ARPANACAUR
Art and authority have always had a difficult relationship, points out Caur. “Even the figures Michaelangelo painted for the Sistine Chapel had come under attack. The work is not erotic by any means. It only celebrates God through the natural form. A clergyman then was brave enough to stand by him and say they were not objectionable,” says Caur, whose works have consistently focused on the female form— the girl child, the condition of women—and the growing violence in India. “As long as the work is not sensational for the sake of being so , it needs to be understood before any objections are raised.”

Caur has had her share of run-ins with controversy. “I painted a dancing Guru Nanak in my last Nanak show. The work is a translation of poetry from the Granth where Nanak, Bala and Mardana have referred to life as a flaming river. A few unknown artists from Punjab wrote to a Punjabi magazine demanding that I apologise. I was very hurt. I have the deepest love and respect for Nanak and would only depict him in a state of religious joy.”

AKBAR PADAMSEE
A modernist, who was part of the Bombay Progressives group, Padamsee is loved for his haunting portraits of lovers, his spiritual Metascapes and nudes. When we asked him what he considered his most shocking work, he said, “I have done no subversive work. Others have found it subversive or obscene. I have simply painted and stood by what I believed in.” In 1954, however, his work Lovers, being shown at the Jehangir Art Gallery, got him into trouble. The artist was arrested on an obscenity charge, because the man in the painting had his hand on his lover’s breast.

... contd.