INTRODUC TION
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MY DE AR FRIEND
BH U PEN KHAKHAR
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AT THE END OF THE DAY
IRON INGOTS C A ME OU T
10.00 –18.00 daily and until 22.00
on Friday and Saturday
Bhupen Khakhar: You Can’t Please All is the first international
retrospective of work by the Indian artist since his death in 2003,
bringing together work from across five decades. Bhupen Khakhar
played a central role in modern Indian art, renowned for his use
of colour and engaging, figurative style. From his early paintings,
portraying the lives of local workers and tradesmen, Khakhar
was committed to the principle of telling the truth. Throughout
his career he confronted provocative themes, particularly his
homosexuality, with honesty, sensitivity and wit. Towards the
end of his life, he depicted the realities of his battle with cancer
in characteristically unflinching detail.
Born in Bombay (Mumbai) in 1934, Khakhar initially studied
accountancy before he moved to Baroda (Vadodara) in Gujarat
for a master’s degree in art criticism. Away from the conventional
demands of family, he found artistic freedom in the intellectual and
artistic fraternity around the Department of Fine Arts at Maharaja
Siyajirao University. Khakhar was affiliated with a group of Indian
artists who moved away from modernist abstraction to paint
narrative-led and figurative compositions, taking inspiration from
folk and classical South Asian art and contemporary visual culture.
This room takes its title from the 1999 painting in which Khakhar
boldly painted the agony he suffered during cancer treatment.
He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1998, and lost his battle
against the disease in 2003. There is a comic edge to these works,
both in their titles and in Khakhar’s use of translucent glazes and
bright colours. Once again, he deployed subversive humour to face
difficult subjects.
This room focuses on Khakhar’s brave and sensitive portrayals of
love and desire, including his own inter-generational relationships.
He was interested in mystical Bhakti spiritual traditions, which
often expressed the idea of love between men, master and
disciple, as a form of devotion. Khakhar’s partners tended to
be older men who he cared for with great tenderness, and
inter-generational bonds are explored in the works Two Men in
Benaras 1982 and Yayati 1987. He wanted to portray ‘warmth, pity,
vulnerability, touch’, rather than beauty alone, and attempted to
explore the complexity of desire and his own vulnerability through
his painting.
Khakhar acknowledged that his time in the United Kingdom
allowed him to experience living openly as a homosexual, giving
him the confidence to express his most private thoughts. Ironically,
while consensual relationships between men were decriminalised
in England in 1967, colonial laws remained in place in India.
Sponsored by
Supported by
In Bullet Shot in the Stomach 2001 the pain and violence is more
direct – the painting references Bollywood cinema hoardings,
invoking the ‘double-role’ where the actor playing both good
and evil twins effectively kills himself in the climactic finale.
From 2001 Gujarat saw a period of great violence between
Hindu and Muslim communities, captured in the raw portraits
in this room.
Khakhar experimented with supports for his paintings. In the
Coconut Groves 1993 is painted on printed textile, and Night 1996
is an amalgamation of several framed canvases, a new approach
to multiple and layered narratives within one work. The unusual
black-and-white work Party 1988 and In a Boat 1984 are scenes of
freedom and revelry, even as one character looks quizzically out of
the painting, suggesting it might be a dream or fantasy.
with additional support from
the Bhupen Khakhar Exhibition
Supporters Circle:
Radhika Chopra and Rajan
Anandan
Amrita Jhaveri
Peter Louis
Chandru Ramchandani
Cancer itself was represented as small biting creatures,
transmogrifying and weird, even veering into rare abstraction
in the watercolour Sri Lanka Caves 2002. Radically different in its
sensibility, the last work in this exhibition is one of the last that
Khakhar painted, a small but disconcerting picture titled Idiot
2003. While he is the object of ridicule, the eyes of the agonised,
grimacing character demand our compassion.
Night 1996 Collection Kiran Nadar Museum of Art
TATE MODERN
1 J U N E – 6 N OV E M B E R 2016
Curated by Chris Dercon,
former Director, Tate Modern,
and Nada Raza, Assistant
Curator, Tate Modern.
Idiot 2003 Collection of Brian Weinstein
Exhibition realised with the
assistance of the National
Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.
1 J U N – 6 N OV 2016
This exhibition has been
made possible by the provision
of insurance through the
Government Indemnity Scheme.
Tate would like to thank HM
Government for providing
Government Indemnity and
the Department for Culture,
Media and Sport and Arts
Council England for arranging
the indemnity.
Large print texts are available
at the exhibition entrance
and on the exhibition
pages of tate.org.uk
Photography is not allowed
in the exhibition.
Join the conversation
#KHAKHAR
All images are © Estate of Bhupen Khakhar
Cover: Bhupen Khakhar You Can’t
Please All (detail) 1981 Tate
B H U PEN
KHAKHAR
YOU C AN’T PLE A SE ALL
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A M AN L ABELLED BH U PEN
KHAKHAR BR AN DED A S PAINTER
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TH E INSIGNIFIC ANT M AN
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GOOD TA STE C AN
BE VERY KILLING
The works in this room trace Khakhar’s self-directed development,
from early experiments with collage to finely detailed oil paintings.
He was fascinated by local forms of expression and popular
culture, even as his knowledge of European and American painting
deepened, nourished by books, lectures and conversations with
his peers. Man Leaving (Going Abroad) 1970 reflects the friendly,
cosmopolitan circle around Khakhar, as well as his yearning to travel.
Khakhar called these portraits his ‘trade paintings’, depictions of
ordinary men that he encountered during everyday life in Baroda,
then a small provincial town. He had studied the Company School
of painting, ethnographic representations of Indian life, produced
by Indian painters during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
for colonial audiences. Khakhar was also looking at temple
paintings from Rajasthan and church altars from Renaissance Siena,
both of whose borders contained scenes from the life of the god or
saint, a device he adopted in paintings such as Man with Bouquet
of Plastic Flowers 1975. Khakhar’s more humble subjects, the
local barber, watchmaker and tailor, were thus beatified in these
sensitive and observant portraits.
As Khakhar’s skill as a painter improved, the narratives within his
paintings became more complex. His bright palette had developed
out of his appreciation for the aesthetics of the lower middleclasses, the common class of Indian with whom he empathised and
sought to represent. An ardent admirer of Gandhi, Khakhar was
committed to representing social truth through his own personal
experience, and through familiar myths and stories.
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CO N CO U R S E
FIND OU T MORE
EVENTS
Visit tate.org.uk or call
020 7887 8888 for more
information and to book
B H U P E N K H A K H A R:
T R U T H I S B E AU T Y
Starr Auditorium
Saturday 2 July,
14.00 – 16.00
£12, concessions available
Chaired by Chris Dercon,
this panel discussion aims
to introduce and situate the
artist’s practice and life within
his particular contexts.
Speakers include Geeta Kapur,
Sonal Khullar and Karin Zitzewitz.
In partnership with Paul Mellon
Centre and Asia Art Archive.
C U R ATO R ’ S TO U R
In the exhibition
Monday 11 July,
18.30 – 20.30
£20, concessions available
With Assistant Curator Nada Raza.
Following the tour guests are
invited to explore the exhibition
for themselves.
TAT E M E M B E R S
Enjoy free entry to all Tate
exhibitions, plus get exclusive access
to the Members Rooms at Tate Britain
and Tate Modern. Membership starts
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Join today in the gallery
Call 020 7887 8888
or visit tate.org.uk/members
He developed a unique and unconstrained artistic voice, combining
references to European artists such as Henri Rousseau and Pieter
Brueghel the Elder with forms from Indian miniature or temple
paintings, experimenting until he arrived at the vibrant palette
and awkward and expressive figuration that characterise his work.
Khakhar also wrote short stories and satire in Gujarati, and this
raconteur’s sensibility is reflected in his use of telling detail and
complex, layered compositions. His wry humour is evident in the
subtle homoerotic charge of early works such as Tiger and Stag
1970. Paintings such as Factory Strike (Voice of Freedom) 1972 and
Muktibahini Soldier with a Gun 1972 were painted in response to
the lively political discussions of his fellow artists. Khakhar himself
preferred to work from observation and experience.
Filmed in Baroda, Messages From Bhupen Khakhar 1983 is an
intimate profile of the artist speaking about many of the works in
the exhibition. As one of the playful titles in the film proclaims,
‘Human beings in their local environment, climate, provincial
society: This should be the ultimate aim of the artist.’
You Can’t Please All 1981 is based on one of Aesop’s fables, the tale
of a father and son whose donkey dies as they heed the meddling
advice of passers-by. A self-portrait, it portrays a confident,
white-haired figure surveying an absurd world. 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. Works such as Yagnya 2000 use the device
of multiple scenes within one landscape to describe the world
in rich and complex detail, while Jatra 1997–9 enters a darker
fantasy world.
Khakhar first visited the United Kingdom in 1976 and returned in
1979, spending a few months teaching at the Bath Academy of Art
in Corsham, a guest of the painter Howard Hodgkin. Man in Pub
1979 describes his impressions of a British worker’s alienated and
lonely urban life.
As Khakhar began to express his sexual preferences, he also shared
the torment he suffered. A residency at the European Ceramic Work
Centre in the Netherlands in 1994 led to experimentation with
ceramics, and this display includes rarely seen sculpted portraits
of his long-term partner.
Man Leaving (Going Abroad) 1970 Tapi
Hathyogi 1970
When Khakhar suffered from cataracts in the early 1990s, he
adopted a looser, blurry style of brushwork, which allowed him
to depict suggestive scenes of same-sex encounters. After he
recovered, his work regained detail and precision, especially in
his luminous watercolours. His interest in storytelling and in the
subversive power of humour also developed. This room features
three accordion-folded painted books, brought together for the
first time. Khakhar wrote and illustrated his own short stories
as well as a volume for Salman Rushdie, and a play that was
performed with sets that he designed and painted.
Green Landscape 1995 Collection Ranjana Steinruecke, Mumbai, India
/ Image courtesy Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke