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Lot Essay
“It becomes increasingly clear [...] that Souza is concerned with creating a conditioned reflex in the mind of the spectator. Just as in the treatment of some aspects of pathology electrical shock is administered to make the patient’s mind function, Souza, too, subjects his audience to a kind of shock treatment. In fact, he makes the audience see the relationship between themselves and the subject matter” (R. Bartholomew, 'Souza's Shock Treatment', Times of India, 3 February, 1973).
By the early 1960s, Francis Newton Souza had truly come into his own, leading the critic Mervyn Levy to describe him in 1964 as “one of the most vigorously stimulating and committed painters of our time” (‘F.N. Souza: the human and the divine’, Studio International Art, April 1964, p. 134). It was in this heady period that Souza’s style, particularly in terms of portraiture, dramatically evolved, most notably in his use of thinner lines and multiple oval ocular forms in his portraits. The year he painted The Apocalypse, Souza stated, “I started using more than two eyes, numerous eyes and fingers on my paintings and drawings of human figures when I realised what it meant to have the superfluous and so not need the necessary. Why should I be sparse and parsimonious when not only this world, but worlds in space are open to me? I have everything to use at my disposal” (Artist statement, F N SOUZA, London, 1961, unpaginated).
Closely attuned to the worrying sociopolitical and scientific developments of the period, Souza uses this portrait to warn his viewers about the imminence of a day of reckoning for humankind, should the Cold War and its attendant nuclear tensions escalate. Raised as a Catholic, and equally influenced and scarred by the teachings of the Church, Souza conflates this feeling of being on the brink of Armageddon with the apocalypticism of the Gospels, where Jesus is asked ‘What are the signs of the end times?’ and tells his disciples in the final sermon before his arrest that these include war and evil, and that ‘All these things shall be fulfilled in your own time’. Here, Souza’s bearded, multi-eyed subject wears a plush coat and heavy necklaces and holds up his hands, marked with stigmata. Despite his apparent wealth and security, even he is not spared when ‘end times’ come. At once a warning to and an indictment of humankind, this epic painting is a masterpiece, open to multiple levels of interpretation.
Like a warning shot, this painting along with works like Mad Prophet in New York (also 1961), seems to be a precursor to the series of large, ominous portraits the artist executed the following year, including Fall-Out Mutation, Red Curse and Manufacturer of Nuclear Weapons. Each of these paintings appears to represent a possible consequence of The Apocalypse, leading the critic Geeta Kapur to label Souza a “painter of doom and destruction as seen from the inside of a suicidal civilization” (G. Kapur, Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi, 1978, p. 26).
By the early 1960s, Francis Newton Souza had truly come into his own, leading the critic Mervyn Levy to describe him in 1964 as “one of the most vigorously stimulating and committed painters of our time” (‘F.N. Souza: the human and the divine’, Studio International Art, April 1964, p. 134). It was in this heady period that Souza’s style, particularly in terms of portraiture, dramatically evolved, most notably in his use of thinner lines and multiple oval ocular forms in his portraits. The year he painted The Apocalypse, Souza stated, “I started using more than two eyes, numerous eyes and fingers on my paintings and drawings of human figures when I realised what it meant to have the superfluous and so not need the necessary. Why should I be sparse and parsimonious when not only this world, but worlds in space are open to me? I have everything to use at my disposal” (Artist statement, F N SOUZA, London, 1961, unpaginated).
Closely attuned to the worrying sociopolitical and scientific developments of the period, Souza uses this portrait to warn his viewers about the imminence of a day of reckoning for humankind, should the Cold War and its attendant nuclear tensions escalate. Raised as a Catholic, and equally influenced and scarred by the teachings of the Church, Souza conflates this feeling of being on the brink of Armageddon with the apocalypticism of the Gospels, where Jesus is asked ‘What are the signs of the end times?’ and tells his disciples in the final sermon before his arrest that these include war and evil, and that ‘All these things shall be fulfilled in your own time’. Here, Souza’s bearded, multi-eyed subject wears a plush coat and heavy necklaces and holds up his hands, marked with stigmata. Despite his apparent wealth and security, even he is not spared when ‘end times’ come. At once a warning to and an indictment of humankind, this epic painting is a masterpiece, open to multiple levels of interpretation.
Like a warning shot, this painting along with works like Mad Prophet in New York (also 1961), seems to be a precursor to the series of large, ominous portraits the artist executed the following year, including Fall-Out Mutation, Red Curse and Manufacturer of Nuclear Weapons. Each of these paintings appears to represent a possible consequence of The Apocalypse, leading the critic Geeta Kapur to label Souza a “painter of doom and destruction as seen from the inside of a suicidal civilization” (G. Kapur, Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi, 1978, p. 26).