Maqbool husain conference: spring 2009
Barefoot Across the Nation: Maqbool Fida Husain and the Idea of India
Barefoot Across the Nation: Maqbool Fida Husain and the Idea of India: April 9-11, 2009
Barefoot Across the Nation: Maqbool Fida Husain and the Idea of India
An International Symposium
Duke University, April 9-11, 2009
Room 240, John Hope Franklin Center
This conference will explore the entanglement of the artistic imagination in the cultural politics of risk in our troubled times by considering the oeuvre of Maqbool Fida Husain, arguably modern India’s most iconic and celebrated painter and also possibly that country’s most embattled artist today. Some years ago, another embattled creative spirit wrote, “The real risks of any artist are taken in the work, in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in the attempt to increase the sum of what it is possible to think.” For Salman Rushdie, the author of these words, “Books become good when they go to this edge and risk falling over it—when they endanger the artist by reason of what he has, or has not, artistically dared.” The principal questions we ask in this conference are: What is at stake when an artist works to “increase the sum of what it is possible to think,” and in that process places his very life at risk for what s/he has artistically dared? Is it just the Self that is threatened, or are Others at risk as well, including the very communities within which the artist operates, but also dares against? If artists like Husain evoke the triumphs and predicaments of the human condition in their work, is humanity itself at risk when their lives and labors are in peril? What then is the scholarly responsibility—ethical and political—in circumstances such as these? This conference brings together some of the world’s leading experts on Husain and contemporary Indian visual culture in conversation with scholars from other disciplines to debate questions such as these—and to commemorate the life and work of this provocative artist and Muslim citizen of India at a moment of great peril.
Last Supper in Red Desert, M.F. Husain : On loan to the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University from the Qatar Museums Authority
Other Representations of The Last Supper by M.F. Husain :
M.F. Husain: Context and Elaborations
Bruce Lawrence, "A Metaphysical Secularist? Decoding M.F. Husain as a Muslim Painter"
Professor Bruce Lawrence's address asks: "What makes someone not just a Muslim
who paints but rather a Muslim painter?" His talk will reference the incomplete but evocative set of Husain's acryllic scenes that depict Arab/Islamic civilization on display in a temporary gallery of the newly opened Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar.
Lawrence's talk will focus specifically on Husain's "Last Supper in Red Desert," which will be on exhibit at the Nasher Museum during this conference. The exhibition of this painting has been made possible by the generous support of Sheikha Mayassa Al-Thani and the Qatar Museums Authority.
Bruce Lawrence is Director of the Duke Islamic Studies Center and Professor of Religion at Duke University.
Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar
The Museum of Islamic Art is the flagship project of the Qatar Museums Authority. Under the leadership of its Chairperson, Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the QMA is transforming Qatar into the cultural capital of the Middle East and an international centre for the arts: “We have aspired in this project to create an architectural masterpiece and a premier collection of art. But, more than this, the Museum of Islamic Art will also be a place of learning and a platform for international dialogue” (H.E. Sheikha Al Mayassa).
The opening exhibition of the Museum of Islamic Art, Beyond Boundaries: Islamic Art Across Cultures (Dec 1, 2008 – Feb 22, 2009) featured art across space and through time in the Islamic world and included interactions between the world of Islam and that of other cultures and religions. The opening exhibit included a section dedicated to the Indian painter, Maqbool Fida Husain.
Conference Cosponsors
Barefoot Across the Nation has been funded by the North Carolina Center for South Asian Studies and the following Duke units: Visual Studies Initiative, Center for International Studies, Provost's Common Fund, Duke Islamic Studies Center, Arts and Sciences Council, the Vice Provost for International Affairs, the Nasher Museum of Art, the Department of History, John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, John Hope Franklin Center for International and Interdisciplinary Studies, and the Trent Foundation.