Osian's Auction Catalogue ABC Series III | March 2007

ABC Series III 47 47 BHUPEN KHAKHAR (1934–2003) Untitled Mixed media on terracotta 10.3 in (26.2 cm) diameter INR 1,000,000 – 1,250,000 USD 22,550 – 28,200 ‘Thehumour inBhupenKhakhar’s works stems from a kind of an anti-orthodox,anti-establishment attitude which contests middle class pieties, shocks upper class sensitivities and upturns the high-art expectations of the avant-garde. Inuenced by the loud charms of Pop Art, Khakhar uses popular kitschy visual registers to parody colonial ethnographic documentation to mock the societal codes of normative heterosexuality... Many of his works are marked by a conjuring up of ‘lurid’ fantasies which involve, among others, beasts, ‘freaks’ and ‘normal men’…engaging in subversive, sometimes explicit displays of affection with a certain gleeful disregard for the world at large.’ – Abhay Sardesai rpt. in Art India Vol.VIII Issue IV 2003; p37.