Krishen Khanna

Even when he draws out Chaplinesque dualities and outlines pathos, painting for Krishen Khanna remains an experience of Annanda or complete bliss.
By Surendra Kumar Seth

What do you think have been the influences on you?
I don’t believe that there are any major influences on my work. On the other hand, I have met so many wonderful people and have been exposed to so much work by other artists. In fact, in...

Even when he draws out Chaplinesque dualities and outlines pathos, painting for Krishen Khanna remains an experience of Annanda or complete bliss.
By Surendra Kumar Seth

What do you think have been the influences on you?
I don’t believe that there are any major influences on my work. On the other hand, I have met so many wonderful people and have been exposed to so much work by other artists. In fact, in my house you will hardly find any painting of mine. They are all works of other people. All these can influence you at one level.

In any discussion of your work the "Bandwallas" feature prominently. What made you choose the "Bandwallas" as your subject matter?
These are the most recent of my paintings so they are much talked about. What has drawn me to the bandwallas is the context they come from. They are a legacy of the Raj. The British left the bandwallas in India and now all baraats (wedding processions) look like parades. Everyone must fall in line. The bandwallas themselves wear glittering uniforms of a general and resemble the grandeur of the army except for their chappals. I see the bandwalla as a relic of the past appropriated by Punjabis and people in the North in general for their marriage processions and the like. On the one hand, we have uniforms which provide a kind of grandeur— as well as anonymity—to military personnel, while a different kind of uniform transforms the bandwalla into an amusing public entertainer. That is so peculiarly Indian. I have not only painted the bandwallas but also truckwalas( truck driver) because to me they seem very peculiarly Indian. I am moved by Chaplinesque situations that involve dual emotions. On the face of it, they can be very funny, even ridiculous. But there is a kind of pathos beneath it all.

What do you think is the reason for the sudden resurgence of Indian art?
Certain people think and propound that Indian art today, is better as vis-à-vis other countries and their art. But it is not so. Artists have been doing good and important work in India for a while. The only difference that has come in Indian art today is that auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s have started auctioning Indian art and Indian art is selling. So the world has started relearning Indian art. There are now so many galleries selling Indian art. Art, by definition, is an individualistic exercise. How then, is it possible to group artists in a particular style? Does art have to have a message? Artists are individuals. And as a product of their times, which is why is it possible that there may be a common thread in their work. For an artist, work is not a means of recognition but a striving towards answers. An artist seeks to find the meaning of life. That is where art gets its depth from. Certain sensibilities that may be forms of one concept can be grouped together. Sometimes there are idealistic similarities, sometimes responses to social realities in that time are alike. In the latter part of the 20th century space became far more important than painting. The easel is a limited space. There was so much inbreeding of ideas because of restrictions of space. Such paintings divested themselves with the general flow of life. Now the edges have started smudging. The painter has to use creativity to create the subject and then send the message out. You have to create the concept of pictorial space or for that matter, a geometrical two-dimensional space. I have begun to use the easel less and less now and I have moved to murals where the restriction of space is less. A painting has edges and an artist has to work within those restrictions. I would like to move out of the edges.

What does it mean to you to paint?
Art for me, is the ultimate Annanda (bliss). Art can provide you with the metaphysical answers you have been looking for even whilst you are involved in its creation. They call it drawing. I really have no name for it. It's a compulsion, an itch. The more I scratch, the more I want to continue. It is enjoyable but it can also hurt when nothing emerges but an incomprehensible mess. Was I taught to draw? Silly question really. How can one manipulate a compulsive itch? Try and stop it and see what happens. Bad temper, depression and a sickness of spirit. Emptiness. It follows that my subject matter is of importance to me and is not fortuitous. Dependent on this choice are the means that will reveal it. Nor is it ever certain that every venture will be successful. What is certain, and this gives me some comfort, is that a moment of my life was spent in such absorption that bypassed Time. If at the end of it, what I make I made finds acceptance with someone, it confirms to me that I'm not alone. The drawing becomes a ground for sharing an experience.

What is your process like? Is there any change in your style from earlier to now?
My gaze is independent of my pencil holding hand. I think I could shut my eyes without ceasing to scribble. Sustained scribbling achieves only a small inroad that may dislodge an image. Sounds dramatic doesn't it? It isn't always so. I could not repeat the contours of a subject I've tackled before, which is not to say that I would not go back to the same subject in the hope of discovering another dimension. I used to do abstracts earlier and I have now moved on to human forms. I thought that the person or the individual is being neglected – the person in a particular situation who is influenced by the conditions around. I want to now emphasise the human beings caught up in their particular condition.