The luminescent figure of is nothing if not tantalizing. Indeed, like Tantalus reaching for sustenance, Khakhar seems forever just out of reach, with any concrete sense of the man remaining evasive. Though much has been written, discussed and theorized about this adored artist from India, both during his BHUPEN lifetime and since he passed away in 2003 from a spate of cancerous episodes, the surfeit of separate accounts and contrary material leads to only one consensus: namely, that he was a man who could not be encapsulated—either in real life, or on the page. As an KHAKHAR artist and writer, Khakhar lived out a life that was both habitual and radical. His breakthrough work between the 1960s and 1990s spanned the modern and the postmodern. With his notions of the local and the light-hearted, combined with forays into the global and the critical, he was remarkable in his singularity. “Bhupen was unique in looking at the quasi-modern and urbanity on the margins,” said art-critic-turned-artist when we spoke in January. “He occupied this slippery space, like a fish . . . and he lived in those slippages.” It was here, in the most unlikely of interstices, positioned somewhere between the cosmopolitan and the vernacular, the community and the self, the (then very distinct) East and West, that he thrived. The core of Khakhar’s painting practice was located at a time when the elitist ideals of Indian modernism were starting to splinter and the space for immediate, homegrown and political impulses of art were beginning to open up. Being cognizant of his weighty role within this shift, yet never letting it be his sole driving factor, Khakhar forged a revered place for himself within the histories of art and writing in India and beyond.

Touched by Bhupen At first the image of a common accountant—born in 1934 and raised in the chawls (multistory tenements) of suburban —seems difficult to reconcile with the momentous descriptions one hears of him today. In our recent interviews, Indian gallerist Shireen Gandhy claimed Khakhar as “one of India’s most important artists,” whereas American academic Karin Zitzewitz positioned him as “a template for everything that comes after him.” These references speak to his position within the loosely categorized Baroda School—undoubtedly a pivotal force in steering Indian painting toward the indigenous and the story-like—and how, even within this commanding collective, he remained a significant outlier. Through the 1960s and ’70s the self-organized, experimental Baroda School gained momentum and notoriety as it proposed new “street” forms of figurative realism. Having joined the art criticism course at MS University of Baroda in 1962, Khakhar was surrounded by these novel forms and ideas, but remained largely self-taught as an artist. This was not, however, the reason for his lone trajectory and particular approach to art. What made Khakhar stand out was his distinctive life path, which gave him the exceptional ability to operate between careers, classes and sexualities. As a young, middle-class man moving to the conservative state of Gujarat in the 1960s, the artist-accountant became an engaged figure within the forward-thinking artistic community as well as the traditional business and religious ones. Just two decades later, as Khakhar had gained a level of critical acclaim from the local and international art worlds for his bracing take on painting, he went on to spearhead another reformative movement, by revealing himself as India’s first openly homosexual artist. Khakhar, somehow, made all these confluences and multitudes come together and seem possible. As cultural theorist remarked in his essay “A Crazy Pair of Eyes”: “Khakhar demonstrated the Other, not as Love in the Time of Bhupen deviant or antagonistic to Indic society, but as part of that complexly (Opposite page) figured human tapestry.” BHUPEN KHAKHAR, Man Leaving The exhibition for which this was written, “Touched by Bhupen,” (Going Abroad), 1970, oil on canvas, 105.5 x 105 cm. Courtesy Tapi Collection, was staged in November 2013 at the Max Mueller Bhavan and Galerie BY JYOTI DHAR India. Copyright the artist’s estate. Mirchandani + Steinruecke in Mumbai, and was an exploration of

96 | MAY/JUN 2016 | ISSUE 98 Features artasiapacific.com 97 (Opposite page, top) BHUPEN KHAKHAR, An Old Man from Vasad Who Had Five Penises Suffered from Running Nose, 1995, watercolor on paper, 102 x 102 cm. Copyright the artist’s estate. Photo by . Courtesy Tate, London.

(Opposite page, bottom) SHILPA GUPTA, ...and she said his cook had a runny nose, 2013, brass, 22 x 31 cm. Courtesy Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai.

Khakhar’s enduring professional and personal legacy, ten years after his death. The contemplative artist Shilpa Gupta was among the 26 cross-generational artists, alongside , Francesco Clemente, Subodh Gupta and , to take part in the tribute show. In my interview with her earlier this year, Gupta spoke about what compels us to revisit this venerable artist’s work, and how one still tends to encounter the myth and persona of Khakhar, before experiencing his prolific oeuvre of paintings, drawings and writing. “Bhupen comes to you first as a personality, as stories, as an icon,” she said. “That informs the reading of all his work—but that’s also what makes you want to go back and look again.” Indeed, it can be difficult to ascertain where the character of “Bhupen” ends and his art begins, and how the appreciation of one biases the other, as the two seem to inhabit the same space of fictionalized truth. “Everyone has a story about Bhupen; everyone thinks they know him,” added curator Nada Raza, who has organized a major retrospective of Khakhar for June 2016 at Tate Modern, when we spoke in January. Among the stories that circulate between those he affected and inspired are ones that show him to be selfless, such as generously helping his friends through ill-health, and others that portray him as selfish, demanding of others and needing attention. He was known for his self-confidence and sociability; his studio was often filled with people whom he invited to visit. Yet other accounts reveal that for much of his life, he was isolated and ashamed at having to lead a secret life as a gay man. The funniest stories about Khakhar are often the most revelatory, though, such as those of him turning up to random funerals and pretending he knew the deceased, or his writing to peers about his imaginary wife “Savita.” His visual art certainly bears similarity to the literary realm of autobiographical fiction, drawing heavily on lived experiences and observations. And if his art mimicked his life, then his life, too, was shaped by his art. “He was always performing the role of an artist,” suggested Raza, a statement that is somewhat explained by Zitzewitz’s belief that Khakhar was interested in the “inauthentically authentic.” This means that he wanted to be able to embrace and perform all the things that one person could truly be—the many identities that people simultaneously and genuinely inhabit. Though his life seemed to be one witty, poignant performance, it is important to note that neither his practice nor his personality is said What made Khakhar to have come across as scripted or false in any way. Rather, much that Khakhar did and said appears to be tinged with a humorous, indulgent and make-believe quality. “Those who knew him closely stand out was his say performance was his drug,” noted columnist Sanjukta Sharma said after the “Touched by Bhupen” show. distinctive life path, One of the youngest artists to take part in the exhibition, Gupta is usually known for her interest in exploring perception, materiality and sociopolitical issues through a range of digital and which gave him the sculptural media. Admittedly knowing more about Khakhar through secondhand references, but still highly intrigued by his use of exceptional ability “provocation . . . and the way he challenges our gaze,” she decided to extract, appropriate and recontextualize the five-headed phallus in his well-known watercolor An Old Man from Vasad Who Had Five to operate between Penises Suffered from Runny Nose (1995). Gupta’s version, titled ...and she said his cook had a runny nose (2013), is a relief of the phallic careers, classes and image cast in brass. The young artist’s work questions the memory and experience of an artwork, as her piece has specific resonances and meanings for those who know Khakhar’s painting, whereas sexualities.

98 | MAY/JUN 2016 | ISSUE 98 Features artasiapacific.com 99 it would remain fairly open for others. Gupta’s work also strikes a in hand and wings lightly dipped in rainbows, this portrait alludes to balance between the whimsical and the cerebral, the accessible and the multiple lives that Khakhar led as Sheikh’s “comrade-in-arms,” the equivocal, which is reminiscent of Khakhar’s own approach. as Hoskote calls him, in the pursuit of an individualistic form of art Born 25 years after Khakhar, contemporary artist Atul Dodiya and way of living. has often paid homage to the artist in his work. Of similar backgrounds—they share a Gujarati heritage and both grew up Phoren Soap in Mumbai chawls—the two developed a close, collegial and sometimes competitive relationship over the span of three decades. Much of Khakhar’s life and work has been documented in Timothy In reverence to the late artist, Dodiya’s painting Jal-Kamal (2013), Hyman’s 1998 monograph and Judy Marle’s film Messages from created for the “Touched by Bhupen” exhibition, depicts a ghostly Bhupen Khakhar (1983), as well as through retrospectives at the version of Khakhar’s intriguing work Ranchhodbhai Relaxing in Bed Reina Sofía in Madrid (2002) and the National Gallery of Modern (1975)—seemingly copied onto a canvas and placed in the middle of Art in Mumbai (2003). His writing, however, largely encompassing an empty cinema hall. Dodiya serves as an example of an artist from short stories and plays published in Gujarati journals, is not nearly the generation after Khakhar, not necessarily shaped stylistically as well disseminated—even though according to Hyman, up until by him but deeply moved by his subject matter. “He painted 1967, Khakhar’s predominant aim was to become a writer. In looking landscapes, people and interiors that I was familiar with. They were back at Khakhar’s life and practice, Nada Raza reminds us that it is like scenes from my neighborhood,” Dodiya explained when we essential to ask ourselves, “What made him want to be an artist?” spoke in February. “He also allowed me to be more relaxed about and “Why was it so compelling for him?” Some of the answers to referencing the autobiographical, the social and the political—as these fundamental questions surface in Khakhar’s varied texts. The well as other artists.” artist’s prolonged engagement and continued playfulness with the Khakhar’s unburdened approach of borrowing from the canons written word arguably provide crucial insight into his process and of Pop art and realism combined with sources closer to home—such psyche. Hyman goes so far as to posit that “the descriptive detail of as miniature painting, Kalighat painting, Gujarati poetry and Indian his stories, the lack of stylishness, the deadpan humor, were closer to cinema—left Dodiya feeling liberated. This may be what Zitzewitz his urgent interests than his work as a painter.” means when she states that Khakhar created a kind of “template” In both writing and painting, Khakhar takes the autobiographical for other artists. Perhaps of even greater significance, however, as a starting point from which to entice the viewer, and then was Khakhar’s pursuit of painting from the 1970s onward, when sprinkles them with anecdotes and imaginative moments, to present the medium’s relevance in the art world was under question. Of universal experiences. Those close to him have described the artist’s course, Khakhar was not on this journey alone; peers such as Sudhir pictorial process as one of intensive but pleasurable labor, in which Patwardhan, Vivan Sundaram, and Ghulammohammed he edited, deleted and crafted, sometimes for months, until he was Sheikh were essential in theorizing the “narrative turn” in painting, satisfied. Today, however, the viewer only gets to see the painting’s as it began to be called. In allegiance to their 45-year friendship, final, consolidated surface. In comparison, his writing potentially Sheikh tried to capture and celebrate much of what Khakhar’s allows for the tools, devices and layering of his narrative to be made spirit was about, with his life-size, winged sculpture for the same visible, as it has a more comprehensible vocabulary and range exhibition, lovingly named Painting Still? (2013). Paintbrush firmly of reference. Khakhar adds another level of accessibility to his written stories, and the issues that interest him, by making them so entertaining—his tales are filled with morsels of satiric comedy, absurd performance and mythological fantasy. Though the availability of his early writings is limited, as whatever fragments remain are mostly scattered among friends, we do know that as early as 1969, Khakhar was one of the editorial impulses behind the Baroda-based experimental magazine Vrishchik (“Scorpion”) alongside contemporaries Sheikh and Kapur, and contributed “visual notes” for the inaugural issue. These supposedly included iconographic excerpts from mass media, such as advertisements for soap, posters of celebrities and religious ephemera. Not only does this help us to contextualize Khakhar’s early leanings toward popular culture, but it also provides pictorial annotations for collage works such as Pan Shop (1965) and Interior of a Temple (1965), which are made up of many of the same materials, forms and citations as his Vrishchik pieces. Dodiya describes how Khakhar’s introduction of Pop in the 1960s was key to Indian contemporary art, and suggests that

(This page, top) “no one had done this in this way before.” ATUL DODIYA, Jal-Kamal, 2013, oil, acrylic Providing an insight into his preoccupation with regular life in and oil stick on canvas, 137.1 x 198.1 cm. Courtesy 1950s and ’60s India are Khakhar’s plays and short texts, largely Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai. written in the 1980s and ’90s, which spring from his observations (This page, bottom) of growing up in a sprawling suburb in Mumbai. Through these BHUPEN KHAKHAR, Ranchhodbhai Relaxing in Bed, 1975, oil on canvas, 152 x 152 cm. fable-like stories, the daily chores and interactions of regular people Courtesy Chemould Gallery, Mumbai. are laid bare, while the neighboring proximity and interknitting of their worlds is given precedence. Many of these subjects also (Opposite page, top) GULAMMOHAMMED SHEIKH, Painting had found their way into the paintings that first garnered Khakhar Still?, 2013, acrylic on fiberglass, silver painted critical notoriety, including those of local tradesmen and their pedestal, 292 x 162.5 x 96.5 cm. Courtesy surroundings, such as Barber’s Shop (1973), Janata Watch Repairing Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai. (1972) and View from a Teashop (1972), as well as others about (Opposite page, bottom) countrymen who travelled overseas in search of opportunities, BHUPEN KHAKHAR, Pan Shop, 1965, collage on board, 91 x 76 cm. Courtesy like Man Leaving (Going Abroad) (1970). However, the way in which Chemould Gallery, Mumbai. taboo subjects are woven into his written stories—where housewives

100 | MAY/JUN 2016 | ISSUE 98 Features artasiapacific.com 101 make pickles and discuss making love to strangers, or common and 1987, in which sexual tension mounts between two strangers. religious references are used to make melodramatic points— The last of these episodes eventually leads to an awkward sexual debatably provides a more amplified lens into the subversive, flawed encounter (where all the protagonist can think about is painting) and discordant elements that can color the everyday. in the unfamiliar lover’s home in Mumbai. The setting for these The early 1970s was a highly formative period for the artist, unfulfilling experiences is one that epitomizes middle-class India, and as several scholars have noted, this is the moment when he especially the one sitting between the eras of post-Independence moved toward a more confident and fluid aesthetic. Gallerist (1947) and pre-liberalization (1990s), and includes the expected and close friend Shireen Gandhy describes this in a more gamut of “rexine sofas, a swing, a fan and white or grayish painted straightforward way, as the formation of an unfettered, painterly walls.” Likewise, in the painting Man with Bouquet of Plastic Flowers style characterized by “a clumsy . . . uninhibited contortion of the (1976) a central male character is surrounded by all the trappings and body.” By the time Khakhar painted Ranchhodbhai Relaxing in aspirations of Indian suburban life, ranging from a glass cabinet full Bed, this impulse had manifested in his particular take on realism, of miniature models, trophies and picture frames to a dining table populated by a curious cast of characters from his immediate garnished by a precisely placed tea set and an obligatory swing set. vicinity. Although the work depicts two men, one lounging under Khakhar obviously emphasizes the kitsch aesthetic in Man with floral sheets and the other, in his boxer shorts, combing his hair, Bouquet with the forlorn-looking figure holding plastic flowers, it could be indicative just as well of a postcoital scenario as of but through his writing we are made to see the symbolic allure two friends sharing a tightly packed communal living space. (The (Opposite page, top) that these items have. In the play Maujila Manilal (1992) and the BHUPEN KHAKHAR, Barber’s Shop, latter would be an especially likely case in India, where same-sex 1973, oil on canvas, 103. 5 x 103. 5 cm. short story Phoren Soap (1997) the longings for foreign languages relationships are rarely suspected as being gay.) For the wider Copyright the artist’s estate. Photo by Jean and commodities, respectively, are both completely ridiculed and public at this time, unaware of the artist’s homosexuality, the Louis Losi. Courtesy Tate, London. confidently claimed. Access to new and so-called fancy goods

painting sits in a mischievously ambiguous space. (Opposite page, bottom) meant the opening up of possibilities, of connecting to ostensibly In his writing, latent homosexuality, farcical relationships BHUPEN KHAKHAR, View from a better worlds—of a way out. It is also possible to correlate this between married couples, male chauvinism, cross-dressing and Teashop, 1972, oil on canvas, 112 x 112 cm. eagerness for a “way out” with Khakhar’s own urge to finally “come Courtesy Chemould Gallery, Mumbai. bisexuality are themes that Khakhar tackles with ease, sincerity out.” Eventually, long after many of his contemporaries, Khakhar and comic genius. Nonetheless, a dominant and recurrent theme (This page) got his own chance to travel internationally and went to Russia, BHUPEN KHAKHAR, Man with Bouquet underlying all his work is that of class. In his story Pages from a of Plastic Flowers, 1976, oil on canvas, 145 x Italy and England in 1976, followed by a longer stay in England in Diary (1990), Khakhar talks about three moments, dated 1972, 1985 140 cm. Courtesy Chemould Gallery, Mumbai. 1979. Naturally his time abroad had a number of consequences on

102 | MAY/JUN 2016 | ISSUE 98 Features artasiapacific.com 103 his painting and thinking. As Raza astutely reminds us, however, for alms while ghostly figures dot the scene, possibly representing in an important reversal of the usual perspective, Khakhar sought lost souls. Framing this panorama of all-male activity is the holy river to ask: “‘What in the West appeals to me?’—rather than the other Ganges and the Himalayas. way around.” Khakhar himself explained that, in India, there were not many places for gay people to meet, and so one would often go to the Two Men in Benaras temple or masjid to make connections. This helps to contextualize Dube’s proposition that Khakhar would often look at “how sexuality “If at all Bhupen was in a closet, then it must have been a closet with functions, even within constraints, and how one can find their way transparent walls!” exclaimed the writer Aveek Sen in a discussion toward pleasure.” It certainly seems the case that pleasure and love of Khakhar’s work in December 2013. For those who had not picked were of utmost importance to Khakhar, both in the way he led his up on the multiple clues in his paintings—the lack of women, the life and in the way he painted. One could say, with the way he is said questioning of masculinity and the homoerotic references—or those to have caressed his canvases as he worked, loosely applying color who were not in his inner circle of friends, the early 1980s was the and taking the time to depict every detail of the body with care, period when Khakhar officially “came out.” In a letter to Hyman, that painting itself was a sensual act for him. Two Men in Benaras Khakhar wrote “Paintings like Yayati, Two Men in Benaras, You does seem indicative of both duration and generosity in the way Can’t Please All are efforts to come out in open.” It was a juncture it lovingly portrays many perspectives at the same time: from the that had been reached after spending a lot of time in England, simultaneous privileging and normalizing of the sexual act, to and some in India, in the company of gay, British artists such as drawing parallels between human desire and godly worship. and , as well as American-born Although Khakhar was said to be more ideological than religious RB Kitaj. Interestingly, Hodgkin mirrors Khakhar as he recalled in per se, we do know that the traditions of bhakti (“devotion”) and an interview with the Financial Times, “I was gay and I was very the idea of seva (“service”) intrigued him, and that he regularly worried about it” and that India was a “relief and an escape” for him attended satsangs. Zitzewitz, who has written extensively on at the time. Khakhar’s particular take on secularism, describes the artist’s ideal For Khakhar it was the reverse, as seeing homosexuality flourish concept of devotion as “dissolving oneself into another.” Not all of and take different shapes within the normalized, community Khakhar’s audience understood these seemingly unconventional context in England gave him spirit and validation. Another catalyst ideas at the time, though. What’s more, to some this unabashedly contributing to his coming out was his mother’s death around the emotive, erotic and personal subject matter seemed divorced from same time, as the idea of family and traditional values remained his earlier portrayals of quotidian living. Others go as far as to admit imperative to Khakhar. In this vein, Two Men in Benaras (1982) is at to having felt betrayed by this so-called deviation. Nonetheless, loyal once an act of total bravery in the face of societal pressures, and a “comrades” such as Kapur, Sheikh, Malani and Sundaram continued means of placing homosexuality within an acceptable framework to accept and embrace him. “He was taken in by this circle of artists for himself. In the foreground of the painting is a white-haired, and given the support and recognition to keep going,” Dodiya naked male in the embrace of a man with an erect penis. In the mid- explains. “His real family was his artist-friends and the people from ground, devotees are massaged in front of a shivling, as beggars ask the local community.” Faces from this “real family,” along with his known and unknown lovers, make an appearance in his paintings Gallery of Rogues (1993) and Image in Man’s Heart (1999). In the former, Khakhar’s intimates are boxed into window-like spaces looking out at familiar exteriors such as the ghats of Benaras, and we are granted views into private worlds filled with lounging friends and pairs of figures making love. In the latter, a looming, blue male figure—reminiscent of the Hindu deity Krishna, with whom the artist was fascinated—gazes downward as he is surrounded by a crowd of wraithlike men behind him. Inside the main figure rest the faces of four men, presumably ordered in their prominence by way of differing sizes, detailing and Indeed, it can be coloring. As the image resonates with the myth of the demi-god Hanuman opening up his chest to reveal the figures of Rama (also an difficult to ascertain avatar of Vishnu and Krishna) and his wife Sita, it reinforces just how daringly Khakhar appropriated from all sources to construct his own where the character of version of reality. These paintings also highlight a unifying idea, taken from Peter Wollen’s film theory, that Khakhar’s practice can simultaneously “Bhupen” ends and his have highly personal meanings, be meaningful for the wider public and create new forms of meaning within critical discourse. And art begins, and how the perhaps this is why Khakhar, decades after peers such as Sundaram and Malani had begun experimenting with forms of video and installation art, continued with his story-like painting. Painting appreciation of one (This page, top) BHUPEN KHAKHAR, You Can’t Please All, offered him the space to reveal, imply, process and propose so much. 1981, oil on canvas, 175.6 x 175.6 cm. Copyright “That was real to him,” Dube said. “Nothing else made sense. Art and biases the other, as the the artist’s estate. Courtesy Tate, London. love; the rest were props.” Indeed, in the stories that abound about

(This page, bottom) Bhupen Khakhar, love appears to be the core principle that surfaces BHUPEN KHAKHAR, Two Men in time and again: his compelling love for his art, his deep affinity two seem to inhabit Benaras, 1982, oil on canvas, 175 x 175 cm. for the people around him and his uninhibited desire to pursue a Courtesy Chemould Gallery, Mumbai. fantastical and fulfilling life against all odds. the same space of (Opposite page) BHUPEN KHAKHAR, Image in Man’s Heart, 1999, acrylic and oil on canvas, “Bhupen Khakhar” opens on June 1, 2016 and is on view until 91.4 x 76.2cm. Courtesy Christie’s. November 6 at Tate Modern, London. fictionalized truth.

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