Bhupen Khakhar?s recent show at the Vadhera?s Gallery in the Capital proves the point that he is one of our major artists today. More than that, he has the courage it requires to be a major player in a world that calls for tearing out the guts of illusions being sold to the consumer 24 hours a day.
Works like Beauty Is Skin Deep Only and Bullet Shot In Stomach could well have been painted after the Gujarat riots. But it is to the credit of Mr Khakhar that he was able to see the rotting skin of our social fabric long before it tore itself in the form of the riots.
Mr Khakhar no longer focusses only on revealing the homophile basis of grossly unequal patriarchal societies, but also the rot that may be a skin disease, wanton violence or consumerism. The role of consumerism in purveying the worst of what is India is highlighted in three cut-outs from the series he did on Bollywood for the Tate Gallery in London.
There are cut-outs of three film stars, with the ethos that feeds their cult behind the calendar type pop portraits.
Amitabh Bachchan built his popularity on the glorification of violence, Shah Rukh Khan on the hedonism of the upper classes and Rekha on the sleazy side of feudalism. And the three give us a good understanding of how Ahmedabad degenerated into what it did.
Here we see the degradation of the servile arts, with singers, dancers and artists at the beck and call of patrons. One can also see the young crazing for the luxuries of life even if they have to loot them, of violence?and senseless violence at that?posing as the only rational solution.
I see his three works, Muslims Around The Mosque (I & II) and Hypnotic Sleep, as a reaffirmation of the composite reality of our society that a narrow stratum of fanatics in our society would like to do away with physically.
In the face of this, Mr Khakhar does not lose his sense of humour as in works like Waiting For Darshan, where he pictures intellectual friends like Ghulam Sheikh, Amit Ambalal and Dyaneshwar Nadkarni. Also, his Memories Of Thailand evokes the bloody heights of Girnar through the gateway of the Junagadh fort?and we dare to remember there is an Ayodhya in Thailand too, that has nothing to do with Rama, just like Faizabad that was Saket before.
The expertise with which Mr Khakhar reveals the aesthetics of falsehood that we are being subjected to today is his greatest success in this exhibition. But it is still second to his foresight in tearing the fabric of a society that has religion as a skin disease. Do we see the boils of falsehood on communalists? faces? Mr Khakhar wants us to see them, and also the fact that they are not incurable evil. It can be fought and defeated by people of vision. And for reminding us of that, Bhupen Khakhar, we bow our heads before you.