Painting will take centre stage at Tate in 2016, with solo exhibitions dedicated to major art historical figures such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Francis Bacon, Maria Lassnig, Wifredo Lam and Robert Rauschenberg. Sharing the summer slot with O’Keeffe, however, is the self-taught Indian artist Bhupen Khakhar (1934-2003), who continued to work as a chartered accountant even as his homoerotic, Pop-inspired canvases attracted international attention in the 1980s.
The 1981 piece in Tate’s collection, which Khakhar said represented the difficulties he faced in coming out as gay, gives the show its title: You Can’t Please All (1 June-6 November 2016). The exhibition will bring together Khakhar’s work from across five decades encompassing textiles and ceramics. The artist’s only previous major exhibition at a UK institution was at the Lowry in Salford in 2002, the year before he died.
A Tate spokeswoman says that the artist “confronted provocative themes: class difference; desire and homosexuality; and his personal battle with cancer. After early experiments with Pop art, Khakhar went on to combine popular and painterly aesthetics, part of a new wave of narrative painting and figuration in India." The show is sponsored by Deutsche Bank AG, and is the second of three international art presentations co-organised with the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle in Berlin.
Tate Modern’s 2016 autumn season will open, meanwhile, with a sprawling Wifredo Lam retrospective travelling from the Centre Pompidou in Paris (14 September 2016-8 January 2017). In December, the first posthumous exhibition of Robert Rauschenberg, co-organised with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, promises a “stellar selection” of the artist’s Combines, which blurred the lines between painting and sculpture (1 December 2016-2 April 2017). It will travel to MoMA and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Tate Modern will also present the first major show of O’Keeffe’s work in the UK for more than 20 years (6 July-30 October 2016). It will range beyond the flower paintings for which she is best known, “charting her progression from early abstract experiments to late work”, according to Tate. After its London debut, the exhibition is due to travel to Bank Austria Kunstforum in Vienna and the Museum Folkwang in Essen.
Significantly, photography, an expanding field for Tate, will be the subject of two survey shows. Performing for the Camera at Tate Modern (18 February-12 June) traces the relationship between performance and photography since the invention of the medium in the 19th century. Art and Photography from the Pre-Raphaelites to the Modern Age at Tate Britain (11 May-25 September) draws parallels between early photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron and painter contemporaries, including James Abbott McNeill Whistler and John Everett Millais. The Argentine artist Pablo Bronstein will devise a site-specific performance piece for Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries.
Tate St Ives is due to reopen after renovations in May with an international ceramics survey and a solo show for the young British artist Jessica Warboys (21 May-2 October 2016). These follow a series of special events in April to mark the 40th anniversary of the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden, the former studio of the Yorkshire-born sculptor. The Tate St Ives expansion project is due to conclude in 2017.
At Tate Liverpool, an exhibition exploring the recurring architectural motifs in Francis Bacon’s compositions, Francis Bacon: Invisible Rooms, will run alongside a presentation of works by the late Austrian artist Maria Lassnig (18 May-18 September). The museum will also host a Liverpool Biennial display from July to October.