Contemporary Indian attitudes have long maintained a dichotomous view of the female form. We appreciate it when we see it on temple walls (think Khajuraho). We appreciate it when paintings depicting it fetch millions at auction (think Souza). And we certainly appreciate it when we think of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures. But when it comes to teaching it or considering it in contemporary situations, we shy away from sufficiently acknowledging that same female body.
The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda (MSU) houses one of the most prestigious fine arts departments in the country. However, after a few incidents where outsiders entered the university and disrupted life drawing classes, life drawing was removed from the curriculum. The reasons for this were twofold: first, the fear of offending people who have nothing to do with the course and second, the difficulty in getting nude models, especially women. However, when I visited the Master of Fine Arts exhibition in May this year, I noticed that of the 14 students from the painting department on display, six showed works with female figures and three showed them fully or partially nude. Not surprisingly, these students were all women.
An insightful conversation with Indrapramit Roy, artist and associate professor of painting at MSU, provided me with the vocabulary I needed to express these conflicting attitudes: Aesthetic standards and societal morals do not always coincide. In the 1990s, artist MF Husain was criticized for his stylized nude depictions of the goddess Saraswati, almost a decade after he painted her, and was accused of hurting people’s sentiments. However, all depictions of Saraswati herself, or other goddesses of the 12th and 13th centuries, show them bare-chested. Historically, cultural depictions of the nude female body have been celebrated in India. Yet Roy notes that every few years, “minor controversies” erupt over “obscenity” in the art field.
Political and social factors that have little to do with the artistic or aesthetic understanding of art play a crucial role in shaping society’s attitude towards nudes, creating a gap between moral and aesthetic standards.
In the 1950s, the painter Akbar Padamsee created nude paintings entitled Lover 1 And Lover 2were evicted by the police from the premises of his first solo exhibition in Mumbai on charges of obscenity under Section 292 of the Indian Penal Code. Padamsee successfully fended off these charges when his lawyer Haribhai Desai compared her to the famous Greek marble sculpture Venus de Milo. Desai’s daughter Smita Divan narrated this incident to me earlier this year, so you can imagine how excited we were when we read about the incident in Reema Desai Gehi’s book. The catalystwhere the author also talks about art critic Rudy von Leyden’s defense of the works. This was a groundbreaking case for nudity in art as it set the precedent for it not being considered pornography. However, Smita Divan and I found it funny that the works of an Indian modernist found acceptance only after comparing them with European artifacts.
Tarini Sethi, a contemporary artist from Delhi, felt she struggled to find acceptance for her work and practice, which has sought to demystify the female body from the beginning. She creates surrealist representations of these forms in the hope of sparking conversations and questioning why the image in front of her looks the way it does. She says she especially likes it when children look at her work—“they have no filter”—and ask questions without discomfort. Early in her career, Seth was told her work would not look “nice” on bedroom walls. She was warned that the market would not accept her. Today, her work enjoys audiences across India and the United States
Artists like Sethi are trying, in their own way, to challenge the sociopolitical censorship of artistic practices. But we must ask ourselves why a society that traditionally celebrates the body, especially the female body, is so quick to condemn artistic practices that do the same.
This article originally appeared in the August 2024 print edition of Harper Bazaar.
Photo credit: Pritiza, Barua and Venus de Milo
Also read: Everything the coming year has in store for the Indian art world
Also read: 12 Indian artists who will be in the spotlight at the ongoing Venice Art Biennale
