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Lot Essay
The Meeting painted in 1984, captures a seminal period in Francis Newton Souza's postmodern practice, steeped in hierarchical theories and social reform. 1984 was the title of George Orwell's famous novel (written in 1948) in which a fascist totalitarian state imposed social hierarchies that insisted upon a total loss of liberty. Man became an ubiquitous and vacuous vessel of an all-pervading universalized dogma indoctrinated by the state. The feature film adaptation of the book would come out the same year as this painting and Souza's dehumanized, featureless figures with their urbane vacant eyes convening against a foreboding urban landscape perhaps alludes to Orwell's political masterpiece. This offers a stark contrast to Souza's landscapes of the 50s and 60s, which were so commonly devoid of human presence in the presence of nature.
Souza was also deeply influenced by an article published in the New York Times by Sanford Redmond in 1980, advertising his theory of "Nature in an Altered Perspective". Writing in 1984, the same year as the painting, Souza stated, "A.K. was in N.Y. We spent a couple of days together. He told me that people were saying, and that he thought so himself that during 1980 onwards until 1982 I was under an aberration. An aberration had taken over me, he said. I said, 'nonsense.' It was the year [1980] the Theory had appeared, and of course it progressively turned me upside down and inside out." (F. N. Souza, Diary, 4 June 1984). The main tenet of Redmond's theory is that everything in Nature is hierarchical and as human beings have limited perception, because of this they see a distorted perspective of Nature. If in the past Souza expressed himself through paint in order to exist, now (after Redmond) he uses paint with an urgency to prove the scientific truth of Nature. The Meeting with its menacing, blackened sky juxtaposed against unsettling corniced buildings and distorted figures, shows Souza's veneration for this hierarchical doctrine and his fascination with social theory.
Souza was also deeply influenced by an article published in the New York Times by Sanford Redmond in 1980, advertising his theory of "Nature in an Altered Perspective". Writing in 1984, the same year as the painting, Souza stated, "A.K. was in N.Y. We spent a couple of days together. He told me that people were saying, and that he thought so himself that during 1980 onwards until 1982 I was under an aberration. An aberration had taken over me, he said. I said, 'nonsense.' It was the year [1980] the Theory had appeared, and of course it progressively turned me upside down and inside out." (F. N. Souza, Diary, 4 June 1984). The main tenet of Redmond's theory is that everything in Nature is hierarchical and as human beings have limited perception, because of this they see a distorted perspective of Nature. If in the past Souza expressed himself through paint in order to exist, now (after Redmond) he uses paint with an urgency to prove the scientific truth of Nature. The Meeting with its menacing, blackened sky juxtaposed against unsettling corniced buildings and distorted figures, shows Souza's veneration for this hierarchical doctrine and his fascination with social theory.