Important Notice

The present lot is one of the last works that Bhupen Khakhar made before his death in 2003. As he battled with cancer, he oscillated between depictions of human bodies that were violated by disease, war and violence, and tranquil, meditative works filled with Buddhist symbolism. The latter, of which the present work is an example, were inspired by his visit to Sri Lanka with a group of Indian artists and critics in the same year.

Khakhar... The present lot is one of the last works that Bhupen Khakhar made before his death in 2003. As he battled with cancer, he oscillated between depictions of human bodies that were violated by disease, war and violence, and tranquil, meditative works filled with Buddhist symbolism. The latter, of which the present work is an example, were inspired by his visit to Sri Lanka with a group of Indian artists and critics in the same year.

Khakhar was quite frail by this time and was often unable to accompany the others on their tours of the country’s cultural and historical sites. Instead, he filled his sketchbook with drawings “using visual references, including postcards, tourist handbooks, and the photographs his friends had taken, apart from what he could see from the windows of the coach…The Sri Lanka experience contributed to the key motifs of illumination and redemption that recur in Khakhar’s work during this last phase.” (Ranjit Hoskote, “Visit to Sri Lanka,” Chris Dercon and Nada Raza eds., Bhupen Khakhar: You Can’t Please All, London: Tate, 2016, p. 118)

As seen in the present lot, upon returning to his adopted hometown of Baroda, the artist “tried metallic paints, using burnished tones to highlight delicate clouds or rain, or to decorate the background behind a series of Buddhist monks that he painted in this period.” (Nada Raza, “A Man Labelled Bhupen Khakhar Branded as Painter,” Dercon and Raza eds., Bhupen Khakhar: You Can’t Please All, London: Tate, 2016, p. 24) While the subject of the work is a departure from Khakhar’s earlier explorations of human nature and sexuality, one can observe stylistic cues that came to define his art from the 1970s onwards in its composition. The head of a monk dominates the frame and is surrounded by Buddhist imagery in the manner of Russian or Byzantine icons where the saint is flanked by scenes of his miracles. The composition also recalls popular Indian “uplift” posters that displayed a frontal image of a guru or political figure surrounded by episodes from his life. As in many of his works, Khakhar has included a self-portrait as part of the various icons around the monk.

Writer and critic Ranjit Hoskote, who was among Khakhar’s companions on the Sri Lanka trip, refers to him as an “icon-maker in an age without religious certitudes [who] wished, also, to retrieve the religious imagination from...those who would fetishize and fossilize it, and bring it into public circulation as a redemptive energy.” He adds, “This religious imagination acquired amplitude and saliency in Khakhar’s last works. He portrayed himself as a questor in some of these, turning towards a horizon of approaching closure. It seemed to mark the limit between the obvious finitude of life and the untested possibility of infinity or dissolution lying beyond it.” (Ranjit Hoskote, “Visit to Sri Lanka,” Dercon and Raza eds., Bhupen Khakhar: You Can’t Please All, Tate, 2016, p. 119)

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