Maqbool Fida Husain b. 1915 That Obscure Object of Desire (8)

‘Certain of Husain’s series have been born as a response to films.  Perhaps the most important of these and among the most important of any of Husain’s works, is his That Obscure Object of Desire.  Ranking Bunuel as a film maker of the highest importance, Husain began working on this series immediately after having viewed Bunuel’s film of the same title…The film is about a male character whose desire for a certain woman leads to entrapment…in which the man cannot tell who this woman – the object of his desire – is. Specifically the woman turns out to be a dual figure played by two look-alike yet distinct actresses who play her as alternately passionate and cruel, enticing and rejecting, kind and humiliating.  The key is that the woman is an obscure object, one whose integrity and identity are in doubt. (D Herwitz, Husain, Mumbai, 1988, p. 26)

The central concerns of the series question the nature of personal identity and the self destructive potential of desire itself. In each painting from the series objects float in undefineds spaces and the figures monumental in their presentation remain tantalisingly unidentifiable.