The
incredible love story of Subodh Gupta and Bharti Kher is entwined with the
story of contemporary Indian art – its tentative beginnings, its struggle for
identity and expression, its finest hour of dazzling international glory. SONA
BAHADUR meets the bartan genius and his bindi queen and discovers a bond forged
in steely ambition.
IT WAS HER
HIP RED JEANS THAT CAUGHT Subodh Gupta’s eye when Bharti Kher first walked into
Delhi’s Garhi studio in 1992. “When I see the beautiful lady coming in, I just
follow her,” Gupta whispers in a droll low tone in English described as ‘a
little approximate’ by a Times journalist. The memory inspires a sardonic
eyebrow lift from Kher, who can’t resist a wry smile. “I saw his paintings and
thought he was a really good painter. He saw my red jeans… and well, maybe he
thought they were nice.”
The two
were introduced by common friend, artist Arpana Caur. Kher, who couldn’t speak
Hindi, barely followed a word of what Gupta was saying. Somehow he managed to
invite her to his studio to see his paintings. She agreed. And so it started.
“Honestly, I just found her,” he says incredulously.
The
intense Newcastle art graduate visiting India to see her grandmother and the
struggling Bihari artist from Khagaul were destined to meet, fall in love,
found a bold new aesthetic and spearhead the great contemporary Indian art
boom. He would be dubbed the Damien Hirst of Delhi, creating humungous
skeletons, UFOs and mushroom clouds out of the stainless steel pots and pans he
grew up with in rural Bihar. She would dazzle the arterati with her brilliantly
layered bindi-covered fibreglass animal sculptures. He would become the
youngest Indian artist to enter the million-dollar set and invoke awe at
big-ticket venues like the Venice Biennale and Art Basel. She would rake in the
big bucks at Sotheby’s.
The
nine-foot high chair on which Kher is perched on this day and against which
45-year-old Gupta, slick in his gelled-hair urbane avatar, leans for Verve’s
photo shoot is a prop from their 90s public project Boxwallahs, the only
collaborative work the couple has done to date. “We fought like crazy, of
course,” whoops Kher from her pedestal. The conversation is taking place in
Gurgaon at Gupta’s ultra-modern studio located close to Kher’s studio and to
the artists’ home where they live with their oyster-loving 12-year-old son Omi
and daughter Lola, already a budding artist at six.
The giant
chair is a striking visual metaphor for a love story that’s nothing short of
epic. After their marriage in 1993, Gupta and Kher chose a life of pure art,
working together in their tiny studio, content in their large circle of artist
friends. Jobs were anathema. “We’d paint till six in the evening, have a drink,
start again at 11 and paint till six in the morning, go for a morning walk and
sleep until noon. That’s how we lived for years,” smiles Kher recalling the
intense romanticism of their life in the '90s.
Both
artists made huge paintings which they’d take up to the chhat of their tiny
Mayur Vihar flat to photograph and document their work. “We worked very hard,
doing our individual bit. We had no money and lived on bread and meat and rum.
We worked in the same place as we cooked and slept. We didn’t care,” Gupta
shrugs. Life was free but full of hardship. At Kher’s first exhibition in 1993,
the turnout included 14 people, nine of whom were family. “We used to pray that
someone would buy a painting so we could survive somehow.” Gupta remembers the
time when Kher’s mother visited them from London. “She is a very strong woman,
but when she walk into our home, she started to cry. She said, ‘My daughter
doesn’t even have a chair to sit on!’”
In those
pre-Internet times, with the outdated Lalit Kala Akademi library as their only
resource, all they could do was talk about art: all-night discussions on what
Progressives like Husain and Raza were doing, what Jeff Koons was doing, what
they themselves would do. Kher recalls how her brother-in-law, a teacher in
England, would cut every single newspaper article about contemporary art for
them. “Every six months we’d get this big bundle and we’d sit and look through
what everybody was doing.” The art scene in India was quiet then. The
contemporary Indian artists who would run riot with materials and take the
world by storm a decade later were not even heard of then. Together Gupta and
Kher would help realise major landmarks including founding the international
artists’ workshop Khoj in 1997 with fellow artists Manisha Parekh, Pooja Sood
and Arun Kumar.
A key
realisation that spurred their iconic success in subsequent years came from the
idea that the most interesting artists are honest and create work that comes
from something they know. Kher remembers Gupta’s very first watercolour of a
light bulb. “I asked him, ‘What’s that’? He said, ‘That’s the light bulb that
was in my house.’ The act of looking back sparked other watercolours—those of a
brick and a banana tree. Those were the first works when suddenly something
went Bing in our brains and we thought, ‘We’re on to something.’”
Each
powered the other’s quest for self-discovery. When Kher created her first bindi
work, it was Gupta who egged her on to continue what would become her signature
medium. And it was he who booked her first exhibition in 1993. “Subodh took me
to IFACS and said, ‘I’m booking you. I told him that I wasn’t ready. But he
just handed me the slip and said, ‘You have a show in six months. Get
working.’” Kher, on her part, is said to have been a key catalyst in her
husband’s unprecedented overseas success. It was with her that he went abroad
for the first time after their marriage. “It was really a shock for me. I learn
and learn. Then look back at my home in Bihar. I mix them together. And that’s
how I create my own art works.”
Their
influence on each other’s work has been subtle but profound. “It’s like we
always work together. Although we have nothing to do with each other’s
individual art, somewhere a relationship is formed with it. Because you’re
looking at it all the time, talking about art all the time,” Gupta says. Kher
resumes, “Subodh is hugely ambitious and works really hard. It’s like there’s
someone constantly with you and you say, ‘Ok. I can’t rest. Let’s move it.’
We’re always there for each other. We fire each other. Actually we’re very
competitive. But healthily. Okay, sometimes not so healthily. That’s because
we’re married. We’re together, so there’s everything…you know…everything. We’ve
had this very long journey. It’s quite special, really,” her voice trails off.
It’s
another matter that both have become so busy now that they don’t always get to
see the other’s work immediately. Gupta admits going to Kher’s studio in recent
times and being surprised by what she has done. “I go, ‘Wow! When you did
that?’” Kher teases him. “You always used to stretch my canvas for me. You
don’t do that anymore. That’s on record now!” He shoots back. “You don’t need
me to do that anymore. You have too many fans surrounding you now.”
Although
they have strikingly different artistic styles—his work is visual and organic
while hers is intricate and conceptual—the idea of identity and clashing
cultures is central to both. Kher regards High Life from 2002 as Gupta’s most
significant bartan piece choosing it over his dizzyingly famous 1000-kilo
sculpture Very Hungry God displayed outside Palazzo Grassi in Venice in 2006
and bought by French billionaire Francois Pinault. Gupta regards Kher as a
better artist than himself and admires the depth and detail of her work. His
favourite is her 2008 piece Sing to Them That Will Listen, a metal bowl filled
with grains of rice on which words were written in ink. “Bharti’s work is not
something you look at just visually. You have to look at it in more detail.”
There’s a
fun side to the star couple who loves to entertain. A keen cook, Gupta does the
food while Kher is happiest doing the ‘environment’ and playing hostess. On
Kher’s 40th birthday bash at Gupta’s studio earlier this year in June, they
pulled out all the stops, involving close friends like set designer Sumant
Jayakrishnan in decorations, putting together a video projection and flying
down a DJ from Paris. “It was very happening. Friends came down from all over
the world just for the party,” beams Gupta.
Larger
than life, much like their art, their partnership eludes easy adjectives. “So
you’re just two people who met each other and know each other and live
together. It’s like a journey. That’s it. People often ask us how we manage two
artistic egos. It’s not easy. But it’s fun, too.” Kher drawls. Gupta nods.
“Look, it’s not easy. We have also been lucky. Working hard is one thing but
it’s your destiny to meet people and understand things, to not let it go.
That’s how you gain things.”
Together
for 17 long years, the couple holds strong to the philosophy that problems in
life have to be worked through. “It’s hard to keep a relationship. But both of
us are quite committed to seeing things through. We’re both very stubborn. So
we just don’t let it go,” Kher says resolutely. Who has the temper? She
furtively signals towards Gupta, who sheepishly admits this but insists he
never fights with anyone except his wife.
Both have
mega projects lined up. Gupta has shows in Kiev, Ukraine, and in Scotland, a
solo exhibition in Seoul, and biennales in Brisbane and Taipei. Kher, following
close on the heels of Gupta’s 2009 solo Common Man at Hauser & Wirth,
London, is preparing for her own solo at the juggernaut art venue in March
2010. “It’s like my homecoming. It’s terrifying,” says the British born who
takes strong exception to being called a reverse émigrée after living two
decades in India.
How do
they handle so much power? “There’s no power. Honestly, we don’t see it that
way,” Gupta dismisses. “We got two kids and we’re very happy. Now is the time
for us to work harder than ever before.” Kher
smiles. “People look at us and say, ‘Now what?’ We say, ‘Now’s the beginning.’”
courtesy: verve online Text by Sona Bahadur and Photographs by Ashish Chawla I Published: Volume 17, Issue 11, November, 2009
