One of many highlights of the Serendipity Arts Competition, Goa, this yr is “Bhupen in Goa”, an exhibition of artist Bhupen Khakhar curated by artist and buddy Gulammohammed Sheikh from Swaraj Artwork Archive. In an e mail interview, Sheikh talks about his curatorial imaginative and prescient, Khakhar’s humour and the way his artwork was a method of self-expression. Excerpts:
May you share insights into Khakhar’s works within the Swaraj Artwork Archive, and the curatorial method to this exhibition?
The principal purpose to curate this exhibition was to mission a single-largest assortment of Bhupen within the comparatively unknown Swaraj Archive, established by Vijay Aggarwal. I have no idea any large personal assortment of Bhupen’s work, besides a powerful assortment of Brian Weinstein (about 100 works) in Washington, who was a buddy of Bhupen.
I’ve chosen 164 works out of over 207 within the assortment, selecting quite a lot of mediums Bhupen was adept at, together with watercolours, drawings, prints, ceramic plates and ceramic sculptures beside painted accordion format books.
Sukhdev Rathod, my previous affiliate, artist and ceramist based mostly in Alibaug, has labored with me on the exhibition. Massive-scale blow-ups of his portraits have been made, together with a portrait of him by the ace photographer and buddy (late) Navroze Contractor (courtesy Navroze’s associate Deepa Dhanraj). A booklet has been ready with textual content from my memoir of Bhupen entitled Buddy. As well as, we are going to digitally reproduce a booklet Bhupen had produced for his exhibition in Delhi in 1972, which brings out his humour. On this, he wrote a half-fictitious ‘autobiography’ with pictures of him within the position of James Bond posed with Marianne Nicaise, a visiting French woman, and different pictures mimicking a toothpaste commercial, and one other known as ‘Made for Every Different’.
Had been there works on this assortment that took you without warning?
There have been a number of great works I had identified about, however the pencil-and-colour drawings in his early sketchbook had been a discovery. These include preliminary variations of his seminal works like Janta Watch Repairing (1972), Deluxe Tailors (1972) and Portrait of Salman Rushdie (1995). I plan to place photos of those works alongside the pencil-and-colour sketches. The work embody Picture in Man’s Coronary heart and a few wonderful watercolours from the Sri Lanka and Thailand collection. However essentially the most shifting is the picture of a skeletal man in mattress surrounded with heads of his pals and lovers, considerably harking back to the nice Mughal portray Dying Inayat Khan.
You performed an enormous position in convincing Khakhar’s mom in permitting him to maneuver to Baroda to pursue artwork. May you speak about his early years there?
In Baroda, Bhupen found that he was far too previous to sit down with first-year college students, but in addition that he was eligible to hitch a Grasp’s course in Artwork Criticism, having had his college commencement in commerce earlier than moving into the course of chartered accountancy. So, he joined the course and even wrote a dissertation however then he deserted all of it to color, and painted for greater than 40 years until his dying in 2003.
You’ve got written about how in an try to seem straight, Khakhar performed “the double recreation” skillfully, together with romancing Nasreen Mohamedi and Geeta Kapur. Later, he turned extra snug expressing his sexuality. How did this shift manifest in his work?
Maybe, that’s how he lined his sexual orientation and behind this cover-up was a ache that he suffered till he got here out across the Eighties. In his earlier work, he confirmed his love of the male physique in a clandestine, quite surreptitious manner.
Bhupen was additionally a prankster. Are there any memorable moments of mischief?
He cherished to placed on roles of varied varieties. Maybe, essentially the most mischievous was the best way during which he performed an sad husband with marital and parental woes to some fellow passengers in a prepare. I discovered it extraordinarily troublesome to maintain a straight face as he recounted the escapades of his spouse and tantrums of his youngsters. You had been influenced by each other and, at instances, even used the identical inspiration for various ends.
In artwork, we had widespread favourites like Sienese portray, a lot of pre-modern Indian portray, however I had little curiosity in widespread ephemera, Firm portray and Hindi movies; he was completely immersed in them. We noticed and commented on one another’s works typically. As for our pictorial orientations, we had chosen totally different paths however it’s seemingly that, at instances, our intentions matched.
Within the ’80s, when works like Two Males in Banaras, Yayati, had been proven behind closed doorways in Mumbai, did Khakhar specific the will to have the ability to publicly exhibit his depictions of homosexual relationships? Did the truth that some artists objected to his work and labelled it “obscene” trouble him?
If he painted Yayati and Two Males in Banaras in his Baroda residence in Chikuwadi, which was open to all, it may be imagined he wished to indicate his specific works in public. He was fairly upset when he heard that some Indian artists had dubbed his work obscene. In distinction, he felt at residence in England, the place no such questions had been raised. I keep in mind him speaking excitedly concerning the Mardi Gras pageant in Sydney the place he had displayed a few of his works.
Artists typically talk their innermost ideas via their work. Did Khakhar’s artwork function a very private automobile for self-expression, from his exploration of homosexuality to the ache resulting from prostate most cancers?
It’s obvious that artists do specific their inside turmoil however such expressions are not often specific. Bhupen, nevertheless, made a advantage of portray ache in an specific method however typically with a tongue-in-cheek manner. He would each undergo in addition to snort, a proposition fairly uncommon.
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