‘Bhupen Khakhar’: The genius of the iconic Sunday painter is reimagined in this Gujarati biography

Dilip Chitre, the acclaimed Indian poet, critic, and translator, had once made a profound and equally scandalising remark to the effect that 20th century Gujarat has given us only two major figures, Gandhi and Bhupen. Gandhi, we know, but who is Bhupen? And why is he being invoked in the same breath as the most important character of the last century? A new book published in Gujarati can help us answer both these inquiries.

Biren Kothari’s Bhupen Khakhar is a unique addition to the genre of biography and anthology. In less than 300 pages, Kothari’s book brings to us not only the vibrant life of one of modern India’s most original artists, but also a compilation of the writings of and on the iconic '“Sunday painter”.

The journey to becoming an artist

In his well-known catalogue for the 1972 exhibition Truth is Beauty and Beauty is God, Khakhar begins with a short autobiography where he traces not only his earthly genealogy but also his “past births” as a Kapol Baniya, a butterfly, and finally the Brahmakshtriya that is Bhupen Khakhar. In the section “How I became an Artist” he writes, “The short answer would be through god’s grace, sheer work and tragedy.” In Bhupen Khakhar, Kothari tells us that the truth is actually not very far. It is noteworthy that the book reproduces this autobiographical section in the second chapter, “Who am I?”

Born in 1934, Khakhar grew up in the Khetwadi locality of South Bombay and then went on to forge his artistic career in the city of Baroda. Amidst the art world, Khakhar is renowned as an artist provocateur who upended aesthetic hierarchies, a pioneering gay artist, and, perhaps most important, a chartered-accountant-turned-painter. The immensely complex life lived behind these elementary and overarching details comes alive in Kothari’s biography section, which covers two-thirds of the book.

Khakhar’s interest in painting developed very early in his life. During his school days his drawing teacher marvelled at his drawings and found it hard to believe they were his work. We come to know that Khakhar’s turn to a career in finance was motivated by his earlier failure as a student of economics and political science. And while he went on to be an exceptional student in the new discipline (securing the highest marks in Bombay University and then getting a well-paying job as a CA), he was still confused regarding his true calling.

In 1957, an exhibition at the Jehangir Art Gallery exposed him to the Baroda Group of painters, after which he came to know a student who, as Bhupen writes in the 1972 catalogue, “was destined to become my friend, philosopher and guide.” This student was Gulammohammed Sheikh. Going through his paintings, Sheikh asked him to come to Baroda and join the Faculty of Fine Arts (FFA). And soon after convincing his mother and leaving his job, Khakhar joined the MA program in Art Criticism in 1962.

Kothari’s book provides a riveting portrait of Khakhar’s time at FFA, the institution that was quickly forging its identity independent of Kalabhavan in Santiniketan and the JJ School of Art in Bombay. Art pedagogy at FFA under teachers like KG Subramanyan and NS Bendre was not about mastering a certain ideology or idiom, but honing the skill to “look” and realising one’s vision on the canvas. Apart from the learning environment, the book includes episodes from the enduring friendships that Khakhar built here, for instance, his meeting with Vivan Sundaram on a trip to Tarnetar Fair or his bond with Suresh Joshi, the pioneering Gujarati modernist. In the description of such instances, we witness Kothari’s narrative skill. His other skill, which is rare to come across, is the remarkable ease with which he takes the uninitiated reader through Bhupen Khakhar paintings and shifting aesthetic concerns.

Another friendship that was to transform Khakhar’s artistic journey was the one with Jim Donovan, a student of the Royal College of Art, London, who had arrived in Baroda as part of an exchange programme. Donovan introduced him to pop art, which was taking the art scene in the US and UK by storm. Khakhar immediately found that idiom to his liking. During this time he had been experimenting with collages that included pasting cut-outs of mass-produced images of Hindu gods and goddesses on canvas, and filling the remaining space with garish colours, illustrations, and, often, provocative words taken, for instance, from the walls of a public urinal. From Vivan Sundaram’s and Ushakant Mehta’s account in the book, we learn that such images had created an uproar in FFA and invited charges of being obscene, sacrilegious, and anti-art.

From here on, Khakhar continued to reinvent his style, first turning to miniature and company paintings for inspiration, and eventually foregrounding the sexual in his work, accounts of which abound in art-historical discourse. But what the biographies are uniquely interested in revealing is how these journeys are traversed, how persisting days of anxiety and dilemma are lived, and how the occasional moments of illumination arrive. Khakhar’s trip to England in 1979 and the exposure to gay culture are noted for their transformative impact on his artistic career. And while the book does provide us with an account of that time and the public disclosure of his sexuality later, it also narrates the experience of confinement, shame, and the surprising playfulness of the years before that.

In fact, one of the most critical arguments that this biography helps its readers, especially art historians, establish is the intricate link between Khakhar’s artistic idiom and his sexuality. Khakhar developed his revered and dreaded mode of irony and scathing humour as a refuge against the consistent feeling of being a sexual outcast. This embrace of satire not only informed his canvas, where he derided the sacred and the normative, but also his personal life, where it took the form of performance and parody. Whether it be turning up as a bridegroom at his exhibition opening or inventing a family in the outrageously funny letters to the Ambalals, the book is full of stories of Khakhar’s amicable wittiness and his fondness for roleplaying to transgress the roles assigned to him by society, that of a man and an artist.

The writer

Whether to pursue a career as a writer or a painter had actually been a dilemma for Khakhar at one stage in his life. Therefore, apart from the biography, the section that might captivate the readers the most is a select collection of Khakhar’s multi-genre writings. Many of these writings had been published in Gujarati magazines like Kruti, Uhapoh, and Gadyaparva. On the one hand, his poetry and pieces like “The Window Curtain” or “The Visit to Kota-Bundi” are exquisite examples of the coming together of his writerly and painterly sensibility; on the other hand, his searing reviews of the Gujarat Lalit Kala Akademi exhibitions provide a sense of his non-conformism.

In addition to this, Kothari’s decision to incorporate writings on Khakhar and his work by his friends and scholars – for example, the obituary by Jyoti Bhatt or the critical essay by Jayesh Bhogayata, is a treat for readers curious about the personal and social significance of Khakhar’s life. The realisation of this book itself is a testament to the lasting impact of this artist provocateur. Amrishbhai Contractor, the son of Khakhar’s friend and companion Vallabhbhai Contractor, had commissioned the book as a tribute to his father’s and Khakhar’s friendship.

A chapter in the book describes Kothari’s own travels and travails in course of writing this biography, which took more than a decade. And yet, as he admits in the foreword to the book, “no biography can ever be complete,” and in that spirit, this book, following the work of Mahendra Desai, Timothy Hyman, and Sudhir Chandra, is another valuable addition to the repertoire of works on this preeminent modern Indian artist. To conclude with the words of Amrishbhai: “This book will appeal not just to the connoisseurs of visual art but to everyone who is interested in the human self.” It is only a matter of time before a Gujarati reader picks up this book and embarks on a mission to translate it.

Digvijay Nikam is a PhD student at the Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. His work deals with modernist print cultures from western India.

Bhupen Khakhar, written and edited by Biren Kothari, Sarthak Prakashan.