The Wrath of Kali

New criticism of a Hindu-inspired painting that's part of the Neuberger Museum of Art's show on British self-portraiture illustrates the challenge of using religion in art.

The painting, "Housewives With Steak Knives" (1985) by Sutapa Biswas — herself a Hindu — depicts the artist as Kali, a form of Hinduism's Divine Mother Goddess, Durga. As such, Kali has both a creative and destructive aspect. But her destructiveness is often used in service of mankind. Manuela Dunn Mascetti's book "The Song of Eve: An Illustrated Journey Into the Myths, Symbols and Rituals of the Goddess" (Fireside), for instance, recounts a story in which the many-armed Kali springs forth from Durga's brow to combat demonic forces in the world.

Biswas' painting takes off on the notion of Kali as a potent defender of the innocent to create a metaphor of female empowerment, particularly in the face of domestic violence.

The artist-as-Kali wears a necklace from which hang the heads of some of history's most infamous figures, including Adolf Hitler. In one of her several hands, she holds a flag that reproduces two works by the Italian Renaissance painter Artemisia Gentileschi on the theme of the Israelite heroine Judith beheading the Assyrian general Holofernes. (You'll recall that Gentileschi was raped by her artist-father's apprentice and then tortured to make sure she was telling the truth. The symbolism of her Judith art is lost on no one.)

And it would seem to fit perfectly with Biswas' work: Two artists looking to courageous female figures for inspiration and succor.

But Bhavne Shinde — writing on behalf of ForumForHinduAwakening.org, which has requested the removal of "Housewives" — says "Depicting the Deity as a gruesome figure as in this painting amounts to irreverence and trivialization of the sacred deity."

In a statement that was included in a letter that Neuberger director Thom Collins sent to Shinde, Biswas refutes the idea that her painting is offensive to Hindus:

"It falls completely within the paradigms of the imaginative space that exists within the Hindu faith. In other words, there is not one god, but thousands, and a god can take many forms — we are all sacred in our ways, and capable of good and evil....The narrative of Kali within Hindu culture is a complex one."

Collins goes on to write: "In light of this clarification, I hope you will agree that, far from simply casting the goddess Kali in a negative light, 'Housewives With Steak Knives' is a complex and potentially revelatory instance of self-identification and self-fashioning by a very talented Indian artist imagining herself as part of several rich and mutually imbricated histories and cultural traditions."

In a follow-up to an e-mail in which I posed several questions, Shinde tells The Arts Muse that in Hindu depictions, form is crucial, since it determines whether pure or impure vibrations are sent out into the universe. "Housewives," she says, is in essence a kind of spiritual noise.

I can't argue with Shinde here, even though I think "Housewives" is a compelling representation of female courage in the face of male domination. If Shinde as a Hindu believes the painting gives off bad energy, well, she's entitled to her beliefs as well as her artistic opinions, just as I'm not crazy about another work in the exhibit, Angus Fairhurst's "Pietà," a 1996 Cibachrome print in which he casts himself as Jesus (OK) and a model in a gorilla suit as the Virgin Mary (not OK in my book).

Shinde, who writes that no faith should be trivialized, adds that "the artist when depicting religous symbols or concepts should be knowledgeable in that religion (not just born in it) in the sense of being a devoted practitioner of its concepts and a student of that religion."

I don't agree with the latter part of this statement, for it robs art of the bridge that is the imagination. Without that bridge, Marc Chagall, a Jew, would've never accepted a commission to do stained-glass windows at Reims Cathedral. And he would've never created the moving "White Crucifixion," in which the crucified Jesus becomes a symbol of Jewish suffering at the hands of the Nazis.

You don't have to embrace a religion to create a work about it. But you do have to respect it.

Whether or not "Housewives With Steak Knives" respects Hinduism remains and should remain open to debate.

No doubt, artists will continue to provoke with their treatments of religious figures and stories, as they have always done.

And given the highly personal nature of both art and religion, we will continue to find offense in these works.

"Housewives With Steak Knives" remains part of "British Subjects: Identity and Self-Fashioning 1967-2009," on view through Dec. 13 at Purchase College's Neuberger Museum of Art. 914-251-6100, neubergermuseum.org