The guide to the Hindu temple expected my question about the erotic sculptures on the wall; his answer was immediate and simple: “Sex is part of life. We believe it should be portrayed openly and directly.” That exchange took place in 1981 during a sabbatical leave from Howard University which I spent at the Central Institute of Indian Languages in Mysore in southern India.
Thirteen years later in an uncharacteristically hushed class at the Faculty of Art of MS University, Baroda I heard Bhupen Khakhar answer the same question with the same words. He expanded this idea by saying that his portrayals of sexual intimacy, particularly between men, were not voyeuristic or pornographic because all the relationships expressed in his paintings and prints were based on love. He knew best because he was mainly portraying himself, his intimate experiences, and the lower middle-class milieu of his origins in Bombay. Later he explained that the act of creating the erotic works and the paintings about disease that he suffered from released him from his inner passions and torments. Continue reading…