This Tate Modern exhibition in 2016 … Zitzewitz, Karin. The painting is composed of a continuous narrative in the background, telling the Aesop’s fable of a man, his son, and their donkey. Khakhar, speaking about the painting, has said that if indeed one cannot please all, one should please themselves. If we’re going to spend time in a substantial exhibition on an artist from a very different culture, we need some understanding of where their work is coming from and what it means, or it all just becomes a colourful blur. This includes rarely seen ceramic works, the exhibition catalog he produced for his show at Chemould Gallery in 1978, and a video documentary made by Judy Marle. Bhupen Khakhar is an Indian artist who is best known for his paintings, but also experimented with installations, glass-painting, ceramics and writing. International painting is at the center of this year’s Tate program: Georgia O’Keeffe, Francis Bacon, Maria Lassnig, and Robert Rauschenberg are being honored with major exhibitions. In At the End of the Day Iron Ingots Came Out he shows a man, presumably representing himself, excreting painfully on the lavatory, with a cross-sectional view into his intestines. [2] Nada Raza, “A Man Labelled Bhupen Khakhar Branded as Painter.” Dercon, Chris, and Nada Raza, eds. Biography A self-taught artist, Bhupen Khakhar was born in Bombay on the 10th of March 1934. We’re left wondering if his use of mythological imagery – the monkey god Hanuman makes an appearance alongside a man with five penises – is intended to be satirical, fantastical, sincerely spiritual or simply funny. It draws you in not only through the sheer liveliness of the work, but because Khakhar’s artistic impulses weren’t at heart intellectual or political, but personal and emotional. These works took their queue from colonial era “Company Painting,” a style that arose in the nineteenth century during the expansion of the British East India Company. The Tate’s very welcome exhibition of the great Indian painter Bhupen Khakhar (1934–2003) is the first international retrospective since the superb show held at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai three months after the artist’s death. This, however, is art that could have been created only in India, that will take you out of yourself and into a very different mental realm. Can I go to a museum? The textures of daily life in India — particularly the cheap reproductions of Hindu idols, seen pasted on walls of roadside temples — made appearances in pastiche collages. From Rio to Beirut to Mumbai, it seems, Western abstraction and conceptual art have been the dominant influences for a good half century. [2] From then onwards, male sexuality became a focal trope in his work. Print. He was awarded a CSW Travel Grant in 2017. My first encounter with Khakhar’s paintings came in the summer of 2013, after having just landed in Bombay. Bhupen Khakhar: You Can’t Please All. Enjoy your stay :). In the foreground of the same scene, we see a man — a characteristic self-portrait of Khakhar himself — in the nude looking out over the developments in this tale from his perch on a balcony. W ithin his career and thereafter, Bhupen Khakhar has received the most international and highly regarded institutional attention of any Indian artist. [8] Khakhar’s paintings took this imperial motive and redeployed it for his own inquiries into the lives of his fellow countrymen — the everyday people who would become his muses in both life and art until the end. By this time, there had been two retrospectives of Khakhar’s work, one shortly after his death at the National Gallery of Art in Mumbai, and another mounted at the Reina Sofia in Madrid the previous year. 162. The works presented by curator Nada Raza offered poetic snapshots of different artistic investments over the course of Khakhar’s life. [3] This was the everyman that appeared and reappeared in his paintings: the tea shop owner, the zoo keeper, the average city dweller. His sexuality, which has been such a critical topic of conversation, is not simply presented for consumption but reflexively considered as a polemical anti-colonial gesture. Bhupen Khakhar. Prior to his arrival in Los Angeles, Sayantan worked in commercial galleries in New York and New Delhi and in the education sector in Shanghai. Mark Hudson warms to this exhibition dedicated to the colourful and subtly complex paintings of the late Indian artist Bhupen Khakhar. Subramanyan, Bhupen Khakhar. Mumbai: Mapin Pub., 1998. While we don’t want to be overwhelmed with contextual information, too much about Khakhar’s complex cultural background is left vague. His ‘late style’ is informed by the way sickness ravages and limits the body, most notably seen in “Bullet Shot in the Stomach” (2001), a somber painting in which entrails spill from a man’s midriff after being assailed by a gun. B hupen Khakhar was born in Khetwadi in Bombay in 1934. [5] Khakhar’s lexicon has often been identified with the work of British artists David Hockney and R. B. Khakhar’s more humble subjects, the local barber, watchmaker and tailor, were thus beatified in these sensitive and observant portraits. Scholars have tended to categorize Khakhar’s art with three periodized divisions of his biography, beginning with the earliest period after his relocation to Baroda. Tate Edit Makers' Showcase. Tate. Ultimately, they choose to carry the donkey, so as not to tire it out before it was put up for sale, but the donkey falls after a misstep and dies from the injury. In “Gallery of Rogues” (1993), independently framed panels are arranged together in constellation of plebeian faces: lovers from all corners of Baroda who have been the object of Khakhar’s doting admiration. He worked as a chartered accountant for many years before becoming an artist. Kitaj.[6]. The preoccupation with same-sex union becomes a focal element of Khakhar’s paintings in the 80s and 90s, oftentimes married with iconography from Hindu mythology and folkloric practice. While Gaitonde and Mohammedi might be relatable to global audiences by virtue of their links to abstraction and minimalism respectively, Khakhar presents a much more intrepid option. The sardonic tone in these images stems from his general displeasure at London’s supposed glumness, reflected in paintings such as “Man in Pub” (1979). Thus, the irony of London as the home to the most important retrospective of Khakhar’s work is subtly addressed with great humor and poise. New Delhi: Vikas, 1978. At the Tate which is an institution in its own right extremely exlcusive in its choice of artists and exhibitions how did Bhupen Khakar become the Indian artist who is … He moved to Baroda in 1958 to follow a longstanding passion and curiosity for art, enrolling in a graduate program in Art Criticism at the then-new Faculty of Arts at Maharaja Sayajirao University. You Can’t Please All was painted at Khakhar’s house in Baroda, India. Bhupen Khakhar is on show at Tate Modern from June 1st to September 6th. Bhupen Khakhar played a central role in modern Indian art and was a recognised international figure in 20th century painting. Credit Oil on canvas. Dercon, Chris, and Nada Raza, eds. Shop now. 123-48. Bhupen Khakhar's You Can't Please All (1981), the painting that gives Tate's new show its name Credit: Tate; © Bhupen Khakhar Mark Hudson warms … Born in Mumbai in 1934, Khakhar worked as a factory accountant in the provincial city of Baroda, painting only in his spare time, bringing to mind a kind of Indian LS Lowry, and also the great French primitivist Henri Rousseau – a parallel that appears far from accidental. But he found life in London glum and “grumpy”[14], communicating as much through the paintings he executed there, two of which are on show in the the exhibition’s second room. Print. Subjects were varied, but one prominent use for the Company style was to document uniforms of different groups of tradespeople. Bearing a TATE exhibition label on reverse along with another label with cataloguing details and exhibition history in India from the 1990s. N. pag. 1934 - 2003. This turn was marked most notably in the impressive V. S. Gaitonde retrospective at the Guggenheim New York in 2016, alongside this year’s dedications to Nasreen Mohammedi at the new Met Breuer and to Bhupen Khakhar at the Tate. 13-25. This room takes its title from the 1999 painting in which Khakhar boldly painted the agony he suffered during cancer treatment. His current research interests include histories of display and queer identities in modern South Asia. This subtle nod to queer intention becomes thoroughly explicit in the next age of his career — the legacy of which has in many ways defined his contributions to modernism. As a result, single artists are getting loving attention from curators in landmark retrospectives, certifying them as worthy of a place in an expanded canon. Bhupen Khakhar: Truth is Beauty – Talk at Tate Modern | Tate. In a vitrine in the largest gallery is a set of hand-written notes about life in England, compared with India in what Khakhar himself calls “tabular form”. He journeyed to the USSR, Yugoslavia, England and Italy. Yet while we are told that he drew on external elements from Sienese religious frescoes to Western Pop Art and Bollywood, alongside various forms of traditional Indian art, we are shown only early work – a Pop-influenced painting from 1965. “Paan Shop for People: Bhupen Khakhar (1934-2003).” Worldly Affiliations: Artistic Practice, National Identity, and Modernism in India, 1930-1990. Oil on printed cloth with a cushion backing laid on board. He is a reminder of the immense possibilities of difference: as a “Pop” artist outside the centers of Pop, as a gay artist in a conservative Indian city, and later as someone suffering while in the company of healthy friends. Khakhar started showing his work as early as 1965, and while it took him some time to lead the cosmopolitan life of his peers, he was traveling internationally by 1976. But he was also influenced by art history. Subscription ... Bhupen Khakhar (1) Exhibition Bhupen Khakhar (1) Print type Custom prints (1) Price £25 - £49.99; £50 - £149.99; £150 - £299.99; Clear all [13] The body is no longer a site of sex and love, and more so a place of decay. He was a member of the Baroda Group and gained international recognition for his work. These works are a willful affront to the famously conservative values of the middle class, but mine a long tradition of homosociality in Indian history to locate a local vision of queer identity. Sheikh encouraged Khakhar to attend Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda and intro… Husain, K.G. The story recounts the tale of the pair leading a donkey to the market in order to sell it, while receiving innumerable pieces of advice from passers-by along the way, each suggesting a different configuration for easy and efficacious travel. Ed. His father was an engineer, and he died when Khakhar was still a child. But there’s no attempt to expand on this for the non-Indian viewer. This landmark event ushers in a new age in the display of South Asian contemporary, heralding the possibility of institutional support for a truly international interpretation of modernism. Kobena Mercer. Citron, Beth. A man labelled Bhupen Khakhar branded as painter. “Bhupen Khakhar’s “Pop” in India, 1970-72.” The Art Journal 71.2 (2012): 44-61. At the time, I was only thoroughly familiar with the first generation of modernists emerging at the wake of the Indian republic — such stalwarts as MF Husain, SH Raza, and FN Souza — whose palettes tended towards the muted and somber. London: Tate Publications, 2016. Comprising 91 works from across five decades, this is the first international retrospective of the work of Bhupen Khakhar (1934-2003) since his death and, according to incoming Tate Modern director Frances Morris, it is “part of the spirit of the bigger international story that the new Tate Modern [to be opened to the public on 17 June after its £260m extension] is dedicated to”. Bhupen Khakhar, and the possibilities he represents for a new Indian republic, helps mark a welcome shift in the presence of South Asia at monolithic art museums in which research begins with the artist and only then extrapolates towards the nation, and not the reverse. Bhupen Khakhar, “You Can’t Please All”, 1981, oil and paint on canvas, 175.6 x 175.6 cm. They are painted lovingly, with unidealized bodies and an unglamorous presence. Explore the extraordinary paintings of this key figure in modern Indian art. London: Tate Publications, 2016. Main image: Man Leaving (Going Abroad), 1970 by Bhupen Khakhar Courtesy of Tapi Collection, India (c) Estate of Bhupen Khakhar. The treatment of foliage and flowers in Man Leaving (Going Abroad) appears lifted from Rousseau in a highly knowing way. Renowned for his unique figurative style and incisive observations of class and sexuality, Bhupen Khakhar (1934-2003) played a central role in modern Indian art and was a key international figure in 20th century painting. We rely on advertising to help fund our award-winning journalism. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1998, and lost his battle against the disease in 2003. [1] Baroda would become Khakhar’s permanent home — a respite from the intense urbanity of Bombay, and shelter from the prying eyes of the community he lived in. Building a Bridge between Academia and Community Needs: Trans Latinxs in Southern... César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies. Required fields are marked *. My friend showed me the only monograph of Khakhar’s work produced to date, lovingly compiled by artist Timothy Hyman in 1998. Even at the outset, Khakhar’s sensibilities were oriented (somewhat presciently) towards the aesthetics of the global Pop, and its defiant breakdown painterly conventions that maintained the sanctity and purity of medium. Signed and dated in Gujarati lower right. By combining art-historical influences with contemporary … The moral of the story is that despite how much one may try, it is impossible to please everyone. [11] The nudity suggests a kind of voyeurism he looks to the men of the fable, as if getting pleasure from watching them go about their day. What made the recent record-breaking years in the art market the most exciting ever? It took a second for my eyes to focus; to realize that the figures that emerged in his narrative paintings were indeed men: men who came together in various salacious acts of sexual union. In these decades, any timidness around the male body and eroticism disappears, allowing for graphic images that explore love and lust between Indian men. 3 October 2016 . 175.6 x 175.6 cm. In You Can’t Please All, the painting that gives the show its title, a naked man (the artist, we are led to understand) looks out into a street from a balcony, with scenes in the neighbouring buildings visible in a way that is hardly realistic, but vividly conveys the merging of the public and private worlds in Indian life. It was after his stint in London that Khakhar started speaking openly about his sexuality, reflecting on how sexually liberated people seemed to be in the old metropole. The final room is the most extraordinary, in which Khakhar confronts his five-year demise through cancer, leading up to his death in 2003, in raw and powerful paintings, that are imbued with a stoic and disconcerting humour. BHUPEN KHAKHAR. 153. He holds a pair of driving gloves near his crotch: the fingers bunching into a bouquet of phalluses. Those close to him have commented on the intense relationships he developed with men in Baroda: invariably older than Khakhar and of lower social status. 168-213. Hyman, Timothy, and Bhupen Khakhar. IN THE COCONUT GROVES . Bhupen Khakhar. [7] Khullar, Sonal. Oakland: U of California, 2015. Two men stand in naked embrace, their erect penises almost touching. Oakland: U of California, 2015. Exhibitions of non-Western modern art can give the impression of worthy side-shows to the main events in Paris, New York or London, or of artists who are suspended frustratingly between cultures. We learn from a documentary film from 1983, shown in the gallery, that far from being simply picturesque, Khakhar’s view of Indian life is fundamentally satirical. “Saint Bhupen.” Bhupen among Friends : A Tribute to Bhupen Khakhar by Friends. 18. Towards the end of this “early period”, Khakhar also painted comical scenes from his own time in England, drawing on his travels — an ironic postcolonial reversal, in a sense, of the colonial documentation embodied by Company Painting. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2014. Several times over, it has been cited as a ‘coming out’[9] — a declarative announcement of a gay identity that Khakhar claimed and opened up for discussion by way of this image. Bhupen Khakhar (also spelled Bhupen Khakkar, born Bombay 10 March 1934 – died Baroda 8 August 2003) Bhupen Khakhar was a leading artist in Indian contemporary art. This second ‘stage’ in his practice is consistently pivoted around a turn symbolized by his painting, “You Can’t Please All” (1981). Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2007. There's no mistaking those elephant ears, the shock of white hair as anyone else's. [13] Geeta Kapur, “Mortality Morbidity Masquerade,” Dercon, Chris, and Nada Raza, eds. Why Arthur Conan Doyle’s favourite character wasn’t the ‘consulting detective’, From Ravilious to Rothko: how looking at paintings can lift our spirits. Purchased 1996 © Estate of Bhupen Khakhar About the artist A key figure in 20th century painting, Bhupen Khakhar’s pictures depict the world with unflinching honesty and deep humanity. A group of large blurry paintings created while he had cataracts give way to luminous watercolours and a whole room of paintings on sexual themes, from the realistic – scenes of orgy-like, all-male parties – to the visionary: in one painting, an aged king and his son, transformed into an angel, appear to be making love. What the tier system means for art lovers, Posh, insouciant, ultra-chic: Noel Coward’s greatest creation was himself, ‘Make notes all the time’: artists from Jonathan Yeo to Cornelia Parker on how to find inspiration, The 2021 hot 100: the year’s best entertainment, from Bond and Cinderella to Hockney and Line of Duty, Sherlock who? From the beginning of his artistic career, Bhupen Khakhar expressed a commitment to presenting the world as he saw it and experienced it. The works in this room trace Khakhar’s self-directed development, from early experiments with collage to finely detailed oil paintings. The subjects are oftentimes Khakhar’s own lovers, who tended to emerge from lower socioeconomic classes. Despite having been qualified as a chartered accountant before moving to Baroda in 1962, he joined the Art Criticism course at the Faculty of Fine Arts where he started painting and became involved with the seminal Narrative- Figurative movement. He holds a BA from Williams College in Comparative Literature and Art History. The exhibition, “You Can’t Please All”, opened earlier this year. The magenta-pink surface of a factory yard hits an emerald green street in Factory Strike; brilliant vermilion-red railings vibrate against a deep azure sea in Man Eating Jalebi. Bhupen Khakhar was born in 1934 to a Gujarati family in Bombay. This biography is from Wikipedia under an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License. “The Uncommon Universe of Bhupen Khakhar.” Pop Art and Vernacular Cultures. Bhupen Khakhar and the New Tate Modern. Bhupen Khakhar: You Can’t Please All. After meeting the painter Gulam Mohammed Sheikh in 1958, he became interested in … This to open just weeks after an curated by art critic and Khakhar’s dear friend, Geeta Kapur, that paid tribute to the late artist by way of the theme of death. [7] European travelers to the subcontinent would hire artists to portray daily life, with the intention of bringing these images back to England to show fellow countrymen. Bhupen Khakhar (1934-2003) was born in Bombay, studied economics and qualified as a chartered accountant. Print. The painter, Bhupen Khakhar… paints the overtly homosexual Two Men in Benares. 168-213. He would make two subsequent trips to England and in turn host his British friends in India. Three small panels on the left of the image follow a British man’s empty day, leading to the large panel on the right, showing the same sad face cradling a pint alone in a garishly decorated pub. These aren’t the subtlest colour combinations, but, boy, do they sing out. Bobby Friction: The sound of Bhupen Khakhar. It was clear that time passed on by, but love for Bhupen remained as ardent as ever. Yet for all these qualms, this is a rich and absorbing exhibition. Kapur, Geeta. When Khakhar was asked why the donkey was sporting an erection, he responded, “Because he is carrying two men.”[12] The man in the painting, with his back towards us, may very well be enjoying the view just as much. His mother’s death in 1980 also allowed him greater openness about his preferences, as he became less concerned with reactions from his family. 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