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FRANCIS NEWTON SOUZA
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FRANCIS NEWTON SOUZA 1924–2002
Bridging Western and Indian Modern Art
Aziz Kurtha
With 200 colour and 61 b/w plates
Mapin Publishing
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First published in India in 2006 by Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd. Simultaneously published in the United States of America in 2006 by Grantha Corporation 77 Daniele Drive, Hidden Meadows Ocean Township, NJ 07712 email: mapinpub@aol.com Distributed in North America by Antique Collectors’ Club East Works, 116 Pleasant Street, Suite 60B Easthampton, MA 01027 T: 1 800 252 5231 • F: 1 413 529 0862 E: info@antiquecc.com www.antiquecollectorsclub.com Distributed in the United Kingdom, Europe and the Middle East by Art Books International Ltd. Unit 200(a), The Blackfriars Foundry, 156 Blackfriars Road, London, SE1 8EN UK T: 44 207 953 7271 • F: 44 207 953 8547 E: sales@art-bks.com Distributed in South-East Asia by Paragon Asia Co. Ltd. 687 Taksin Road, Bukkalo, Thonburi Bangkok 10600 Thailand T: 66 2877 7755 • F: 66 2468 9636 E: rapeepan@paragonasia.com Distributed in the rest of the world by Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd. Ahmedabad 380013 India T: 91 79 2755 1833 / 2755 1793 F: 91 79 2755 0955 E: mapin@mapinpub.com www.mapinpub.com Text © Aziz Kurtha Photographs © As listed All images from private collections unless specified otherwise All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. ISBN: 81-88204-63-3 (Mapin) ISBN: 1-890206-91-1 (Grantha) LC: 2005929224 Designed by Paulomi Shah & Janki Sutaria/ Mapin Design Studio Edited by Anupa Mehta Processed by Reproscan, Mumbai Printed and bound in Singapore
For Nadira, Zia and Aziza
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Contents
I
Acknowledgements
6
Introduction
9
Origin and Influence
12
II London, New York and the Subcontinent 64 III Idiom and Expression
94
IV Line and Language
132
V Opinion and Appraisal
188
Overview
197
Endnotes
198
Appendix
199
A Fragment of Autobiography
Chronology
206
Bibliography
208
Index
209
List of Plates
210
Captions
212
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Acknowledgements
I am more than pleased to acknowledge that I received help, assistance and encouragement from many people in writing and producing this book. I would particularly like to thank the writer Richard Lannoy for his great help and support, particularly as he knows both India and Goa so well and had indeed met Souza himself. I am also grateful to Balraj Khanna who co-authored The Art of Modern India with me and who offered useful suggestions in an early draft of the book. The art auction houses now play an increasingly important role in promoting Indian contemporary art and I would like to thank particularly Zara Porter-Hill, Yamini Mehta and Dr Hugo Weihe of Christie’s, as well as Mehreen Rizvi and Claire Penhallurick of Bonhams, and also Robin Dean of Sotheby’s for their general encouragement and support for this project. Some of the many flourishing art galleries in this field also offered encouragement and I would like to thank Arun Vadehra and Sonia Ballaney of Vadehra Gallery in New Delhi as well as Conor Macklin of the Grosvenor Gallery in London. This book would not have been possible without the excellent editorial, design and production facilities at Mapin Publishing and I offer my sincere thanks and appreciation to Bipin Shah, the proprietor, as well as his excellent staff including Paulomi Shah, Anupa Mehta and Diana Romany. They were very patient and efficient in dealing with the numerous changes and amendments that occurred during production and I would recommend them highly to any prospective author in this field of endeavour. Professional photography obviously plays an extremely important part in faithful reproduction of both colour and black and white images, of which there are nearly 250 in this book, and in this connection I would like to thank particularly Prudence Cuming Associates of Dover Street, London, for the large number of photographs taken in London, as well as the few taken competently by the young photographer Alzahraa Suleiman in Dubai in difficult circumstances, as well as the Rose Studio in Dubai who have always been very helpful. I am also grateful to Arnie Adler for some good photographic work of paintings in New York. My assistant Thrity Aga played a very important and patient role throughout in dealing with all manner of amendments and adjustments including audio visual and typesetting work.
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The artist and collector Wahab Jaffer from Karachi and his wife Shirin encouraged me throughout to produce such a book and to them I owe special thanks, as well as to Zuleikha Anant, my sister-in-law, who supported me throughout including putting me in touch with her old friend, the art critic John Berger. I am indebted to John Berger for finding some time to read parts of the earlier drafts of the book, and for perceptively updating his earlier comments which had appeared in the New Statesman in the 1950s. My legal colleague in Dubai, Salman Lutfi, was very understanding about this side of my work and to him I express my thanks. I need to express a special word of thanks to M F Husain who specially encouraged me to write a monograph on Souza as he felt one was sorely needed and in view of his great regard for his “mentor�. Seldom does one find an artist of his fame and stature who is as warm and generous in spirit. My brother Ali was helpful in making some useful suggestions. Last but by no means least, this book would never have come about without the constant support, affection and encouragement by my immediate family and my son Zia, daughter Aziza and, of course, my wife Nadira are owed special thanks and love for bearing with me during the many months in London and Dubai that it took to write this book. Needless to say any errors, omissions and inconsistencies are entirely mine.
Aziz Kurtha January 2006
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Portrait of Souza by M F Husain, Oil on canvas, 87x73 cm (35x29”), 1946
TRIBUTE BY M F HUSAIN As an indication of Souza’s artistic stature, M F Husain, who is probably the most celebrated painter of the Indian subcontinent in the last fifty years, said on his death: “Francis Souza was my mentor. I came into the art world because of him. He saw my exhibition in 1947 and encouraged me. He is the most significant Indian painter, almost a genius. He was an intellectual and very knowledgeable about everything. . . . I will miss him as an artist whom India should be proud of.”
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Introduction Art is often considered a distillation of its maker’s true nature. Many years later, in hindsight, after his demise, it may be pertinent to reflect upon F N Souza’s life and work for its true import. In the mid-1950s, eminent British critics of the stature of David Sylvester and John Berger wrote memorable reviews of Souza’s work. Edwin Mullins’ monograph, and Geeta Kapur’s writings of the 70s, are other important sources to which I owe a debt. However, these writings were hampered by limited access to the artist’s work, as also the relatively less developed, expensive nature of colour photography at the time. Accordingly, images that accompanied such text appeared in small sizes, mainly in black and white. Advances in digital photography allows one to present nearly 200 of Souza’s works in full colour. These appear here, sometimes juxtaposed with classical works by Old and Modern Masters that he admired. Most of Souza’s works in this book have not been seen publicly. Monographs and other picture-led books have an inherent tendency to draw the reader’s eye onto the images rather than theaccompanying text, which often goes unread. Readers are inclined to scan images without grasping the true context and meaning. In an effort to imbue viewing with understanding, extensive captions appear under most of the images. One of my objectives was to examine the role played by Souza in bridging the nascent Modern art movement of India, of which he was a founder, with elements in Western, particularly European, art that he admired deeply. It hardly needs pointing out that great painters in the West, from Turner to Picasso, as also in the East, occasionally honed their craft, in part, by copying other artists. Picasso is reported to have said, “I borrow from everybody and from everywhere.” Indeed, the structure of El Greco’s The Opening of the Fifth Seal (1608) is said to have influenced Picasso’s momentous Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) which, in turn, led to numerous adaptations, including Souza’s Young Ladies in Belsize Park (1962). Souza read widely and studied Old and Modern Masters in museums and galleries. Sometimes he tried to adapt these images to suit his own idiom. Frequently, such works bore very little pictorial relationship to the original, apart from a basic structural resemblance, seen, for instance, in his ‘re-interpretation’ of works by Titian, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Modigliani and Goya and followed by Henri Matisse and Picasso. The total number of Souza’s ‘inspired by’ works constituted a small, yet, revealing portion of his oeuvre.
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Souza held that many abstract painters owed their genesis to poor drafting abilities. While this is not entirely true, as great abstract art has a philosophy of its own, Souza managed to demonstrate that his paintings were strengthened by a prowess at drawing. He said, “Drawing is the school of hard knocks the artist has to go through before he or she can come into the bright sunlight of colour.” Indeed, Souza’s powerful writing complemented his drawing. Stephen Farthing, of the new University of Arts, London, has noted in 2005 that, “In order to make sense of drawing you have got to see it in relation to writing . . . in a way they are part of the same language.” Souza’s stunning prose cannot, I believe, be fully appreciated through brief quotations and so this publication includes as an Appendix, his ‘A Fragment of Autobiography’, first published in the 1950s. As with many great artists, Souza led a frenzied existence apart from a decade of sensational success in London between about 1952 and 1961. Often plagued by financial problems, particularly from the 1960s onwards, he became quite cantankerous with his friends, well-wishers and family. Nevertheless, he remained genial in company and good-hearted towards those whose friendship he wished to sustain. He also had a knack of sometimes deliberately upsetting rich buyers. Once when I introduced him to a wealthy American investment banker in New York (Mr Altschul), who was a famous collector of French Impressionist and post-war American paintings, Souza calmly turned to him and said, “So you like collecting shit?” I first met Francis Souza in London in the early 1970s and soon became a good friend of Maria Figueiredo, his first wife, who ran Gallery 38 at Homer Street, London W1. She was an indefatigable promoter of his work even after their divorce, and Souza owed much to her support, both financially and morally, in his early, difficult years in London. In 1976, Souza visited Dubai and stayed with us for several weeks. During this period, an exhibition was organized for him at the new Hotel InterContinental. His works, tagged around US$200, remained largely unsold as a community used to buying (what he termed) “supermarket kitsch”, regarded them as “too strong”. I acquired several works at that time and many others later, some of which, together with others from collections, both private and institutional, are reproduced here in tribute to Souza’s genius. The idea of writing this monograph came partly from Souza. He sent me notes on a few of his works which could be used as captions, and encouraged me to reproduce his works.
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Souza will be remembered as a profound artist endowed with a natural gift that allowed him to produce visually strong and often disturbing works, including his critical outlook on hypocrisies within stratified social, religious and economic orders. An exhibition of his work, held at Tate Britain in the latter half of 2005 stood as further testimony to his unique stature: a remarkable British painter and a founder of Modern Indian art.
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5 Couple, Gouache and watercolour on paper, 65x52 cm (26x21�), 1965 (see page 14)
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ORIGIN AND INFLUENCE
Francis Newton Souza, painter, writer and iconoclast, was born on 12 April 1924, at Saligaon in the former Portuguese Catholic colony of Goa, about 250 miles south of (then) Bombay, India. He lived and worked productively for several years in London and New York. He died on a visit to Mumbai, India, on 28 March 2002 at the age of 77.
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Modest Beginnings Details of Souza’s origins can be gleaned from his ‘A Fragment of Autobiography’, included in a small book of essays titled Words & Lines,1 published by Villiers in 1959. Edwin Mullins’ monograph on Souza, published in 1962 by Anthony Blond, London, is another source.
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5 Couple Gouache and watercolour on paper 65x52 cm (26x21”), 1965 In 1965 Souza executed a number of exquisite works in gouache (see also Plates 158 and 159) which displayed great dexterity. This image explores one of his favourite motifs—that of an older man accompanying a voluptuous and attractive younger woman. It seems to be a carnival or party scene with a naked couple, the man’s hand holds an unusual object or small animal. The clear attractive features of the young woman’s face and the details of her ornaments, head dress, and feathered stole, contrast sharply with the abstract configuration of the man’s face.
Mullins begins his monograph with a fairly succinct observation: An Indian painter, brought up a strict Roman Catholic under Portuguese colonial rule, later a member of the Communist Party and now (1961) living in London: these are the barest details about one of the most gifted and original modern artists. Those writers on art who even today look upon all new painting as the result of age-old cultural roots, must be rather baffled by such a history, for it bears witness to a great number of contradictory influences which make nonsense of conventional ideas of tradition.2 Apart from being a skillful artist, Souza was also a remarkable writer. In his autobiography he described his birthplace, Goa, as “. . .a beautiful country full of
6 View from Crawford Market Bombay Oil on canvas 75x80 cm (30x32”), 1946 Produced during a visit to Bombay, India, when he was only 22, this painting shows an area full of flowers. The place is hardly recognisable today, though the steeple is still intact.
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rice fields and palm trees, whitewashed churches with lofty steeples, small houses with imbricated tiles . . . rich green foliage, mango trees, flowers, birds, serpents, frogs, scores of butterflies and a thousand kinds of insects. Morning is announced by the cock crowing, the approaching night by Angelus bells”.3
Left
In those days Goa was not the bustling tourist haven that it is today with throngs of foreign visitors who gather there to enjoy its beautiful beaches and a hedonistic lifestyle. Before he left for England in 1949, Souza painted a number of pictures of Goan life of which his large Indian Family (Plate 9) in 1947 signed simply ‘Newton’ and his terrifying Pietà (Plate 11), both from 1947 are, perhaps, among the most evocative works of that period.
The pockmarks reflect Souza’s own condition.
Souza was clearly influenced by Picasso’s experiments with Primitive and African art. With reference to the influence of Primitive art, New Delhi based Indian curator Yashodhara Dalmia has written: Souza’s early works which were inadvertently imbibing these influences were also incorporating the ‘Primitive’ via the mediation of the West. In reclaiming the Primitive then Souza was virtually reinventing his own art and that is where his strength lay.4
The scars on Souza’s face in this picture may reflect the severe attack of smallpox that Souza suffered when, as he stated, he “was on the brink of an infant’s grave”.
Souza also painted a number of pictures of scenes in Bombay including View from Crawford Market Bombay (Plate 6) as well as the grey painting Nude with Mirror (Plate 128) which displays traces of influence from traditional Indian art sources. Some critics have remarked that while his paintings of the 1940s are very evocative, they hark to a talent “not yet fully developed” which was to blossom in the following decade. Nevertheless, some of his works of the 1940s, such as the small Couple in the Park (Plate 13), dated 1940, seems incredibly mature for a young artist. It is clear that he was painting extremely powerful works by the age of 23, exemplified by Indian Family and Pietà.
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7 St Francis Oil on board Approx. 83x60 cm (33x24”), 1960
Right
8 Photograph of Souza in the 1970s
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9 Indian Family Oil on board 100x67 cm (40x27”), 1947 his father’s name, the picture depicts a meal of fish and fruit on the table with empty eating bowls near the family’s feet and a large toad on the floor. Of his house in Goa, Souza has stated, “ . . . the
This painting was among a series of works influenced by socialism and painted in realist mode while Souza was still a member of the Communist Party in Goa. Signed simply ‘Newton’, also
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floor was overlaid with a thick paste of cow dung . . . there were little toads in nearly every hole . . . and holy pictures hung close to each other: Christ and the Madonna . . . .”
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10 The Family Oil on board 100x93 cm (40x37”), 1946 Signed ‘Newton’, rather than ‘Souza’, this is a smaller version of the family theme which he explored in The Family (1947). The Madonna and Child print at the rear is typical of those seen in Christian households, and the seated woman is shown wearing a rosary.
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11 Pietà Oil on canvas 97x57 cm (39x23”), 1947 About this work, Souza wrote: “The fact that both these paintings, i.e. The Indian Family and The Pietà, one secular and one religious, were painted in 1947, demonstrates in a way that Modern Indian Art was clinched with the Independence of India . . . by finding a new Aesthetic.” The Virgin Mary is depicted as a witch-like figure with broken teeth with Christ above her, nailed to the cross. Souza wrote, “This is a savage work . . . not that I am a savage but I was brought up in the savagery of a corrupt and outdated medieval religion, the Roman Catholic church in Goa.”
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12 Indian Scene Oil on canvas 100x88 cm (40x35”), 1949 Executed while he was between Bombay and Goa, this was one of his last paintings before he left for England. The central figure of a buxom woman, possibly of tribal origin, with her hair tied in a bun, was an oft repeated image in his work. While such distinctly Indian elements continued to appear in his line drawings, few paintings depicted such parochial perspectives after he reached London. This work, unusually, is signed ‘Francis Newton Souza ‘49’.
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Never one to flinch from revealing embarrassing domestic details, he has written that he used to watch his naked mother taking a bath. He also wrote that: My grandfather and grandmother were both chronic drunkards. . . . My father, as a reaction to their faith never touched other liquid than water. He became a chronic teetotaler. On his wedding day the toast wine was poured over his head as he would not drink it. Souza’s middle name ‘Newton’ came from his father, who was called Newton; he had an English godfather. His first name ‘Francis’ was chosen by his mother, apparently in thanksgiving to Goa’s patron saint, St Francis Xavier, for having rescued the boy from an attack of smallpox, the scars of which remained on his face well into adulthood. Souza’s father taught English; at home he conversed only in English with but a smattering of Portuguese. Nonetheless, when he left for London in 1949 he travelled on a Portuguese passport. Souza was devoted to his mother and compared her to Jocasta, the mother of Oedipus, saying, “She is a strapping handsome woman. She smells richly of the womb.” Indeed, he painted several pictures around the Oedipus Rex theme (see Plate 97), as well as an abstract picture titled Portrait of my Mother (Plate 226).
13 Couple in the Park Oil on board 27x35 cm (11x14”), 1940 Dated 1940 on the reverse by Souza himself, the structure, form and colours of this work are both sophisticated and extraordinary for a young artist aged only 16. The pigments used—namely ochre, deep green and yellow—are reminiscent of those used in his Torso dated 1960 (Plate 143) as well as The Jealous Lover done in 1949 (Plate 130).
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Catholic Upbringing Souza has written: As a child I was fascinated by the grandeur of the Church and by the stories of tortured saints my grandmother used to tell me. The Roman Catholic Church had a tremendous influence on me, not its dogmas but its grand architecture and the splendour of its services. The Priest dressed in richly embroidered vestments; the wooden saints painted in gold . . . the enormous crucifix with the impaled image of man supposed to be the son of God.5 Although the Vatican appointed a patriarch (since the Church in Goa was under the Holy See) the Goan Christians were looked down on racially by the Portuguese who governed until 19616 (see Plate 15). Souza’s painting Pietà may be said to reflect considerable savagery but it is also interesting from the point of view that it subverts the usual depiction of this theme as the term ‘pietà’ (Italian: ‘pity’) is normally applied to a painting or sculpture showing the Virgin Mary supporting the body of the dead Christ on her lap. Sometimes other figures, such as St John the Evangelist or Mary Magdalene, may also be included. However, Souza’s version with bright luminous colours, is totally different. As is generally known, the most celebrated of all Pietàs are those by Michelangelo in St Peter’s Basilica, Rome (Plate 120), and by Titian at the Accademia, Venice (plate 121). The subject is now always clearly distinguished from the scene known as the ‘Lamentation’. Perhaps Souza was deliberately infusing this remarkable painting (executed in 1947) with anti-clerical sentiments when barely 23. At that time Souza was an active member of the Communist Party, undoubtedly influenced by its militant atheistic credo. It is reported that the last picture that he executed, shortly before he died in Mumbai in March 2002, was titled The Face of Christ. He has written that he felt the suffering of a modern city-dweller to be worse than that of Christ on the Cross—“The city man that you are, your suffering is more complex than the obviously simple tortured expression of one crowned with thorns and impaled with nails.”7 Souza has frequently been compared to Georges Rouault (1872–1958), the French Expressionist painter. In the context of Souza’s Pietà, which resonates like a stained glass window in a church, it is worth recalling that from 1885 to1890, Rouault was himself apprenticed to a stained-glass maker, whose rich colours and strong outlines left a lasting impression on his work. (See also Plate 114, Man with Red Shirt, which is strongly reminiscent of the famous black outlines in Rouault’s work.)
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14 Crucifixion (drawing) Pen and ink on paper Size unknown, 1983 Collection: Dr. Mahesh Chandra
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Goan Mindset Souza’s upbringing in Catholic Goa is important in understanding his later development, both in Bombay and in England. In this connection, Richard Lannoy, who (with his Goan wife) spent many years in India and produced important essays on his experiences, outlined details of Souza’s background, which contributed to his imagery and the development of a distinctive style. In a personal communication, he wrote: This is largely a matter of atmosphere—for Goa is a small, densely picturesque region quite different from other coastal areas of Western India. There are both Portuguese and Hindu elements, a mixture of high Brahmin Hindu and Portuguese Baroque culture, as well as Kunbi tribal folk culture. . . . Goa possesses important community temples of the Konkani Brahmins where during Souza’s young days temple dancers were also prostitutes, then illegal elsewhere in India. Souza was almost certainly influenced, subconsciously at least, by the folkloric images and decoration in the ubiquitous domestic shrines of Roman Catholic families. . . . The houses were surrounded with profusely well-kept floral gardens of the most opulent tropical abundance and surrounded by magnificent trees, including palm trees, the spiky fronds of which Souza incorporated into his style as his most characteristic feature . . . . My novelist-wife Violet Dias Lannoy, herself a Goan, likens the lurid and fantastic atmosphere to that in the fiction of the US South—to Faulkner, Carson McCullers and Truman Capote. This is the cultural matrix of Souza from which his style was to grow as naturally as Goa’s lush tropical vegetation.8 It is interesting to note that in pre-Independence India, Goa played an important role in the Hindu cultural life of the country even while it remained a Portuguese colony until 1961.9
Bombay Sojourn In 1937, at the age of 13, Souza went to Bombay for his schooling. His education was paid for by his mother’s income as a dressmaker. He found it very different from the beaches and palm trees of Goa. He has written that: Bombay had its rattling trams, omnibuses, hacks, railways, forests of telegraph poles and tangles of telephone wires, its flutter of newspapers its haggling coolies, its numberless dirty restaurants run by Iranis, its blustering officials and stupid policemen, its millions of clerks working clocklike in fixed routines, its schools that turn out boys into clerks in a mechanical, Macaulian education system its bania hoarders, its ghatine women carrying a million tiffins to the clerks at their offices during lunch hour, its lepers and beggars . . . its Hindu colony and Muslim colony and Parsi colony, its bug-ridden Goan residential clubs.10
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15 Head of a Portuguese Navigator Oil on board 75x60 cm (30x24”), 1961 (Noted in Art Loss Register)
In 1961, when this painting was executed, Portugal had lost control of Goa and it became part of India. This portrait is apparently of a navigator of an earlier era, much like a conquistador. Souza has commented in a personal note that “ . . . Since Goa belonged to the Holy See, the Goan Christians were looked down upon racially by Portugal which governed Goa until 1961.”
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16 Crucifixion Oil on board Size unknown, 1960 Collection: Mr & Mrs Edwin Mullins The fact that Souza was so bitterly critical of the Catholic Church, especially its clergy, and yet so obsessed with making dozens of images around biblical themes including several of the crucifixion itself, is indicative of the tremendous mental anguish in which he was absorbed.
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Souza produced a number of works based on religious, particularly, Catholic themes including his versions of the crucifixion, the Pope and landscapes with still life and a church. Western critics and observers have attached great importance to this aspect of his upbringing which impacted his largely anti-clerical and irreverent work vis-àvis the Catholic Church. The two paintings of Souza, Crucifixion originally at Tate Modern (Plate 94) and Two Saints in a Landscape (Plate 95) at Tate Britain that touch on these themes were painted after he left for the UK in 1949. The display caption to the painting, Two Saints, states: . . . some artists address spirituality through non-Christian imagery. Others such as Souza, who was raised as a Catholic, continued to consider these issues through traditional Christian iconography. Here, the jumbled buildings in the upper part of the painting contrast sharply with the austerely simple landscape that surrounds the two saints. This marked division suggests the separation of the material and spiritual worlds. Likewise, the formal clarity of the figures compared with the visual confusion of the city may signify a state of grace.
Jesuit Education Souza went to a Jesuit school—St Xaviers High School—but the Jesuit priests objected, among other things, to his pornographic drawings on the walls of the school lavatories and he was expelled after two years. His argument at the time was that the pornographic drawings of others were so bad that he frequently had to alter them for the sake of accuracy! He was already a good draughtsman and he studied the oleographs, prints and pictures imported from Europe and in particular from Italy, which were readily available showing Jesus as a blonde figure “with teardrop eyes wearing a flowing garment like a nightgown and disappearing into the clouds”. Souza’s relatives used to tell him that Michaelangelo and Raphael were true archangels and that Indian sculpture was full of idols worshipped by “vulgar-minded heathen Hindus”. In 1940, Souza joined the famous Jamshetjee Jeejebhoy (JJ) School of Art in Bombay, which had links with the Royal Academy of the UK and was well regarded by officialdom in England. But where teaching was, as Geeta Kapur states, “ . . . downright pathetic and linked to developing a representational Indian style of painting.” Souza was a prize pupil for four years at the college. But he rejected formal teaching, preferring to read books on art and study actual works. Even more troublesome for the school were his politics as he rebelled against the British Raj, and joined demonstrations opposed to the anti-Indian policy of the English principal, Charles Gerald. He was expelled in 1945, purportedly for having failed his exams, but probably in an effort to rid the college of “this nuisance”. 25
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17 The Last Supper Leonardo da Vinci Tempera on plaster 450x856 cm (180x342”), 1495-8 Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan The most famous version of the Last Supper is perhaps Leonardo da Vinci’s. It is worth recalling that da Vinci’s painting shows the reactions to Christ’s announcement that one of his apostles was to betray him. When Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me,” they began to be distressed and said to him one after another, “Surely, not I?” While da Vinci was not the first artist to do so, what makes this work so innovative is the combination of compositional skill and imaginative power. It took him around three years to complete it.
18 The Supper at Emmaus Oil on board Size unknown, 1958 Contemporary Art Society, now Walker Gallery, England
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19 The Last Supper Oil on canvas, Size unknown, 1989 Collection: Masanori Fukuoka Nevertheless, in this image it has been observed that “Christ and his ghoulish companions are lined against a horizontal pink band representing the table. The entire ensemble brings together a motley group, some with tubular projections, others with Martian faces and still others with eyes on the forehead reminiscent of his earlier heads. Christ, seated in the centre has a remorseful expression as he hands the goblet of wine to the
Souza has commented on this work as follows: “I have created a new kind of face. In The Last Supper there are two or three faces and they are drawn in a completely new iconography, beyond Picasso . . .” (In an interview with Yashodhara Dalmia in Bombay, 1991). By the late 80s his biblical and other motifs, including this recurring one, were understandably not as impactful as those executed two or three decades earlier.
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elephantine Judas.” (Dalmia 2001). It has been suggested that the three figures clothed in red (including Christ) in this painting really represent “alternative persona of the same individual” and that “this also saves the painting from being a mere caricature of Souza’s earlier heads”. However, at the time that this painting was executed Souza was not really indulging in any cerebral, or artistic stratagems but was indeed making rather flat and simple images of well worn themes.
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20 Sabbath at Emmaus Oil on canvas 50x67 cm (20x27”), 1975 This loosely painted and generally unremarkable painting should be seen in the context of Souza’s much more powerful The Supper at Emmaus (Plate 18) and the original 1606 painting by Caravaggio of the same title (Plate 22).
21 The Head of John the Baptist Gouache on paper 38x56 cm (15x22”), 1948 Perhaps the most famous painting of the beheading of Saint John the Baptist is by Caravaggio (1571–1610). Souza’s painting of 1948 may be generally based on the theme of Caravaggio’s Salome with the Head of John the Baptist. Naturally, it is totally different in execution.
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22 The Supper at Emmaus Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio Oil and egg on canvas, 141x196 cm (56x78”), 1606 National Gallery, London, NG 172 Another famous biblical motif is that of the Supper at Emmaus. Painted by Souza in 1958 (Plate 18), it may have had its origins in Souza’s admiration of this painting. Souza was alive to these momentous events in Christianity and he obviously admired that Caravaggio had
23 Salome with the Head of John the Baptist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio Oil on canvas, 114x137 cm (45x55”), 1601 Madrid, Palacio Reale, Patrimonio Nacional, inv. 10010026
captured the climatic moment in Christ’s appearance before the apostles at Emmaus on Easter day. It is said that when the apostles reached Emmaus and when Christ blessed the bread, “Their eyes were opened and they recognised Him and He vanished out of their sight.”
The well-known story behind the original picture is that Salome, after dancing for King Herod, had requested as a favour the head of John the Baptist on a plate as a means of exacting revenge on behalf of her mother. “The moment after Salome received the severed head from the executioner was ideal for a compact composition because it presented the essential confrontation of beauty and horror of a cold blooded villain and her righteous victim.” (National Gallery catalogue 2005, 130). In the original, Salome’s red cloak was supposed to proclaim her regal status as well as her
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culpability whereas in Souza’s version she is painted green and in the nude, perhaps to indicate that she was a dancer. In the original version it is sometimes conjectured that the painted head on the plate is that of Caravaggio himself and in Souza’s version the head on the plate could well be his own caricature, as he was at the age of 24. Caravaggio’s fugitive life (as he had killed someone in a fight) combined with his introduction of a dramatically new and powerful method of painting may well have appealed to Souza.
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24 Hindu Girl with Nose Ring Oil on board 98x62 cm (39x25�), 1950 Souza was inspired, at the beginning of his career, by South Indian bronzes and the relief carvings on the Khajuraho temples, especially the female sculptures. This painting clearly draws from that influence, and is a masterful image with minimum colour on the ornaments.
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Eclectic Influences With more time on his hands, Souza began to paint spontaneously, and study art from books in local libraries. He is said to have been particularly impressed by illustrations of classical Indian art and modern European painting, both quite different from what was being taught in art schools at that time. He liked South Indian bronzes for their symbolism and fluidity, and the erotic carvings in the temples of Khajuraho. Unlike work which found favour with the memsahibs and the salons of Bombay, whose members appreciated life-like portraits of well-known figures and pretty watercolours, Souza drew from India’s own rich native heritage.
Progressive Artists Group Souza knew that by working alone he could not hope to radically influence the art movement in India. He needed a group of artists with broadly similar views to achieve a new artistic identity in post-Independence India. Thus, in 1948, he founded the Progressive Artists Group (PAG) with K H Ara, S H Raza and M F Husain; H A Gade
25 The Three Girls Oil on board 1949 Galerie Pallette, Zurich Providing a background to this work, Indian art critic and historian, Geeta Kapur writes: “The other major theme of Souza’s oeuvre is the woman. The aggressive sensuality in the handling of the female figure corresponds in the early years to his frankly borrowed Expressionist idiom and there is obvious relationship of these women to Rouault’s early (pre-1920) paintings of aging prostitutes and charwomen of the Paris slums. The inspiration for the early figures comes simultaneously from Indian sculpture of Mathura and Khajuraho. The three girls are the voluptuous, big breasted Yakshis from Mathura of the Kusana period, except that every touch of grace has been eliminated and they look less like courtesans (which is what the Yakshis, despite their symbolic content, resemble), and more like the common whores of Bombay.” This is another instance of Souza’s work where he uses figures directly from Indian sculptures. He deliberately heightens the sexual imagery to produce a painting which, in 1949, was considered extremely bold and unusual, especially from a man who had just turned 25.
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and Sadanand Bakre were brought in later. Critics have commented on the differences in artistic outlook as well as political vision among the original six members. Certainly, none of the others had any Marxist leanings even though they were progressive and nationalist in a broad sense. Rudi Von Leyden, the influential art critic of the Times of India, a local Mumbai daily, made the following observation about the group: They believe that great emotional power and significance is contained in the very elements of paintings, namely colour and form, and they can be used almost in the pure or abstract state to convey feelings. . . . They have therefore, discarded to a very large extent the appearance of things, and use what the layman calls distorted and unnatural forms.11 26 Photograph of Souza (third from left), April 1952, with Akbar Padamsee, S H Raza and Laxman Pai at Galerie Raymond R. Duncan in Paris.
Recognising that there were certain inherent difficulties in bringing together six founding members with such different artistic backgrounds, techniques and aspirations, in the first catalogue of the group’s exhibition held in July 1949, Souza reformulated in wider and more general terms, the PAG’s intentions and philosophy: Today we paint with absolute freedom of content and techniques—almost anarchic, save that we are governed by one or two sound elemental and eternal laws, of aesthetic order, plastic coordination and colour composition.
East and West In spite of their diversity, a great sense of camaraderie prevailed within the group as S H Raza recalled in an interview in the March 1984 issue of the Bombay magazine with Shirin Bahadurji: There was at our meeting and discussions a great fraternal feeling, a certain warmth and lively exchange of ideas. We were particularly torn between western academic ideas and traditional Indian art springing from the (Indian) Renaissance. The works of the French Impressionists and the German Expressionists inspired us. The Progressive Artists Group seemed to expressly reject the revivalist and representational approach of the Bengal School and was equally dismissive of the British colonial academic system promoted in the art schools. They believed in advancing toward a modernism which took account of their Indian origins and yet were unafraid to embrace artistic influences and movements in the West. A few 32
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years earlier Bertold Brecht had issued a pithy dictum in 1930 which was worth bearing in mind: “True progress consists not in being progressive but in progressing.” This artistic revolt, after the Second World War, against an order that was regarded as formal, sterile and academic was in some respects an echo of what the Dadaist movement encountered two decades earlier against the prevailing social system after the First World War. The Dadaists in Paris, Zurich and Barcelona had flung insults at the conventional view of art. Like Souza, who greatly admired the Old Masters, Dadaists like Jean Arp, Hans Richter, Joan Miro and Marcel Duchamp, also admired the Dutch Masters but there seemed, to be in their view, something radically unacceptable in an art which limited itself to photographic resemblance sometimes dolled up with the artificiality of academic arrangement. The Progressive Artists Group wound up in 1957, though it had begun to dissolve when founding members left to go overseas: Raza went to Paris in 1950, Bakre left soon after; most crucial being the departure of Souza, who left for London in 1949. However, the embryonic PAG movement in India also led to diverse mutations which embraced individual interpretations of fantasy and reality but it remained largely figurative in execution. The late V S Gaitonde and J Swaminathan were among the noteworthy artists who preferred abstraction. Despite the change from a strictly socialist outlook, Souza’s ability to articulate the group’s aspirations in such coherent and expressive language served as a benchmark for a remarkable career in artistic journalism which earned him a living in his first years in the UK. However, prior to his departure he married Maria Figueiredo, a fellow Goan who was one of the first to recognise his talent and buy his paintings.
Spender’s Support In London he was lucky to meet a warm and encouraging person—Stephen Spender, the then editor of the influential literary magazine Encounter. After receiving some recognition in London, Souza could boast that “in England I’m one of the few painters who lives entirely on his art without resorting to teaching or commercial portraits”. And he was able to articulate his attitude towards writing in these words: I used to write a lot too. But whenever I write I get a feel of incompetence. Not so when I paint, for then I feel I am the master of the situation, words however to me are very elusive little things and they fail me. Nevertheless there’s an urge to express myself with them . . . I have never learnt grammar and I can’t spell correctly. Yet I want to say something, to make just a sound, even a guttural sound or a grunt, an onomatopoeic sound emitted with the clearance of my throat. What I’d want to do is to suspend my vocal chords on the nib of my pen, like a mouthful of food on the end of a fork; to throw my voice like a ventriloquist but over a page, to emit sounds with gummed 33
27 Self Portrait Oil on board Approx. 76x61cm (30x24”), 1971 If Souza painted critical and unattractive portraits of others, he certainly did not spare himself. Here, his head seems to be disintegrating and there seems to be a crude reference to the origin of life by the spilling of sperm.
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backs which stick firmly on paper; to make the split point of my pen the sensitive needle of a seismograph as I can easily do when I draw. But it is difficult for most Indians to articulate by word of mouth or pen. There is an innate paralysis in us; a kind of latent paralysed force.12 It is now well known that Souza’s literary success in England owes much to the help and encouragement of the poet Stephen Spender who first published Souza’s essay ‘Nirvana of a Maggot’ in 1955. Through Spender’s connections, Souza met Peter Watson, who in turn included three of Souza’s paintings for an exhibition at the recently opened Institute of Contemporary Arts. The three paintings were on view alongside works by future British luminaries such as Francis Bacon, Ivon Hitchens, Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and others. All three of Souza’s works were sold and he also met Victor Musgrave who had recently set up Gallery One. The subsequent one-man exhibition at Gallery One in early 1955 coincided with the publication of Souza’s essay in the Encounter; almost overnight Souza had become a sensation in the art world of London. Although he maintained a grateful and warm friendship with Stephen Spender, it is surprising that when Souza painted an abstract portrait titled Homage to Stephen Spender the picture showed the large head of a man with serpents springing out of his eyes (Plate 90). However, one may conjecture that this was perhaps a symbolic reference to the art connoisseur/art historian’s contribution to art because it is Spender who first appeared in the guise of a serpent tempting the artist to eat from the Tree of Knowledge.13 Geeta Kapur, an alumni of the Royal College of Art, commented on Souza’s success in the West some ten years later in her book of essays Contemporary Indian Artists: Souza was the first Indian artist to become something of a sensation in the West. For that matter even among his Western contemporaries he stood pretty high on the ladder of success, and it goes without saying that he deserved it. Place him for a moment beside two figurative Expressionists like Graham Sutherland in England and Bernard Buffet in France, the two painters with whom he invites obvious comparison and one will realise how much more sharply Souza impresses himself on one, using the term literally to mean a mark left on the recipient by the force of pressure.14
British Approval Souza held five one-man exhibitions at Victor Musgrave’s Gallery One; the fifth in 1961, held at the Gallery’s new and larger premises in North Audley Street, was particularly successful and displayed some of his larger works. It heralded the arrival of a distinctive new talent which could not go unnoticed.
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In Paris meanwhile, Souza initially had less luck. Galleries and critics did not take to his realist and Expressionist techniques, and he is known to have remarked that he found the city snooty and unwelcoming. However, he was to strike it lucky in 1958 with the small new Galerie Iris Clert whose owner was good enough to introduce him to a wealthy American businessman called Harold Kovner who was specifically looking for an artist to sponsor. Overwhelmed by Souza’s powerful work, he offered to put him on the monthly stipend that Souza badly needed. The arrangement required for Souza to produce paintings which the sponsor did not require to see. He was paid a fixed fee and this arrangement lasted some four years. A number of the paintings from his collection are reproduced here, including a portrait of Kovner himself. It is frequently observed that the height of Souza’s commercial success occurred during the period from 1955 to 1963. Certainly, the paintings of that period are among the most sought after by collectors and auction houses. The painting titled Crucifixion (Plate 94), was purchased by the Tate Gallery in London in 1993, and was on view at Tate Modern in 2004. The curators of the gallery have described the painting as follows: At the heart of Souza’s Crucifixion is the body of Christ transfixed through suffering. His depiction of the agonised black Christ addresses his own feelings of religious conflict as well as cultural tension between black and white, Christian and non Christian, colonised and colonising societies. Geeta Kapur saw this same painting in a different light as “reflecting the spirit of atheistic existentialism,” when she wrote that: . . . in his famous Crucifixion (1959) he turns Christ into a caricature, an effigy made of crooked pieces of thorny wood and a face like a primitive mask, all whiskers and teeth. His figure . . . invites neither pity nor fear. He has painted many versions of Christ, not all of them so bitterly contemptuous. . . .15 In contrast to his father’s strict abstemiousness Souza developed a serious drinking problem and Edwin Mullins noted in his monograph that Souza ultimately sought medical help, which to some extent was successful. He went on to say that: It is doubtful whether alcohol has any marked effect on what an artist creates. In Souza’s case the only real effects of his new sobriety are to allow him to paint even more pictures than before and to permit a more rapid imaginative development. It is contentious to generalise the effects of alcoholism. Still, admirers of Souza have commented, somewhat controversially, that the power and vigour of his work diminished relatively when he weaned himself off alcohol rather than during the time when he was in the throes of a drinking problem that was undoubtedly very serious. He is known to have slashed a large number of his paintings, both on canvas and board. He also executed during his drinking phase a number of paintings almost wholly in black pigment, including two which are reproduced here—Black Pope and Landscape with Church (Plates 30 and 31). 35
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Although no specific reference was made to Paul Cèzanne’s many painted versions of Mont Saint Victoire near the artist’s home of Aix-en-Provence, the inspiration for Souza’s own Mountain Landscape may have come from them. Cèzanne made several versions of this image and in some of them the mountain and surrounding landscape have been turned into geometrical shapes. In Souza’s work, which is pictorially different, there are also clearcut geometrical building structures. The result is a painting which does not attempt to faithfully reproduce the scene but which evokes its tones through the interplay of light and shade. Souza frequently expressed his admiration for this Modern Master and felt that his achievements were even greater than those of Picasso. He commented admiringly on Cèzanne as follows: “The geometric formula underlines the draughtsmanship of the greatest artists including Cèzanne who noted that nature should be viewed as a cone, a sphere and a cylinder. Although he did not mention the cube he and African sculpture are fundamentals to Cubism.” Souza’s own fervent comment on his vocation was that, “When I begin to paint I am wrapped in myself . . . wrapped like a foetus in the womb, only aware that each painting for me is either a milestone or a tombstone!”
28 Mont Saint Victoire Paul Cèzanne Oil on canvas 73x91 cm (28x38”), 1885-95 Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA, USA
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29 Mountain Landscape Oil on canvas 95x125 cm (38x50�), 1958
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The Debt to Goya It is well known that while Souza was in London, from about 1949 to 1967, he regularly visited the National Gallery and developed a great admiration for the works of the Old Masters, in particular those of Rembrandt, Vermeer, Titian and Goya. Although he does not appear specifically to have referred to Francisco Goya in his paintings it is nevertheless certain that he had seen several paintings of the Old Master and it is known that he was aware of a number of black paintings called the Pinturas Negras that were executed by Goya among which was Two Women and a Man (Plate 33).
Goya’s black paintings, unlike Souza’s uncompromising black, contain large areas of brown, ochre and traces of white which illuminate the paintings and which enable the figures to be seen more clearly. Goya’s black paintings and those of Souza nearly 150 years later, probably reflect a melancholy period in the artist’s life.
Goya worked on these paintings in the later years of his life around 1819 when he was 73, and had become deaf. He had bought a farmhouse outside Madrid and on its walls he painted his last cycle of big pictures mainly using black pigment. Robert Hughes, the internationally acclaimed art critic, has stated in his recent 2003 biography of Goya that these black paintings represent “the climax of Goya’s work as a painter . . . even though we don’t really know what the hell they are about.” Is it possible that Souza was inspired by these works of Goya and was echoing the Master and, perhaps, for him too the significance of the black pictures is that they indicate a desire for privacy during a period of deep melancholy? Goya’s murals also had numerous themes including pilgrims on the march, demonic events, quarrelling peasants, landscapes and the dark foreboding figures seen in Plate 33. It must be admitted, however, that Goya’s black paintings were executed in the form of murals on plastered walls and were later transferred by experts onto canvas. He used pigments which were not only black but contained large areas of brown, ochre and traces of white that enabled the figures to be seen more clearly than the sheer black pigment which Souza has used in his works with very sparse use of other colours like white, red and brown. Another thematic difference in this respect is that unlike Goya’s black paintings which generally looked sad, shocking or violent to reflect a melancholy mood, the black art of Souza even had subjects like the portrait of a girl, the Pope or a church landscape which did not per se indicate gloom except for the sheer uncompromising black paint (see Plates 30 and 31). We do not know what Souza was contemplating when he was painting his black works but most of them were executed in the mid-1960s when his honeymoon with the British critics was nearing its end, and these works may herald a period of disenchantment. Soon afterwards, in 1967, he left for New York where he was to face a different and more difficult future compared to what he had experienced in London during the previous decade.
Anti-clericalism and Rebellion The incidence of the black paintings of Goya and the black art of Souza was perhaps only one aspect of the cultural convergence between these two very 38
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Left
30 Black Pope Oil on canvas 100x75 cm (40x30”), 1965
Right
31 Landscape with Church Oil on board 90x60 cm (36x24”), 1965 Critics and collectors have disagreed as to the qualitative significance of Souza’s remarkable black paintings. It is conjectured that they may pay homage to Goya’s own Pinturas Negras which he executed at a late stage in his life, around 1819. Others have suggested, perhaps mistakenly, that Souza's black paintings were inspired by the french artist Yves Klein (1928–62), who often made “body paintings” in monochrome and who was
enduring “the dark night of the soul”, steeped in melancholy. Souza is known also to have been suffering severe financial difficulties at the time.
also represented by the Iris Clert Gallery in Paris. It is difficult to assess Souza’s black paintings especially when photographically reproduced, because the actual figures can be seen only if the painting is viewed from an angle with light falling on the work. It is known that Souza was drinking heavily when these black paintings were produced and it may be a classic sign of the artist
He also executed a series of paintings in sheer red pigment around 1966, including one titled Red Nude whose contours are similar to, and may pay homage to Matisse’s Odalisque in Red Trousers.
different painters separated by two centuries. Not only were they both born Catholics, one in Bourbon, Spain in 1746 and the other in a Catholic colony of Portugal in 1924, but they also became stridently anti-clerical in their different ways. It should be pointed out that a strong anti-clerical movement sprung up in Portugal in the first decades of the 20th century and was taken up by Goan Catholics of the generation of Souza’s father. The Church was the dominant anxiety of Goya’s life as in his time there was an obsession with, and subservience to Papal authority and the concomitant power of the Church engendered extraordinary hypocrisy, bigotry and cruelty which did not escape Goya’s lash. All the excesses of the clergy were caught under the unsparing eye of his famous aquatints and etchings which were famously called the Caprichos 39
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(the caprices). Thus, for instance, Capricho 58—Swallow It Dog—pillories the clergy who forced the faithful to give credence to ludicrous doctrines and, by implication, attacks the Inquisition. Others bitterly criticised the gluttony of monks who preached frugality (Capricho 79—No One Has Seen Us). This satirical ferocity of Goya may well have led Souza to revere him even more as an artist and to follow and to sharpen his own anti-clerical inclinations. Souza, too, was fiercely critical of the Catholic Church in Portuguese Goa and elsewhere, besides noting the strong racial overtones: . . . of the Roman Catholic church in Goa . . . the Goan Christians were looked down by Portugal which governed Goa until 1961 . . . the clergy were always of the upper class or upper caste to be exact because the caste system of Hindu origin is still very much observed by Goan Christians.16
32 Swallow it Dog, Capricho 58 Franscisco Goya Aqutint plate Approx. 30x23 cm (12x9”), 1799 These famous etchings of Goya (the Caprices), in particular, pillory the clergy. The Spanish comment under this etching is translated as “He who lives amongst men will be irremediably vexed” and what the etching tries to convey, in Goya’s anti-clerical sentiment, is that the clergy force the poor public to swallow views handed down to them.
Souza’s series of Crucifixions (Plates 16 and 94) and the terrifying Head of a Saint (Plate 1) can be seen as vehicles for his abhorrence of the hypocrisy of the church and its clergy. His powerful literary abilities enabled him to articulate his secular sentiments, and he spoke sternly of the fact that “the Portuguese had colonised Goa and had converted its inhabitants to Christianity and this also again divided my tongue and minced my words.” He went on: St Thomas the Apostle, according to legend had landed on our shores and preached the Gospel five centuries before it was heard of in Portugal. In any case there were Christians in India called the Nestorians, much to the surprise of the Portuguese conquistadors, but whom they later stoked [in the fires] of the incendiary Inquisition.17 Souza’s own bitter criticism of the clergy is also apparent in his painting titled Death of a Pope (Plate 124) in which the dead Pope is stripped bare of the trappings of ecclesiastic grandeur and surrounded by cold and terrifying figures in black suits attending what could almost be a mummy in unsparing grey and white colours. The figures may well have been perceived by Souza as a sort of Vatican mafia! Head of a Saint shows a man with piercing eyes and a stony hard visage, totally lacking in all compassion, to contrast deliberately with the official view of such persons. The Deposition: Burial of Christ (Plate 125) again picks up a morbid and yet momentous theme in Christian history and yet he treats it like a quotidian event at a parochial medieval village. He deliberately overturned the benevolent and martyred image of Saint Sebastian in two paintings titled Mr Sebastian (Plate 77) and St Sebastian (Plate 79) and the even more powerful image of the same saint painted probably also in the 1950s when it was purchased from Gallery One. This latter image of Saint Sebastian with arrows stuck in his neck and with gnashing teeth and a heavily drawn face is reminiscent of a Byzantine icon with its yellowish-gold background. However, even in the context of their mutual anti-clericalism, there were clear differences in their treatment of the Church and its teachings. Goya was a court 40
MODERN & CONTEMPORARY ART
Francis Newton Souza Bridging Western and Indian Modern Art Aziz Kurtha
212 pages, 196 colour illustrations 62 black & white illustrations 9 x 11” (228 x 280 mm), hc ISBN: 978-81-88204-63-2 (Mapin) ISBN: 978-1-890206-91-8 (Grantha) ₹3500 | $65 | £40 2006 • World rights