Page 40 - TheArtsTrust Krishen Khanna

that remains obscured from the viewer. above: The Khanna family
Intensifying the painting’s grim atmosphere is in Delhi on the artist’s 90th
birthday in 2015
the muted palette of blacks and greys, as well as opposite: Khanna in 2017,
the pallid flesh tones of the figures, evoking a with the Padma Shri and
Padma Bhushan citations,
sense of detachment and dehumanisation. In a high civilian honours
1975 work of the same title, six men surround a awarded by the Government
of India
this calculated indifference. The table and the closed interiors become the corpse, with one man poised to dismember it.
metaphorical reflection of hidden covert bunkers, where generals and As a narrative of moral decay, these unsettling
bureaucrats convene to make decisions somewhat removed from the ground images channel the disillusionment with the institutions of power experienced
reality. As they engage in these abstract negotiations, they seem to remain by the populace during the time, and lay bare the collateral damage that can
indifferent to the corpses that lay strewn near their feet. With this damning underlie the performance of order and control.
portrayal, the artist questions the actions taken from detached deliberations During the politically-fraught years surrounding the Emergency,
that often leave a trail of devastation in their wake. Biblical themes began to take on a more prominent role in Khanna’s art. It
Another body of work from the time that focuses on these realities marked the beginning of a sustained engagement with the iconography of
through the vulnerability of the human body is The Anatomy Lesson series. Christ throughout his long and varied career. While the artist’s initial forays
These works become allegories of a brutal system that sows the seeds of into Christian subjects emerged in the 1950s, with works like Betrayal and
turbulence and then dissects and scrutinises those victimised by it. A 1972 St. Francis and the Birds, the subsequent works are more than religious
version of the work, charged with a sense of existential dread, showcases a meditations—they become visual parables of the quiet heroism of the
group of men, all dressed in black and absorbed in an inspection or dissection vulnerable. Executed with spare detail and saturated colour fields, these

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