The Last Supper in Red and Blue

Two iconic paintings by MF Husain:  Is Husain using pop culture to critique overconsumption, greed?  Is the central figure with a book and candle in the red painting Jesus, a prophet or just a wise man?

By Meher Pestonji in Mumbai

Two huge paintings – MF Husain’s ‘The Last  Supper in Red’ and ‘The Last Supper in Blue’ – face opposite walls of a softly lit gallery, a long, slim table overladen with fruit between them. Another sparse table with two chairs for gallerist Dadiba Pundole and art historian Ranjit Hoskote, face a select audience of art connoisseurs.

The paintings join a long tradition of Last Supper paintings from fifteenth century Renaissance to the present.  Leonardo Da Vinci’s iconic work on the drama of betrayal is considered the most significant, portraying Jesus with his apostles in shock and disbelief. All are portrayed as white men, appropriating a West Asian Arab born in Bethlehem, into Western culture.

Husain reinterprets the classical theme, spanning centuries to bring in contemporary images into icons of Christianity, as he grapples with global civilizational issues. Early in life, he was part of the Progressive Artists Group, seeking a new direction for Indian art, breaking away from the colonial British style to create art that was quintessentially Indian. Searching for new ways of interpreting and expressing comes naturally to him.

After Dadiba, acquired these monumental works from Wadhera Art Gallery, he kept them rolled up, opening to air them every eight-ten years. Last week, for the first time, he hosted a private viewing for art connoisseurs.

“Husain believed in duality as expressed in many of his works,” began Dadiba, pointing to a segment in the red painting where the table is held up by the devil while an angel hovers overhead.  “For Husain good and evil co-exist. Life involves recognizing and dealing with this duality.”

Painted around 1991, the Last Supper paintings were part of a larger body of incomplete work titled ‘Let History Cut Across Me, Without Me’. The red was painted first, the blue came as a counterpoint to it.

This was a period of wars in Muslim countries -- Iraq, Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf - that disturbed Husain and had him meditating on the nature of warfare. Incongruous images – soldier, gun -- got juxtaposed against cherubins, Pontius Pilate poking a fork at a devil emerging from a television screen. The resemblance to the Onida advertisement ‘neighbour’s envy, owners pride’ is unmistakable.

Standing before the works leaves you contemplating the mind of the artist. Is Husain using pop culture to critique overconsumption, greed?  Is the central figure with a book and candle in the red painting Jesus, a prophet or just a wise man?

Does the empty bowl at his feet symbolize famine, perhaps in the neglected region of  Africa?  Why is blind Democles cleaving  a sword through the table? What is comedian Buster Keaton, a repeated motif in Husain’s works, doing at a table held up by devils? Does the robotic figure transition us from the start of civilization to today?

Each figure leads to questions one wishes Husain was around to answer.

Even Dadiba didn’t imagine that the falling figure at a corner of the blue painting is ‘crucified Eve’ till Husain pointed to the nail on her hand.  Why does the apple, symbolizing evil, fallen at her feet, have a halo?  Or, is it one of Saturn’s rings?

Trusting the artist’s intuition expands our sensibility as eyes traverse from image to image searching for interpretations.

“Husian had the confidence to approach sacred images with his encyclopaedic mind,” said Ranjit. “While Da Vinci dramatized the Last Supper, Husain fragments it in different ways bringing in moral, political drama in a global context. He went beyond scriptural dogma to wrestle with civilizational issues. He was an Indian artist who belonged to the world.”

Religious themes have long been part of Husain’s art practice as he has painted Ramayana and Mahabharata on an epic scale, as well as various Hindu gods and goddesses. Beginning life as a painter of cinema hoardings, working on scale was never a challenge.

His most ambitious work on a religious theme was a panel of ten grand paintings called Theorama, a panaroma of world religions. Each panel focused on a religion – Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Confucianism, Judaism with the tenth panel depicting Humanism the thread connecting all. A modern-day secularization of religious beliefs and imagery.

“Despite the public image of him as a maverick who could complete a painting in public within minutes, Husain was a widely read scholar spending hours at the library in Doha,” said Ranjit. “As a young critic, I used to be critical of Husain, but as I studied his work I grew to appreciate the breadth of his knowledge, the depth of his mind. It’s been a joy to re-visit these great works.”

However, Husain’s portrayal of Saraswati, goddess of wisdom, aroused the ire of Hindu fanatics, leading him into self-exile from India, his beloved homeland. The last years of his life were spent between New York, London and West Asian countries where he was welcomed as an honoured artist. Ranjit is currently curating a Husain museum at Qatar which will hold Husain’s ninety-nine works on the Arab civilization.

“Historically kings and church authorities have been patrons of the arts, but that art had limitations as no critique was permissible,” said Dadiba. “In those days galleries in India didn’t have the bandwidth to support Husain on the large scale he wanted to work on. In the Arab world Husain found his patrons and made monumental works. ‘I have so much to say, but so little time’ -- Husain would sigh regretfully.”

Don’t we wish he was still around to portray the current chaos in the world?

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Meher Pestonji is a writer, poet and social activist based in Mumbai.  She has been a journalist writing on multiple social issues, theatre, literature and art, and she has worked in several grassroots and civil society campaigns for the rights of the marginalised, for women’s rights, housing rights of slum dwellers, with street kids, among other campaigns. Her books include Mixed Marriage and Other Parsi  Stories, Pervez, Sadak Chhaap, Piano for sale, Feeding crows, Outsider.  Her other books include Being Human in a War Zone, Can Poetry Halt War, Offspring and Poems.