This book is a work of art separate from the monumental paintings reproduced herein. There is no way we can grasp the scale of paintings which range from twelve feet to forty feet; nor can we quite sense the immediacy of Husain's feelings or the throb we experience in close proximity to these extraordinary pictures. Perhaps the artists pictures and words closely bound in a book form are meant for contemplation. This is passionately cerebral work (never merely intellectual!) with clear evidence of a vital purpose.
If these powerful pictures are about anything at all, they are about contradiction, contrast, paradox. We must look for the enigma of time / timelessness… violence / sublime… resurrection / destruction… disequilibrium / harmony… sacred / profane… creation / negation… static tension /freedom.
Incongruities such as these become whole and coherent by means of Husain's vigorous line, imaginative structure and images as well as vision steeped in awareness of art history. He is not concerned with the imminent demise of art historians into their own endless categories ranging from neo geo to post posterior modernism.
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