Bhupen Khakar: You Can’t Please All


Colourful exhibition at Tate Modern of work by Indian gay artist Bhupen Khakar.

I liked the way this artist layered story in a picture which was shown in particular the ‘trade paintings’ in which he showed ordinary people he encounter in his home town. He showed all aspects of their life by surrounding a portrait of them in their work guise with a border of other images of their life. This drew on the idea of altarpieces which had an image of a saint and an outline of their life in the praedella.

I also liked his ceramics especially a portrait plate with the image shown as the unglazed sections. I loved one image called Night which built a larger image out of a series of smaller framed pictures givng a similar effect to a Hockney Polaroid collage.

He depicted his own life in graphic images of same sex relationships and visceral pictures at the end of the exhibition of his cancer treatment.

Closes on 6 November 2016
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