Janata Watch Repairing, 1972, by Bhupen Khakhar
From and article in The Hindu: "He painted the man without subjectivity, without face, without the privilege of revolutionary intent". And he would address this in a manner akin to the Bollywood slapstick with innocent insertions of the blasphemous, which would also double as surgical rip-offs on the airy pretensions of "high art" and its pedantic pundits.
Yet, one needs to pause to repair a damage. In the past few weeks, the whole of the Indian media put together does not seem to have generated even 10 columns of space to mark the passing away (on August 8) of Bhupen Khakhar, 69, for long considered the enfant terrible of Indian art. On hindsight, his works remain the clearest indicators of the emotional reasons behind the recent political mobilisations around religion and their — not spiritual — but sexual and violent underbelly.
The reason for the coyness of the mainstream media is not difficult to surmise. Besides consistently marginalising him as a "gay painter", the Indian media found it singularly difficult to engage with the sheer honesty with which he exposed middle and low middle class hypocrisy; specifically sexual hypocrisy. ..
At another level, Khakhar has been lauded for being among those rare artists who could successfully blend the canons of high art with the abandon, irreverence and fluidity of popular expression in calendar art or even the small-town romance represented in billboards, shop-signs and street side graffiti....more
More on Bhupen Khakhar:
Art and Culture Network
indiancanvas.com
the-artists.org
Lines of Descent: The Family in Contemporary Asian Art
An Old Man from Vasad Who Had Five Penises
Suffered From A Runny Nose, 1995, from Grey Art Gallery
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