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. The curators do not shy away from teasing out the complex relationship between the former colonial metropole and the artists who boldly produced art for a new India in the years after 1947. 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”. “Bhupen Khakhar’s “Pop” in India, 1970-72.” The Art Journal 71.2 (2012): 44-61. A friend was finishing a painting that would be included in a show titled “Touched by Bhupen”: an exhaustive group exhibition that brought together several Indian artists who either claim influence from Khakhar or knew him personally, in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of his death. Print. 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. 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. Here are some interesting links for you! Biography A self-taught artist, Bhupen Khakhar was born in Bombay on the 10th of March 1934. This is also the time when Khakhar worked on a series of “trade paintings”: portraits of men diligently at work in their local shops, allowing for a certain view into a world ordered by their particular line of business. 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. 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. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2007. In a growing trend that is gaining momentum at institutions across the world, there is a tacit acknowledgement that nations from the former colonial periphery have produced artists worthy of large-scale solo retrospectives, replacing the popular multi-artist survey. 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. 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. 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. The subjects are oftentimes Khakhar’s own lovers, who tended to emerge from lower socioeconomic classes. Bhupen Khakhar. What made the recent record-breaking years in the art market the most exciting ever? 13-25. 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. Bearing a TATE exhibition label on reverse along with another label with cataloguing details and exhibition history in India from the 1990s. His father was an engineer, and he died when Khakhar was still a child. 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. Why Arthur Conan Doyle’s favourite character wasn’t the ‘consulting detective’, From Ravilious to Rothko: how looking at paintings can lift our spirits. Subramanyan, Bhupen Khakhar. The latest offers and discount codes from popular brands on Telegraph Voucher Codes, Bhupen Khakhar's You Can't Please All (1981), the painting that gives Tate's new show its name, Janata Watch Repairing 
(1972) by Bhupen Khakhar, Man Leaving (Going Abroad) by 
Bhupen Khakhar
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While the exhibition tells us that Khakhar, an admirer of Ghandi, began painting everyday Indian life for essentially political reasons, we have to go to the catalogue to find out that he was associated with a band of artists, the Baroda Group, that looked to indigenous subjects in rebellion against the more mainstream modernism of India’s dominant art movement, the so-called Progressives. 162. Bhupen Khakhar and the New Tate Modern. 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. A man labelled Bhupen Khakhar branded as painter. Building a Bridge between Academia and Community Needs: Trans Latinxs in Southern... César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies. So it’s difficult to pick apart these influences or understand how he evolved his characteristic style. Tate Edit Makers' Showcase. W ithin his career and thereafter, Bhupen Khakhar has received the most international and highly regarded institutional attention of any Indian artist. Print. IN THE COCONUT GROVES . 168-213. During this time, he began experimenting in material and showed a particular interest in the art of the street. We should read Jonathan Jones’ review in The Guardian of Bhupen Khakhar’s retrospective at the Tate Modern as an expected irritant – he (still) writes like a provincial Englishman. We can only hope that the particular subjectivities of a whole host of other artists from across the globe will continue to be celebrated and that their work will fill the halls of the same institutions that have denied their parity with colleagues out West. Credit Oil on canvas. 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. Khakhar’s more humble subjects, the local barber, watchmaker and tailor, were thus beatified in these sensitive and observant portraits. We rely on advertising to help fund our award-winning journalism. He would make two subsequent trips to England and in turn host his British friends in India. Web. 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. But there’s no attempt to expand on this for the non-Indian viewer. It is a journalistic documentation of the people who populated the artist’s life and an assertion of a borderless pursuit of love — an aspect of Khakhar’s unwavering anti-elitism in both the method in his art and its subject matter. Bobby Friction: The sound of Bhupen Khakhar. My first encounter with Khakhar’s paintings came in the summer of 2013, after having just landed in Bombay. Kapur, Geeta. Khakhar graces the walls of the Tate with his characteristic irreverence and quirkiness: his colors are brilliant; his men playful. 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. Tickets: 020 7887 8888; tate.org.uk. Bhupen Khakhar: Truth is Beauty – Talk at Tate Modern | Tate. “Paan Shop for People: Bhupen Khakhar (1934-2003).” Worldly Affiliations: Artistic Practice, National Identity, and Modernism in India, 1930-1990. 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. 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? You Can’t Please All was painted at Khakhar’s house in Baroda, India. There's no mistaking those elephant ears, the shock of white hair as anyone else's. The exhibition, “You Can’t Please All”, opened earlier this year. Ed. 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's You Can't Please All (1981), the painting that gives Tate's new show its name Credit: Tate; © Bhupen Khakhar Mark Hudson warms … Required fields are marked *. 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. The works in this room trace Khakhar’s self-directed development, from early experiments with collage to finely detailed oil paintings. 175.6 x 175.6 cm. [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. Bhupen Khakhar. There is a comic edge to these works, both in their titles and in Khakhar’s use of translucent glazes and bright colours. It was clear that time passed on by, but love for Bhupen remained as ardent as ever. London: Tate  Publications, 2016. Tate Museum, London. [2] From then onwards, male sexuality became a focal trope in his work. This muralistic style of composition reveals Khakhar’s study of the Sienese painting tradition,[10] which he shared with his colleagues in the Baroda and would see reproduced in books during his time studying at the Faculty of Arts. 149-77. 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. London: Tate Publications, 2016. [4] These relationships featured heavily in his work. Towards the latter end of his life, Khakhar’s interest in the male body took a turn for the grotesque. [1] Kapur, Geeta, “The View from a Teashop,” Contemporary Indian Artists, New Delhi: Vikas, 1978. The exhibition was an homage to the artist’s late style, which started to show a preoccupation with morbidity and mortality in the late ‘90s. The face of the older man, though masked by the dark, urgent profile of the younger is recognisably Khakhar's. As his own relationship to corporality shifted in response to his battle with cancer, so did his approach to it in its painted form. Print. Sheikh encouraged Khakhar to attend Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda and intro… Yet you won’t spend long in front of these beguiling images before you start wondering how much in them is naïve, how much is pseudo-naïve and how much is making a sophisticated play with our expectations of Indian art. 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. Bhupen Khakhar: You Can’t Please All. Sayantan Mukhopadhyay is a graduate student in Art History at UCLA. 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. [3] This was the everyman that appeared and reappeared in his paintings: the tea shop owner, the zoo keeper, the average city dweller. Oakland: U of California, 2015. As a land grant institution, UCLA acknowledges the Gabrielino/Tongva peoples as the traditional land caretakers of Tovaangar (Los Angeles basin, So. 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. For his friends and colleagues who have outlived him, he is a warm memory that continues to inspire — to be found in their art, their writings, and their wistful conversations. Shop now. Bhupen Khakhar (1934-2003) was born in Bombay, studied economics and qualified as a chartered accountant. While we’ve tended to think of art from what used to be called the Third World as exotic, primitive and – that ghastly word – “ethnic”, these perceptions has been radically overturned by the many exhibitions of work from Latin America, Africa, China and India, staged over the past decade. Oil on printed cloth with a cushion backing laid on board. “The View from a Teashop.” Contemporary Indian Artists. The moral of the story is that despite how much one may try, it is impossible to please everyone. He was awarded a CSW Travel Grant in 2017. There’s a dream-like quality to Death in the Family, in which a reclining figure – the departed soul perhaps – seems to float over the nocturnal streetscape. While we don’t want to be overwhelmed with contextual information, too much about Khakhar’s complex cultural background is left vague. Kapur, Geeta. BHUPEN KHAKHAR. Khakhar’s colors, by contrast, rose to the surface of the page with an electric charge. Khakhar’s manipulation of diverse influences suggests parallels with another Western painter, David Hockney, as indeed does his frank treatment of his own homosexuality. Tate Museum, London. Yet for all these qualms, this is a rich and absorbing exhibition. By combining art-historical influences with contemporary … Channel Islands). Mumbai: Mapin Pub., 1998. Bhupen Khakhar is on show at Tate Modern from June 1st to September 6th. “The Uncommon Universe of Bhupen Khakhar.” Pop Art and Vernacular Cultures. Bhupen Khakhar, “You Can’t Please All”, 1981, oil and paint on canvas, 175.6 x 175.6 cm. Enjoy your stay :). Kapur, Geeta. 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 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. 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. From Rio to Beirut to Mumbai, it seems, Western abstraction and conceptual art have been the dominant influences for a good half century. 181. 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. Mark Hudson warms to this exhibition dedicated to the colourful and subtly complex paintings of the late Indian artist Bhupen Khakhar. 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. “You Can’t Please All” is an ode to a much-loved man, whose art signals an incredible world of possibilities for visual culture in a young republic. “Saint Bhupen.” Bhupen among Friends : A Tribute to Bhupen Khakhar by Friends. His mother’s death in 1980 also allowed him greater openness about his preferences, as he became less concerned with reactions from his family. Painted in 1993 The painter, Bhupen Khakhar… paints the overtly homosexual Two Men in Benares. The works presented by curator Nada Raza offered poetic snapshots of different artistic investments over the course of Khakhar’s life. In addition to these prominent positions, the museum is presenting an artist who has yet to be discovered by Western audiences: Bhupen Khakhar. Kids Membership Join as a Member Give a gift membership Join Tate Collective Donate Tate Etc. [13] Geeta Kapur, “Mortality Morbidity Masquerade,” Dercon, Chris, and Nada Raza, eds. Print. 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. [2] Nada Raza, “A Man Labelled Bhupen Khakhar Branded as Painter.” Dercon, Chris, and Nada Raza, eds. The graphic directness of Khakhar’s treatment, and his apparent lack of self-pity, are remarkable. Bhupen Khakhar: You Can’t Please All. From the beginning of his artistic career, Bhupen Khakhar expressed a commitment to presenting the world as he saw it and experienced it. Of particular note is the way in which the exhibition succeeds in mining the relationship Khakhar had with England: a fraught set of connections in the postcolonial era. As … 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. Until November 6. He would care for these frail men intensely, looking after their wellbeing and often their medical expenses. [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. Khakhar, speaking about the painting, has said that if indeed one cannot please all, one should please themselves. But his most important and comprehensive expose was arguably the current show mounted at the Tate Modern, titled after his seminal painting “You Can’t Please All” (1981). Your email address will not be published. Main image: Man Leaving (Going Abroad), 1970 by Bhupen Khakhar Courtesy of Tapi Collection, India (c) Estate of Bhupen Khakhar. This second ‘stage’ in his practice is consistently pivoted around a turn symbolized by his painting, “You Can’t Please All” (1981). 110-35. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2014. 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. He worked as a chartered accountant for many years before becoming an artist. He is best known for his pictures of everyday life in India which owe much to the British figurative artists, RB Kitaj and David Hockney. As a coda to an oeuvre that celebrated the ecstasies of desire, it is a sad capitulation in terms of content, but resplendent as ever in style. Six Indian Painters: Rabindranath Tagore, Jamini Roy, Amrita Sher-Gil, M.F. They are painted lovingly, with unidealized bodies and an unglamorous presence. Tate Modern; Exhibitions; Bhupen Khakhar; Feature . 123-48. B hupen Khakhar was born in Khetwadi in Bombay in 1934. London: Tate Publications, 2016. Khakhar was born in and died in India, but spent some time working and exhibiting in the United Kingdom. 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. Two men stand in naked embrace, their erect penises almost touching. 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. The productive capacity that this deviation has is evidenced everywhere in the retrospective. 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. The Tate’s decision to celebrate his abbreviated life reveals not simply a desire to shine light on alternative modernisms that flourished internationally in the 20th century, but ones that also worked against the grain of prevailing conservative values within a given region. Nilima Sheikh, Vivan Sundaram, Mrinalini Mukherjee, GM Sheikh, and other artists had banded together to establish a new outlook on art as India marched farther and farther away from the date of its liberation from the British empire. Print. “Paan Shop for People: Bhupen Khakhar (1934-2003).” Worldly Affiliations: Artistic Practice, National Identity, and Modernism in India, 1930-1990. We urge you to turn off your ad blocker for The Telegraph website so that you can continue to access our quality content in the future. Khakhar referenced the work of two sixteenth-century Dutch artists, Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s depictions of peasant life and Hieronymous Bosch’s supernatural worlds. 153. Bhupen Khakhar played a central role in modern Indian art and was a recognised international figure in 20th century painting. His career change was partly thanks to meeting the poet and painter Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh in 1958. The milieu he had built for himself in Baroda was a nurturing one: he was surrounded by a group of like-minded artists who were the beginnings of a counterculture that developed in response to the dominant school of painting emerging at the wake of a new nation. 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. He holds a pair of driving gloves near his crotch: the fingers bunching into a bouquet of phalluses. (167.6 x 140 cm.) 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. Husain, K.G. But he was also influenced by art history. Often celebrated for his bold and honest approach to his life as a gay man in India during the late twentieth century, he stated in the catalogue to his 1972 exhibition at Gallery Chemould, Bombay that he wanted … Painters: Rabindranath Tagore, Jamini Roy, Amrita Sher-Gil, M.F electric charge and. 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