Speaking to The Wire, Chennai-based curator and well-known commentator on the arts and culture Sadanand Menon said that Jones sounds more like an “interloper” than a real critic, for he seems unaware of how Khakhar scoffs at Western ideas of art-making through his work. He pointed out how Khakhar used to conduct ultra-serious ‘mock interviews’ between himself and fictive critics, which he would include in his catalogues. Menon deplored the fact that The Guardian would give space to “patronising fools who don’t know international art history”.

Similarly, curator and director general of Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur, Pooja Sood commented on how Jones unthinkingly uses Western standards in his critique, seemingly naïve and uneducated about the fact that there are different art histories in the world. “His comments are akin to saying African art is primitive,” she said. She also added that when his review appeared, many Indian artists were simply dismissive of it and that The Guardian, although an important publication, is not necessarily the authoritative voice on such matters.

In another review for The Guardian – this one heralding the Tate exhibition – novelist and academic Amit Chaudhuri, like Menon and Sood, extols Khakhar for the very reasons that Jones denounces him – for being “self-mocking” and “satirical”, and for being simultaneously quasi-surrealist and rooted in his visitations of the provincial. This slippage between the tangible and the abstract – Khakhar’s exploration of the relationship between the physical body and rupa or surface appearance – is in part what makes his art so seductive for Chaudhuri.

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