You can't please all: Evaluating Bhupen Khakhar beyond the 'gay artist' tag

Khakhar's coming out couldn't have been more dramatic, and found unsettling expression in his art

Economic liberalisation might have robbed aspiring towns of their provinciality, but Baroda in the latter decades of the 20th century was as claustrophobic as only a small town can be. It was not a city where you could hide, or keep secrets, but Bhupen Khakhar did both. More even than the fear of being outed as homosexual was the anxiety of the morality brigade, surrounded as he was by the trade and commerce of any small town — the barber, fruit seller, grocer, tailor, watch repairer, mendicant and, inevitably, the neighbour. Within this slightly squalid world, desire existed at a