Bhupen Khakhar

(1934-2003)

Through the Gate

Footnotes

Provenance
Property from the Karen Beagle Estate.
Acquired in Bombay in 1963.
Sotheby's, South Asian Art including Property from the Dartington Hall Trust, 15th June 2010, lot 67;
Acquired from the above.

'Modern art has seen to it that there is actually only one criterium for the judging of art, and that is, namely, authenticity...he has self-assuredly processed the things of the world from his own, unique perspective without looking to anything or anybody for sources of influence. He is a completely assured artisan who isn't afraid to think. In Khakhar, intellect and artistry go hand in hand. He has his own style that cannot be compared with anyone or anything else, and in that style he is completely at home...Bhupen Khakhar is authentic. (Jan Hoet, Authenticity is the only Criterium from India Contemporary Art Rpt. in Inventure-Collection, Amsterdam ExC. Nov. 1989)

'Bhupen Khakhar was born in 1934, in Bombay, to a family in straitened circumstances made worse by the father's early death. Khakhar applied himself to serious study, passed a sequence of difficult examinations, and became a Chartered Accountant. During all this time he was deeply drawn to literature and art; in 1962, despite family resistance, he decided to become an artist and joined the Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda. From 1967 his paintings, done in a brash popular mode, began to attract notice. From the 1970s, as his work moved into a more elaborate and discomforting genre, he invited considerable debate and continues to be controversial.' (Tate Gallery, Six Indian Painters, Tate Gallery Publication Department, 1982, p.38)

'It was decided that the Baroda students should not only learn their skills...find themselves, but they should also be informed properly. So they should know the arts of all over the world..' (K.G. Subramanyan, interview with Mirjam Asmal, February 1995.)

'When Khakhar arrived in Baroda in 1962, it was just at the moment when its character as the centre of a 'movement' in Indian art began to take shape...

Baroda, the medium-sized ex-capital of one of the more progressive princely states, with a distinguished university, was a good place to found an art school. It could be at one remove from the art politics and in-fighting associated with Delhi, as well as from the more market-orientated Bombay. Yet it was not (unlike its rival institution, Kala Bhavan at Santineketan) a remote or sequestered community. The station, close by, was on the main line between Delhi and Bombay, and from the beginning there was a tradition of artists (both Indian and foreign) dropping in at the Faculty of Fine Arts, often quite informally...

The Baroda Fine Arts course was normally five years; at 28, Khakhar could not possibly afford this, so he enrolled as a student of the two year 'Art Criticism' course. The training was not (as it has become today) art historical in emphasis, but focused on the issues of contemporary art. It was meant to nurture painters and sculptors, as well as future art critics. Khakhar read and discussed the writings of - for instance - Herbert Read, Arnold Hauser, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Ortega y Gasset, Rudolf Arnheim. After the helpless confusion of Bombay, he enjoyed being guided by artists such as K. G. Subramanyan ('Read this, see that') and N.S. Bendre ('Do more work!') and, he recalls, 'I felt more at home.' But although he sometimes hovered about the painting classes, and might occasionally show his work to a teacher, he received no formal instruction, and to that extent remains 'self taught.' He remembers the overall tendency as overwhelmingly biased towards a formal abstraction. One day, he watched the impeccably dressed V.R. Patel (then a government scholar) as he worked on some vastly confident abstract painting; and wept at his own helpless incompetence.

The Indian art world was, in 1962, still a very small world. There were at most a few hundred 'professional' artists; all were, by definition, more or less westernised, centred in the larger cities, and severed from the traditional arts and crafts in which many millions were active. The tiny elite had nevertheless begun to create a lively art-climate. Two successive generations had been instrumental in shaping this. Before independence, in Santiniketan (the 'forest-university' founded by Rabindranath Tagore in rural Bengal) such artists as Nandlal Bose, Binode Bihari Mukherjee and Ram Kinker Baij, as well as Rabindranath himself, had laid the foundations for a genuinely indigenous modern art in India. But they did so in the wake of the idealist and nationalist revival in Bengal, which defined itself partly against modern western influence. In the 1940s, the next generation reacted in turn against the Santiniketan emphasis on refined and self-consciously 'oriental' modes. Incorporating a new awareness of developments in the European and American contemporary avant-garde, they became known as the 'Bombay Progressives.' It was to these artists - including M.F. Husain, Akbar Padamsee, S.H. Raza, Tyeb Mehta, F.N. Souza, Ram Kumar and Krishen Khanna - that Khakhar first responded in Bombay. They had long since repudiated any trace of the British academic tradition, still the basis of many Indian art schools...They looked instead to the post-war school of Paris. It was through them that Khakhar recalls first becoming aware of 'Picasso, Braque, Bernard Buffet, Poliakoff.' They seemed linked to a wider world: 'I must confess I was impressed because they had lived in Paris and London.' From them, he began to imbibe a modernist visual taste, its culture and consensus; he learned to appreciate Paul Klee, for instance. All this he would later unlearn.

In the West, a civil war had raged between figuration and abstraction, with abstract painting claiming the ideological high ground, and an almost evolutionary sanction; and figuration case as the backward child...'(Timothy Hyman, Bhupen Khakhar, Chemould Publication and Arts, 1998, p. 10-12)

'Though the Gate' was painted in 1963, a year after Bhupen moved to Baroda to purse painting seriously where he enrolled at the two year Art Criticism course. The title and composition perhaps alludes to this decision, which would likely have been a difficult one, given his circumstances, the uncertainty surrounding this path and his family's opposition to this career. He therefore appears to have both metaphorically and physically stepped 'through the gate.' The painting itself was likely part of Gallery Chemould's 1963 inaugural exhibition, which included works by N.S Bendre, Himmat Shah, Piraji Sagara, Krishen Khanna, Ram Kumar and Laxman Shrestha amongst others, and where the original owners likely acquired it.

A year into his course, the painting is an amalgamation of figuration and abstraction, and bears many of the hallmarks of Bhupen's later paintings, which includes the large canvas size and colours such as blues and whites, although it is the hazy figuration and the prominent abstraction that make it stand out within his oeuvre. Bhupen was a self-taught painter and was experimenting and trying to find his style at this time. Abstraction was the dominant force in many artistic circles, and Bhupen was likely trying to assimilate this technique with his own sensibilities. This can most clearly be seen through the black drips or pouring of paint, commonly referred to as drip painting, a form of abstraction which peppers the canvas. Whilst the gate can be discerned through its high arch, it may be a reference to the Gateway of India, located in Mumbai, which served as the first port of entry into Mumbai in the early 20th century. The Gateway of India is built in the Indo-Saracenic style of architecture and is replete with arches, replicating Muslim architecture and Hindu decorations including the carved stone lattice work, or jalis. Both these features can be observed in Bhupen's painting. Moreover, the composition is reminiscent of the 1962 Baroda series watercolours, which Bhupen likely did and perhaps used as preparations for the larger oil. Unlike his later often humorous works that he is renowned for, 'Through the Gate' is a more contemplative work, shrouded in uncertainty. Its triumph lies in its ability to ask as many questions as it answers, but more importantly showcase the breath of Bhupen's experimentation and exploration to find his own artistic language.

Karen Beagle (1960-2021) was born in Patna, India and opened her first gallery off Portobello Road in Notting Hill, where she specialised in art from across Asia, particularly Buddhist art from India, Tibet, Nepal and China. She was famed for her collection of antique fragments, and other works from her collection are being offered in Bonhams' Himalayan & Southeast Asian Art auctions.

Bonhams extends their gratitude to Mr Brian Weinstein Ph.D. for his assistance with cataloguing this work.