In his new painting, "Clint Eastwood Finds Meryl and Madhuri on the Bridge [sic] of Madison County" (1995), Husain turns his gaze toward the contemporary image-dominated scene of American and Indian movie worlds. Now the imperialist/modernist agenda of old-fashioned colonialist powers--portrayed in "Apu and the Train" and in "The Raj" paintings-- has been replaced by the propagandist, cultural-difference obliterating, and relentlessly Americanizing strategies of popular entertainment. The painting, which I have examined only as photographically reproduced in the �multi-national� Indian news magazine India Today (November 10, 1995, p. 105), suggests Husain�s strong sense of equivalence between the United States and India. I am not arguing that the painter equally approves of both nations, but only that he sees them as equally matched in power, especially in their power to seduce. Both countries produce larger-than-life personalities, and are equal in their power to sway the masses. If anything, "Madison County" shows the (an?) American ideal of manhood being somewhat overshadowed by the (an?) Indian ideal of womanhood.

Husain has been highly perceptive in selecting as his target the Hollywood film "The Bridges of Madison County." In one sense this movie is typically American because of its fictional location in the American heartland--rural Iowa. At the same time it is quite un-American in aspiring to present a sensitive, non-macho portrayal of a sentimental and memory-driven storyline. Especially, the film is notable in the popular mind for Clint Eastwood�s success in putting behind him the stereotypical role of the taciturn, gun-toting Western "hero" that had made him famous in his earlier movies. In the painting, however, Husain nullifies Eastwood�s attempt to rewrite the history of his typical popular image. Husain drags him back on a recalcitrant horse, places a Stetson firmly on his head, hands him a gun (held up, rebel-like, with one hand), straps an ammunition belt over his naked torso, slings a revolver on the belt of his blue denim trousers, and shods his feet in Western boots. The horse is short-tailed, ill-tempered, thick-maned, and it is bucking: the wild bronco rearing up, its head turned backward in an exaggerated fierceness. There is no rein in Eastwood�s hand, and he appears to be riding without a saddle. The "hero" rides bareback, and his back is bare; the American film ideal--"Dirty Harry"--is bared for what it is. Every stereotypical association of the much valorized, conventionality-defying western hero is exposed by Husain. By reconfiguring the agricultural mid-west as the stereotypical wild west, he denies America the right to civilize itself; and he punctures popular American movie industry�s claim to respectability and fine human feelings.

Eastwood, as the proto-American male, occupies the lower half of the painting, riding away from us. He seems to be riding along a dirt track, a dusty gully of sorts that runs towards the fairly nondescript bridge drawn across the middle of the canvas. On the bridge are the two female figures: Meryl Streep and Madhuri Dixit. The former, in pale yellow sits on the bridge�s edge toward the left occupying rather insignificantly about a quarter of the top half of the picture. Although she turns her face around toward the viewer, she is actually sitting with her back towards Eastwood. Madhuri Dixit, on the other hand, occupies most of the top half of the composition. Not only does she face Eastwood, she actually bends down toward him, arching significantly above the approaching hero. She is brown skinned and dark haired; her breasts, outlined against a strikingly white pinafore of sorts, are suspended above Eastwood�s head. The white of the pinafore repeats the white head and body of the rampant horse. She is wearing a long red skirt that matches the colour of the sunburnt hero�s bare body. Eastwood is framed first by the arch under the bridge; but more significantly, Eastwood and the bridge-arch are placed under sign of the arching body of Madhuri Dixit.

Each woman in the picture is shown with a child. Streep�s child hides behind her, and is barely visible. Dixit�s red-faced child, dressed in white, repeats the red and white colour scheme of the rider and his mount. This child bravely rides on its mother�s back as the latter leans over the edge of the bridge. Typically, Husain also manipulates perspective and depth. The lower part of Streep�s body is obscured by the bridge on which she sits. One arm of Dixit rests on the bridge�s edge concealing part of Streep�s dress and pushing her further into the background. By a complete defiance of logic, Dixit�s voluminous and pleated red skirt can be seen overlapping the lines of the bridge, although realistically they ought to be obscured by the fore part of the bridge. In effect, Dixit appears to arise from within the masonry of the bridge and seems like its spiritual emanation. While the typically misogynist American frontier male is denied much authority in the picture, he holds aloft his gun in a hand awkwardly raised above his head. The barrel of the gun is suggestively pointed toward Dixit�s crotch. Clearly, there is much sexual suggestion in the composition, but it is hard to determine how far it is meant to be erotic, and to what extent it is merely parodic. On the other hand, there can be no question about Husain�s reflexivity in the painting in which he takes up the notion of stereotype itself as his prominent theme. By juxtaposing the image of Madhuri Dixit, currently the most popular heroine of Bombay movies, with the American male stereotype represented by Clint Eastwood, Husain posits the co-equal status of India and the United States of America in the contemporary, "postmodern," world.