VHP to ‘monitor’ art biennale

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) will “closely monitor” the first international art biennale beginning here on Tuesday.

The organisation will assign cadres to visit the venue and find out the nature of the paintings, especially the ones by M.F. Hussain, a senior VHP official told The Hindu .

“Our workers will visit the venue and find out whether any controversial paintings of Hussain, humiliating Hindu gods and goddesses, are exhibited in the art show or not. If any such paintings are exhibited, we will convene a meeting and decide our next course of action,” said Sachindranath Sinha, organisational secretary of the VHP in Bengal.

However, Mr. Sinha said if the cadres could not find any “objectionable artwork” then the VHP would rather give the two-week long biennale a “smooth passage.”

The exhibition — titled Calcutta Art Biennale 2015 — will witness 64 artistes from four continents. The convenor of the exhibition artist Manas Roy of Roymans Art Studio told The Hindu that Hussain’s Mahabharat series will be exhibited “along with 10 other maestros.”

Besides Hussain’s series, works of S.H. Raza, Alexander Tokarev, Nandalal Bose, Ramananda Bandopadhyay, Adrienne Kusters, Jogen Chowdhury, John Wieser and Wasim Kapoor will also be presented.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/vhp-to-monitor-art-biennale/article7075221.ece