Lot 595
BIKASH BHATTACHARJEE (1940-2006)
A Social Gathering
Closed16 September 2009
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Specialist note
Making Calcutta's subaltern culture the central subject of his paintings: street boys, men, women, beggars, performers and prostitutes often find their way on to his canvases.
A Social Gathering painted in 1979, focuses on the theme of women and social injustice. The austere manner in which the artist has executed the central figure of a mature woman in her distinctly Bengali white with red border sari, seated in the midst of other women with similarly shadowed and blackened out eyes, suggests a mood of insurgency.
"Sometimes the target of his caustic comment is often a class of women, plump and bejeweled ladies of high society, slick socialites, office girls with the heavily made-up synthetic faces they put up to attract male attention, whether for status in the elite social spheres or for the upward mobility in job or profession, demeaning in each case their real self as women. One may recall The Office Girl (1979), At the Opening Ceremony (1979), At a Social Gathering (1980) and Stenographer (1984)." (M. Majumder, Works of Bikash Bhattacharjee: Close to Events, New Delhi, 2007, pp. 165, 169)
A Social Gathering painted in 1979, focuses on the theme of women and social injustice. The austere manner in which the artist has executed the central figure of a mature woman in her distinctly Bengali white with red border sari, seated in the midst of other women with similarly shadowed and blackened out eyes, suggests a mood of insurgency.
"Sometimes the target of his caustic comment is often a class of women, plump and bejeweled ladies of high society, slick socialites, office girls with the heavily made-up synthetic faces they put up to attract male attention, whether for status in the elite social spheres or for the upward mobility in job or profession, demeaning in each case their real self as women. One may recall The Office Girl (1979), At the Opening Ceremony (1979), At a Social Gathering (1980) and Stenographer (1984)." (M. Majumder, Works of Bikash Bhattacharjee: Close to Events, New Delhi, 2007, pp. 165, 169)