that screams Debile more than Bad Taste.)







http://www.vigilonline.com/index.php?opt...0&Itemid=1

INDIAN MEDIA PRAISES JIHADI ‘ARTIST’ HUSAIN FOR INSULTING HINDUS

[...]

Finally, a little but bitter truth about Husain’s alleged art. The Indian media has called him ‘Picasso of India’. The foolish media does not seem to know that both Husain and Picasso were not artists but fraudsters. Both did not practice art. The ‘modern art’ both practiced was pure swindle. In fact, Picasso had once admitted : “I fooled everyone.” While Picasso had the honesty to at least admit the truth about his ‘art’ towards the end of his career, the ‘artist’ from the holy town of Pandharpur in Maharashtra did not have the decency to do so till the end. How typically Islamic!

Reads like an admission of the Emperor's New Clothes being non-existent.

[Bodhi]

I have departed from my earlier position on Husain. Here is my take



http://bharatendu.wordpress.com/2011/06/...rspective/

[ramana]

I found out Kandinsky painted his famous Man on a Horse.



Looks like Hussien's two horses are in the same genre.

[Bodhi]

Part 2 of take on M F Husain



http://bharatendu.wordpress.com/2011/06/...pective-2/

[shamu]

Then, why did M F Hussain make the controversial paintings?

What were the motives? Who was behind that?

[dhu]

Possibly, the controversy was manufactured to show the Hindus as equally intolerant after the Rushdie affair in 1989 exposed Islam's pretensions across the world stage.

The timeline supports this interpretation.

This has been done a number of times: Ram Sene, James Laine, priests attacking their own churches, Deendar Anjuman attacking churches.

[ramana]

Bodhi,

Once again a great job of squaring the circle and more than that educating us.



Shamu, He was tempted to paint the wrong bhavas. It was his own karma that led him to fall from grace.

[Bodhi]

Thx Ramana. Please help spread the word. We must do justice.

[ramana]

Bodhi Can you comment on his Madhuri Dixit sketches next?

[Bodhi]

[quote name='ramana' date='05 July 2011 - 12:07 PM' timestamp='1309847345' post='112111']

Bodhi Can you comment on his Madhuri Dixit sketches next?

[/quote]



No, I am done. My purpose was to do justice to the painter, which I beleive is served; otherwise I am not an admirer of his art.