A Man of Words and Strokes : Bhupen Khakhar

Exhibition Review

-Aishwarya Walvekar

A Man of Words and Strokes

Amidst the controversy of Bhupen Khakhar’s works at Tate Modern - You Can’t Please All and The Guardian’s critic Jonathan Jones labelling it as ‘an old-fashioned, second-rate artist’, stands the revealing and potent exhibition of Khakhar’s work at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. Titled Many Facets of an Artist: Collections from Bhupen Khakhar Estate, the exhibition is a voyage through Khakhar’s works and collections unfolding facets of him being an artist.

The exhibition being curated by the National Gallery of Modern Art is fairly put, although lacks originality and experimentation. It unfurls the varied mediums and methods used by the Khakhar, from pencil sketching, ink on paper, watercolor, oil on canvas to etching, linocuts, lithographs, screen prints. Among the installation are sofas painted by him and a paan stall. The exhibition also displays his vivid work on ceramic bowls and plates. S

An accountant turned artist, Khakhar started with his art career in his thirties. In an interview to Tariq Ali, Khakhar says, “If I had started early, I would not have known whether I really wanted to paint or write or do other thing. In the beginning, I wanted to really write and I have written stories and a few short stories. Slowly, I think now, I am including my stories and painting.” As an amateur and self-trained painter, figures in his works are not in proportion (as a trained painter) and are flabby. Nevertheless, they are vivacious and intriguing using a palette of garish colors, depicting scenes from everyday bourgeois life. Be it an etching or a watercolor or any other medium, most of his pieces are narrative and metaphorical at the same time. Being a self-declared homosexual, his art work reflects enormously about his personal life and society’s denunciation to it. Kiss of the Devil, and two untitled pieces – an etching and a watercolor, showcase his sexual preferences. The etching shows two men sitting on a sofa wearing the same suit and inscriptions on the sofa read, ‘they loved each other so much, that they even wore the same suits’. The watercolor one shows two men sitting and looking at a bird which has one body but two heads. Kiss of the Devil is yet another example, where he shows a black colored half-man half-wolf devil kissing a man, while another man sitting beside him looks outside to the audience. He uses metallic color on the devil’s body and also on the shirts of the two men depicting the transference of the devil’s kiss or maya. 

In the early 1960s, Khakhar joined the Art Criticism course at the Faculty of Arts, Baroda. His works are often regarded as a milestone in the contemporary modern art with their stark illustration of reality and yet move and innate emotions.  His use of flamboyant colors and simple strokes and lines with watercolor give depth to his paintings. One such painting is In The Room, where two men are sitting in a room on a carpet. The pink lines of the carpet and the vertical line pattern on the man’s outfit give a perspective to the painting. He uses indoor and outdoor scenarios in his paintings. Through his pieces he illustrates a vivid distinction between the structured and tight frames of the indoor material life and on the other hand, the outdoors are more amorphous, yet structured by the humans.

One of his untitled work of pen on paper where he demonstrates the barber cutting hair of a man, he uses harsh and rapid pen strokes to depict the bourgeois chores. Sadhu With The Red Towel, is yet another spectacular work of Khakhar. A watercolor painting, the sadhu is nude and has a broken leg, wearing a red towel on his head and poses with a black spectacles. Though the figure is not proportionate, it conveys an insight of Khakhar’s perspective of life.  His series of paintings called the Manchester are also a part of the exhibition. These series, especially the Old Cotton Mills, elucidate the industrialization with a warm color scheme and black strokes of pollution. The whole canvas is filled with architectural structures of the mills, smoke and workers and it is juxtaposed with a human face huge enough to occupy the canvas. Giving the sense of growing materialistic life, he highlights individualism through this painting. A similar and massive work is that of the Gurujayanti done in watercolor and ink on paper. It depicts a scenario of a guru coming to a small village and is being ignored, as the people are busy with their daily chores.

Other than his own oeuvres, Khakhar was also a collector of film posters and cut-outs of the film actors used for advertising. A cut-out poster of Amitabh Bachchan and Rekha is installed at the exhibition. Khakhar bought these cut-outs and painted at the back of them. The back is a depiction of Khakhar’s perception of the actors and is abstract and fluid.

Being critical of the beautification of the world, his paintings are raw and sensitive and visceral. His illustration of the paan stall with images of gods and goddesses in contrast to the inscriptions ‘west cigarettes sold here’, draw distinct and powerful take on the westernization post-independence. The exhibition indeed stages varied facets of Bhupen Khakhar as an artist. It articulates and extracts the striking inspirations of Khakhar and his perception of life. The Englishmen still aren’t past colonization and hence regard Khakhar’s work as ‘staid, old-fashioned and second-rated’; however, the exhibition at National Gallery of Modern Art, indeed, gives you a discrete pathway through his works and opens your perspectives to think about the artist, who thought way ahead of time and had valor enough to stand by his ideas of life.

The exhibition: Many Facets of an Artist: Collections from Bhupen Khakhar Estate, is open at the National Gallery of Modern Art from Tuesday to Sunday between 10.00 AM to 5.00 PM.

Photo Courtesy:

·         trishagupta.blogspot.in

·         bhupenkhakharcollection.com