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Lot Essay
I use aesthetics instead of knives and bullets to protest against stuffed-shirts and hypocrites.
– F.N. Souza
Over the six decades of his artistic career, Francis Newton Souza largely focused on figurative painting to document both the splendor and decadence of his times, and to convey his cynical take on religion, class and society. “Souza’s particular strength lies not in his refusal to admit the importance of abstract art, but in his capacity to find in figurative painting everything that he needs; so much so, that he cannot understand why any other artist can do anything else. ‘To paint abstract paintings is quite impossible.’ Souza has written, ‘it's like trying to paint thin air and those who think they do are fooling themselves. They claim to be going “beyond”. Beyond what? Beyond zero is minus. They say the spectator must bring his own imagination to work upon their painted surfaces, which means that the spectator should do all the work. It's another instance of the Emperor's clothes. And if this is "art", then I’m the little boy who shouts "it's naked!”” (E. Mullins, Souza, London, 1962, p. 36).
Exploring the nuances of figuration and offering his withering commentary on the clergy and gentry, Souza’s male ‘heads’ and portraits from the mid and late 1950s are considered among his most seminal paintings. “Around 1955 [Souza] fashioned for his purpose a distinctive type of head for which he is perhaps best known. It is a face without a forehead, bearded and pockmarked, eyes bulging from the side of the skull [...] a mouth full of multiple sets of teeth” (G. Kapur, Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi, 1978, p. 2). The present lot, painted in 1958, bears some of the features Kapur describes. In addition, the male subject, most likely a priest or cleric, wears a handsomely brocaded tunic of silvery-grey with details picked out in Prussian blue. Souza uses the same blue to highlight the detailing of the dark background his subject is posed against, giving it the appearance of a heavy velvet drape.
It is this opulence that Souza identifies as one of the markers of what he sees as the hypocrisy of the Church, its rituals and its representatives. In his paintings like the present lot, “ [...] the darkened image of Man emerges, virulently depicted, with malignancy of character pervading and eroding his features into strangely disturbing ornamental patterns. This horrific formalization has no precedent in contemporary imagery and remains convincing and potently revealing whenever Souza chooses to strike” (J. Burr, ‘Of Our Time’, Art New & Review, New York, May 1955).
– F.N. Souza
Over the six decades of his artistic career, Francis Newton Souza largely focused on figurative painting to document both the splendor and decadence of his times, and to convey his cynical take on religion, class and society. “Souza’s particular strength lies not in his refusal to admit the importance of abstract art, but in his capacity to find in figurative painting everything that he needs; so much so, that he cannot understand why any other artist can do anything else. ‘To paint abstract paintings is quite impossible.’ Souza has written, ‘it's like trying to paint thin air and those who think they do are fooling themselves. They claim to be going “beyond”. Beyond what? Beyond zero is minus. They say the spectator must bring his own imagination to work upon their painted surfaces, which means that the spectator should do all the work. It's another instance of the Emperor's clothes. And if this is "art", then I’m the little boy who shouts "it's naked!”” (E. Mullins, Souza, London, 1962, p. 36).
Exploring the nuances of figuration and offering his withering commentary on the clergy and gentry, Souza’s male ‘heads’ and portraits from the mid and late 1950s are considered among his most seminal paintings. “Around 1955 [Souza] fashioned for his purpose a distinctive type of head for which he is perhaps best known. It is a face without a forehead, bearded and pockmarked, eyes bulging from the side of the skull [...] a mouth full of multiple sets of teeth” (G. Kapur, Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi, 1978, p. 2). The present lot, painted in 1958, bears some of the features Kapur describes. In addition, the male subject, most likely a priest or cleric, wears a handsomely brocaded tunic of silvery-grey with details picked out in Prussian blue. Souza uses the same blue to highlight the detailing of the dark background his subject is posed against, giving it the appearance of a heavy velvet drape.
It is this opulence that Souza identifies as one of the markers of what he sees as the hypocrisy of the Church, its rituals and its representatives. In his paintings like the present lot, “ [...] the darkened image of Man emerges, virulently depicted, with malignancy of character pervading and eroding his features into strangely disturbing ornamental patterns. This horrific formalization has no precedent in contemporary imagery and remains convincing and potently revealing whenever Souza chooses to strike” (J. Burr, ‘Of Our Time’, Art New & Review, New York, May 1955).